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Title: The Benefactress

Author: Elizabeth Beauchamp

Release Date: October 20, 2009 [EBook #30302]
[Last updated: January 20, 2023]

Language: English

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                          The Benefactress

         BY THE AUTHOR OF "ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN"


New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1901

_All rights reserved_

Copyright, 1901,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Norwood Press
J. S. Gushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.




             Man bedarf der Leitung
    Und der männlichen Begleitung.

                    WILHELM BUSCH.




THE BENEFACTRESS




CHAPTER I


When Anna Estcourt was twenty-five, and had begun to wonder whether the
pleasure extractable from life at all counterbalanced the bother of it,
a wonderful thing happened.

She was an exceedingly pretty girl, who ought to have been enjoying
herself. She had a soft, irregular face, charming eyes, dimples, a
pleasant laugh, and limbs that were long and slender. Certainly she
ought to have been enjoying herself. Instead, she wasted her time in
that foolish pondering over the puzzles of existence, over those
unanswerable whys and wherefores, which is as a rule restricted, among
women, to the elderly and plain. Many and various are the motives that
impel a woman so to ponder; in Anna's case the motive was nothing more
exalted than the perpetual presence of a sister-in-law. The
sister-in-law was rich--in itself a pleasing circumstance; but the
sister-in-law was also frank, and her husband and Anna were entirely
dependent on her, and her richness and her frankness combined urged her
to make fatiguingly frequent allusions to the Estcourt poverty. Except
for their bad taste her husband did not mind these allusions much, for
he considered that he had given her a full equivalent for her money in
bestowing his name on a person who had practically none: he was Sir
Peter Estcourt of the Devonshire Estcourts, and she was a Dobbs of
Birmingham. Besides, he was a philosopher, and philosophers never mind
anything. But Anna was in a less agreeable situation. She was not a
philosopher, she was thin-skinned, she had bestowed nothing and was
taking everything, and she was of an independent nature; and an
independent nature, where there is no money, is a great nuisance to its
possessor.

When she was younger and more high-flown she sometimes talked of
sweeping crossings; but her sister-in-law Susie would not hear of
crossings, and dressed her beautifully, and took her out, and made her
dance and dine and do as other girls did, being of opinion that a rich
husband of good position was more satisfactory than crossings, and far
more likely to make some return for all the expenses she had had.

At eighteen Anna was so pretty that the perfect husband seemed to be a
mere question of days. What could the most desirable of men, thought
Susie, considering her, want more than so bewitching a young creature?
But he did not come, somehow, that man of Susie's dreams; and after a
year or two, when Anna began to understand what all this dressing and
dancing really meant, and after she had had offers from people she did
not like, and had herself fallen in love with a youth of no means who
was prudent enough to marry somebody else with money, she shrank back
and grew colder, and objected more and more decidedly to Susie's
strenuous private matrimonial urgings, and sometimes made remarks of a
cynical nature to her admirers, who took fright at such symptoms of
advancing age, and fell off considerably in numbers.

It was at this period, when she was barely twenty-two, that she spoke of
crossings. Susie had seriously reproved her for not meeting the advances
of an old and rich and single person with more enthusiasm, and had at
the same time alluded to the number of pounds she had spent on her every
year for the last three years, and the necessity for putting an end, by
marrying, to all this outlay; and instead of being sensible, and talking
things over quietly, Anna had poured out a flood of foolish sentiments
about the misery of knowing that she was expected to be nice to every
man with money, the intolerableness of the life she was leading, and the
superior attractions of crossing-sweeping as a means of earning a
livelihood.

"Why, you haven't enough money for the broom," said Susie impatiently.
"You can't sweep without a broom, you know. I wish you were a little
less silly, Anna, and a little more grateful. Most girls would jump at
the splendid opportunity you've got now of marrying, and taking up a
position of your own. You talk a great deal of stuff about being
independent, and when you get the chance, and I do all I can to help
you, you fly into a passion and want to sweep a crossing. Really," added
Susie, twitching her shoulder, "you might remember that it isn't all
roses for me either, trying to get some one else's daughter married."

"Of course it isn't all roses," said Anna, leaning against the
mantelpiece and looking down at her with perplexed eyebrows. "I am very
sorry for you. I wish you weren't so anxious to get rid of me. I wish I
could do something to help you. But you know, Susie, you haven't taught
me a trade. I can't set up on my own account unless you'll give me a
last present of a broom, and let me try my luck at the nearest crossing.
The one at the end of the street is badly kept. What do you think if I
started there?" What answer could anyone make to such folly?

By the time she was twenty-four, nearly all the girls who had come out
when she did were married, and she felt as though she were a ghost
haunting the ball-rooms of a younger generation. Disliking this feeling,
she stiffened, and became more and more unapproachable; and it was at
this period that she invented excuses for missing most of the functions
to which she was invited, and began to affect a simplicity of dress and
hair arrangement that was severe. Susie's exasperation was now at its
height. "I don't know why you should be bent on making the worst of
yourself," she said angrily, when Anna absolutely refused to alter her
hair.

"I'm tired of being frivolous," said Anna. "Have you an idea how long
those waves took to do? And you know how Hilton talks. It all gets
whisked up now in two minutes, and I'm spared her conversation."

"But you are quite plain," cried Susie. "You are not like the same girl.
The only thing your best friend could say about you now is that you look
clean."

"Well, I like to look clean," said Anna, and continued to go about the
world with hair tucked neatly behind her ears; her immediate reward
being an offer from a clergyman within the next fortnight.

Peter Estcourt was even more surprised than his wife that Anna had not
made a good match years before. Of course she had no money, but she was
a pretty girl of good family, and it ought to be easy enough for her to
find a husband. He wished heartily that she might soon be happily
married; for he loved her, and knew that she and Susie could never, with
their best endeavours, be great friends. Besides, every woman ought to
have a home of her own, and a husband and children. Whenever he thought
of Anna, he thought exactly this; and when he had reached the
proposition at the end he felt that he could do no more, and began to
think of something else.

His marriage with Susie, a person of whom no one had ever heard, had
brought out and developed stores of unsuspected philosophy in him.
Before that he was quite poor, and very merry; but he loved Estcourt,
and could not bear to see it falling into ruin, and he loved his small
sister, who was then only ten, and wished to give her a decent
education, and what is a man to do? There happened to be no rich
American girls about at that time, so he married Miss Dobbs of
Birmingham, and became a philosopher.

It was hard on Susie that he should become a philosopher at her expense.
She did not like philosophers. She did not understand their silent ways,
and their evenness of temper. After she had done all that Peter wanted
in regard to the place in Devonshire, and had provided Anna with every
luxury in the shape of governesses, and presented her husband with an
heir to the retrieved family fortunes, she thought that she had a right
to some enjoyment too, to some gratification from her position, and was
surprised to find how little was forthcoming. Really no one could do
more than she had done, and yet nothing was done for her. Peter fished,
and read, and was with difficulty removable from Estcourt. Anna was, of
course, too young to be grateful, but there she was, taking everything
as a matter of course, her very unconsciousness an irritation. Susie
wanted to get on in the world, and nobody helped her. She wanted to bury
the Dobbs part of herself, and develop the Estcourt part; but the Dobbs
part was natural, and the Estcourt superficial, and the Dobbses were one
and all singularly unattractive--a race of eager, restless, wiry little
men and women, anxious to get as much as they could, and keep it as long
as they could, a family succeeding in gathering a good deal of money
together in one place, and failing entirely in the art of making
friends. Susie was the best of them, and had been the pretty one at
home; yet she was not in the least a success in London. She put it down
to Peter's indifference, to his slowness in introducing her to his
friends. It was no more Peter's fault than it was her own. It was not
her fault that she was not pretty--there never had been a beautiful
Dobbs--and it was not her fault that she was so unfortunately frank, and
never could and never did conceal her feverish eagerness to make
desirable acquaintances, and to get into desirable sets. Until Anna came
out she was invited only to the big functions to which the whole world
went; and the hours she passed at them were not among the most blissful
of her life. The people who were at first inclined to be kind to her for
Peter's sake, dropped off when they found how her eagerness to attract
the attention of some one mightier made her unable to fix her thoughts
on the friendly remarks that they were taking pains to make. In society
she was absent-minded, fidgety, obviously on the look-out for a chance
of drawing the biggest fish into her little net; but, wealthy as she
was, she was not wealthy enough in an age of millionnaires, and not once
during the whole of her career was a big fish simple enough to be
caught.

After a time her natural shrewdness and common sense made her perceive
that her one claim to the scanty attentions she did receive was her
money. Her money had bought her Peter, and a pleasant future for her
children; it had converted a Dobbs into an Estcourt; it had given her
everything she had that was worth anything at all. Once she had
thoroughly realised this, she began to attach a tremendous importance to
the mere possession of money, and grew very stingy, making difficulties
about spending that grieved Peter greatly; not because he ever wanted
her money now that Estcourt had been restored to its old splendour and
set going again for their boy, but because meanness about money in a
woman was something he could not comprehend--something repulsive,
unfeminine, contrary to her nature as he had always understood it. He
left off making the least suggestion about Anna's education or the
household arrangements; everything that was done was done of Susie's own
accord; and he spent more and more time in Devonshire, and grew more and
more philosophical, and when he did talk to his wife, restricted his
conversation to the language of abstract wisdom.

Now this was very hard on Susie, who had no appreciation of abstract
wisdom, and who lived as lonely a life as it is possible to imagine.
Peter kept out of her way. Anna was subject to prolonged fits of chilly
silence. Susie used, at such times, to think regretfully of the cheerful
Dobbs days, of their frank and congenial vulgarity.

When Anna was eighteen, Susie's prospects brightened for a time. Doors
that had been shut ever since she married, opened before her on her
appearing with such a pretty _débutante_ under her wing, and she could
enjoy the reflected glory of Anna's little triumphs. And then, without
any apparent reason, Anna had altered so strangely, and had disappointed
every one's expectations; never encouraging the right man, never ready
to do as she was told, exasperatingly careless on all matters of vital
importance, and ending by showing symptoms of freezing into something of
the same philosophical state as Peter. Their mother had been German----a
lady-in-waiting to one of the German princesses; and their father had
met her and married her while he was secretary at the English Embassy in
St. Petersburg. And Susie, who had heard of German philosophy and German
stolidity, and despised them both with all her heart, concluded that the
German strain was accountable for everything about Peter and Anna that
was beyond her comprehension; and sometimes, when Peter was more than
usually wise and unapproachable, would call him Herr Schopenhauer--which
had an immediate effect of producing a silence that lasted for weeks;
for not only did he like her least when she was playful, but he had, as
a matter of fact, read a great deal of Schopenhauer, and was uneasily
conscious that it had not been good for him.

While Peter fished, and meditated on the vanity of human wishes at
Estcourt, Anna, with rare exceptions, was wherever Susie was, and Susie
was wherever it was fashionable to be. For a week or two in the summer,
for a day or two at Easter, they went down to Devonshire; and Anna might
wander about the old house and grounds as she chose, and feel how much
better she had loved it in its tumble-down state, the state she had
known as a child, when her mother lived there and was happy. Everything
was aggressively spruce now, indoors and out. Susie's money and Susie's
taste had rubbed off all the mellowness and all the romance. Anna was
glad to leave it again, and be taken to Marienbad, or any place where
there was royalty, for Susie loved royalty. But what a life it was,
going round year after year with Susie! London, Devonshire, Marienbad,
Scotland, London again, following with patient feet wherever the
unconscious royalties led, meeting the same people, listening to the
same music, talking the same talk, eating the same dinners--would no one
ever invent anything new to eat? The inexpressible boredom of riding up
and down the Row every morning, the unutterable hours shopping and
trying on clothes, the weariness of all the new pictures, and all the
concerts, and all the operas, which seemed to grow less pleasing every
year, as her eye and ear grew more critical. She knew at last every note
of the stock operas and concerts, and every note seemed to have got on
to her nerves.

And then the people they knew--the everlasting sameness of them, content
to go the same dull round for ever. Driving in the Park with Susie,
neither of them speaking a word, she used to watch the faces in the
other carriages, nearly all faces of acquaintances, to see whether any
of them looked cheerful; and it was the rarest thing to come across any
expression but one of blankest boredom. Bored and cross, hardly ever
speaking to the person with them, their friends drove up and down every
afternoon, and she and Susie did the same, as silent and as bored as any
of them. A few unusually beautiful, or unusually witty, or unusually
young persons appeared to find life pleasant and looked happy, but they
avoided Susie. Her set was made up of the dull and plain; and all the
amusing people, and all the interesting people, turned their backs with
one accord on her and it.

These were the circumstances that drove Anna to reflect on the problems
of life every time she was beyond the sound of Susie's voice.

She passionately resented her position of dependence on Susie, and she
passionately resented the fact that the only way to get out of it was to
marry. Every time she had an offer, she first of all refused it with an
energy that astonished the unhappy suitor, and then spent days and
nights of agony because she had refused it, and because Susie wanted her
to accept it, and because of an immense pity for Susie that had taken
possession of her heart. How could Peter live so placidly at Susie's
expense, and treat her with such a complete want of tenderness? Anna's
love for her brother diminished considerably directly she began to
understand Susie's life. It was such a pitiful little life of cringing,
and pushing, and heroically smiling in the face of ill-treatment. No one
cared for her in the very least. She had hundreds of acquaintances, who
would eat her dinners and go away and poke fun at her, but not a single
friend. Her husband lived on her and hardly spoke to her. Her boy at
Eton, an amazing prig, looked down on her. Her little daughter never
dreamed of obeying her. Anna herself was prevented by some stubborn
spirit of fastidiousness, evidently not possessed by any of her
contemporaries, from doing the only thing Susie had ever really wanted
her to do--marrying, and getting herself out of the way. What if Susie
were a vulgar little woman of no education and no family? That did not
make it any the more glorious for the Estcourts to take all they could
and ignore her existence. It was, after all, Susie who paid the bills.
Anna pitied her from the bottom of her heart; such a forlorn little
woman, taken out of her proper sphere, and left to shiver all alone,
without a shred of love to cover and comfort her.

It was when she was away from Susie that she felt this. When she was
with her, she found herself as cold and quiet and contradictory as
Peter. She used, whenever she got the chance, to go to afternoon service
at St. Paul's. It was the only place and time in which all the bad part
of her was soothed into quiet, and the good allowed to prevail in peace.
The privacy of the great place, where she never met anyone she knew, the
beauty of the music, the stateliness of the service offered every day in
equal perfection to any poor wretch choosing to turn his back for an
hour on the perplexities of life, all helped to hush her grievances to
sleep and fill her heart with tenderness for those who were not happy,
and for those who did not know they were unhappy, and for those who
wasted their one precious life in being wretched when they might have
been happy. How little it would need, she thought (for she was young and
imaginative), to turn most people's worries and sadness into joy. Such a
little difference in Susie's ways and ideas would make them all so
happy; such a little change in Peter's habits would make his wife's life
radiant. But they all lived blindly on, each day a day of emptiness,
each of those precious days, so crowded with opportunities, and
possibilities, and unheeded blessings, and presently life would be
behind them, and their chances gone for ever.

"The world is a dreadful place, full of unhappy people," she thought,
looking out on to the world with unhappy eyes. "Each one by himself,
with no one to comfort him. Each one with more than he can bear, and no
one to help him. Oh, if I could, I would help and comfort everyone that
is sad, or sick at heart, or sorry--oh, if I could!"

And she dreamed of all that she would do if she were Susie--rich, and
free from any sort of interference--to help others, less fortunate, to
be happy too. But, since she was the very reverse of rich and free, she
shook off these dreams, and made numbers of good resolutions
instead--resolutions bearing chiefly on her future behaviour towards
Susie. And she would come out of the church filled with the sternest
resolves to be ever afterwards kind and loving to her; and the very
first words Susie uttered would either irritate her into speeches that
made her sorry, or freeze her back into her ordinary state of cold
aloofness.

If Susie had had an idea that Anna was pitying her, and making good
resolutions of which she was the object at afternoon services, and that
in her eyes she had come to be merely a cross which must with heroism be
borne, she probably would have been indignant. Pitying people and being
pitied oneself are two very different things. The first is soothing and
sweet, the second is annoying, or even maddening, according to the
temperament of the patient. Susie, however, never suspected that anyone
could be sorry for her; and when, after a party, before they went to
bed, Anna would put her arms round her and give her a disproportionately
tender kiss, she would show her surprise openly. "Why, what's the
matter?" she would ask. "Another mood, Anna?" For she could not know how
much Anna felt the snubs she had seen her receive. How should she? She
was so used to them that she hardly noticed them herself.

It was when Anna was twenty-five, and much vexed in body by efforts to
be and to do as Susie wished, and in soul by those unanswerable
questions as to the why and wherefore of the aimless, useless existence
she was leading, that the wonderful thing happened that changed her
whole life.




CHAPTER II


There was a German relation of Anna's, her mother's brother, known to
Susie as Uncle Joachim. He had been twice to England; once during his
sister's life, when Anna was little, and Peter was unmarried, and they
were all poor and happy together at Estcourt; and once after Susie's
introduction into the family, just at that period when Anna was
beginning to stiffen and put her hair behind her ears.

Susie knew all about him, having inquired with her usual frankness on
first hearing of his existence whether he would be likely to leave Anna
anything on his death; and upon being informed that he had a family of
sons, and large estates and little money, looked upon it as a great
hardship to be obliged to have him in her London house. She objected to
all Germans, and thought this particular one a dreadful old man, and
never wearied of making humorous comments on his clothes and the oddness
of his manners at meals. She was vexed that he should be with them in
Hill Street, and refused to give dinners while he was there. She also
asked him several times if he would not enjoy a stay at Estcourt, and
said that the country was now at its best, and the primroses were in
full beauty.

"I want not primroses," said Uncle Joachim, who seldom spoke at length;
"I live in the country. I will now see London."

So he went about diligently to all the museums and picture-galleries,
sometimes alone and sometimes with Anna, who neglected her social duties
more than ever in order to be with him, for she loved him.

They talked together chiefly in German, Uncle Joachim carefully
correcting her mistakes; and while they went frugally in omnibuses to
the different sights, and ate buns in confectioners' shops at
lunch-time, and walked long distances where no omnibuses were to be
found--for besides having a great fear of hansoms he was very
thrifty--he drew her out, saying little himself, and in a very short
time knew almost as much about her life and her perplexities as she did.

She was very happy during his visit, and told herself contentedly that
blood, after all, was thicker than water. She did not stop to consider
what she meant exactly by this, but she had a vague notion that Susie
was the water. She felt that Uncle Joachim understood her better than
anyone had yet done; and was it not natural that her dear mother's
brother should? And it was only after she had taken him to service at
St. Paul's that she began to perceive that there might perhaps be points
on which their tastes differed. Uncle Joachim had remained seated while
other people knelt or stood; but that did not matter in that liberal
place, where nobody notices the degree of his neighbour's devoutness.
And he had slept during the anthem, one of those unaccompanied anthems
that are sung there with what seem of a certainty to be the voices of
angels. And on coming out, when a fugue was rolling in glorious
confusion down the echoing aisles, and Anna, who preferred her fugues
confused, felt that her spirit was being caught up to heaven, he had
looked at her rapt face and wet eyelashes, and patted her hand very
kindly, and said encouragingly, "In my youth I too cultivated Bach. Now
I cultivate pigs. Pigs are better."

Anna's mother had been his only sister, and he had come over, not, as he
told Susie, to see London, but to see Susie herself, and to find out how
it was that Anna had reached an age that in Germany is the age of old
maids without marrying. By the time he had spent two evenings in Hill
Street he had formed his opinion of his nephew and his nephew's wife,
and they remained fixed until his death. "The good Peter," he said
suddenly one day to Anna when they were wandering together in the maze
at Hampton Court--for he faithfully went the rounds of sightseeing
prescribed by Baedeker, and Anna followed him wherever he went--"the
good Peter is but a _Quatschkopf_."

"A _Quatschkopf_?" echoed Anna, whose acquaintance with her
mother-tongue did not extend to the byways of opprobrium. "What in the
world is a _Quatschkopf_?"

"_Quatschkopf_ is a _Duselfritz_," explained Uncle Joachim, "and also it
is the good Peter."

"I believe you are calling him ugly names," said Anna, slipping her arm
through his; by this time, if not kindred spirits, they were the best of
friends.

Uncle Joachim did not immediately reply. They had come to the open space
in the middle of the maze, and he sat down on the seat to recover his
breath, and to wipe his forehead; for though the wind was cold the sun
was fierce. "_Gott, was man Alles durchmacht auf Reisen!_" he sighed.
Then he put his handkerchief back into his pocket, looked up at Anna,
who was standing in front of him leaning on her sunshade, and said, "A
_Quatschkopf_ is a foolish fellow who marries a woman like that."

"Oh, poor Susie!" cried Anna, at once ready to defend her, and full of
the kindly feelings absence invariably produced. "Peter did a very
sensible thing. But I don't think Susie did, marrying Peter."

"He is a _Quatschkopf_," said Uncle Joachim, not to be shaken in his
opinions, "and the _geborene_ Dobbs is a vulgar woman who is not rich
enough."

"Not rich enough? Why, we are all suffocated by her money. We never hear
of anything else. It would be dreadful if she had still more."

"Not rich enough," persisted Uncle Joachim, pursing up his lips into an
expression of great disapproval, and shaking his head. "Such a woman
should be a millionnaire. Not of marks, but of pounds sterling. Short of
that, a man of birth does not impose her as a mother on his children.
Peter has done it. He is a _Quatschkopf_."

"It is a great mercy that she isn't a millionnaire," said Anna, appalled
by the mere thought. "Things would be just the same, except that there
would be all that money more to hear about. I hate the very name of
money."

"Nonsense. Money is very good."

"But not somebody else's."

"That is true," said Uncle Joachim approvingly. "One's own is the only
money that is truly pleasant." Then he added suddenly, "Tell me, how
comes it that you are not married?"

Anna frowned. "Now you are growing like Susie," she said.

"_Ach_--she asks you that often?"

"Yes--no, not quite like that. She says she knows why I am not married."

"And what knows she?"

"She says that I frighten everybody away," said Anna, digging the point
of her sunshade into the ground. Then she looked at Uncle Joachim, and
laughed.

"What?" he said incredulously. This pretty creature standing before him,
so soft and young--for that she was twenty-four was hardly
credible--could not by any possibility be anything but lovable.

"She says that I am disagreeable to people--that I look cross--that I
don't encourage them enough. Now isn't it simply terrible to be expected
to encourage any wretched man who has money? I don't want anybody to
marry me. I don't want to buy my independence that way. Besides, it
isn't really independence."

"For a woman it is the one life," said Uncle Joachim with great
decision. "Talk not to me of independence. Such words are not for the
lips of girls. It is a woman's pride to lean on a good husband. It is
her happiness to be shielded and protected by him. Outside the narrow
circle of her home, for her happiness is not. The woman who never
marries has missed all things."

"I don't believe it," said Anna.

"It is nevertheless true."

"Look at Susie--is she so happy?"

"I said a _good_ husband; not a _Duselfritz_."

"And as for narrow circles, why, how happy, how gloriously happy, I
could be outside them, if only I were independent!"

"Independent--independent," repeated Uncle Joachim testily, "always this
same foolish word. What hast thou in thy head, child, thy pretty woman's
head, made, if ever head was, to lean on a good man's shoulder?"

"Oh--good men's shoulders," said Anna, shrugging her own, "I don't want
to lean on anybody's shoulder. I want to hold my head up straight, all
by itself. Do you then admire limp women, dear uncle, whose heads roll
about all loose till a good man comes along and props them up?"

"These are English ideas. I like them not," said Uncle Joachim, looking
stony.

Anna sat down on the seat by his side, and laid her cheek for a moment
against his sleeve. "This is the only good man's shoulder it will ever
lean on," she said. "If I were a preacher, do you know what I would
preach?"

"Thou art not, and never wilt be, a preacher."

"But if I were? Do you know what I would preach? Early and late? In
season and out of it?"

"Much nonsense, I doubt not."

"I would preach independence. Only that. Always that. They would be
sermons for women only; and they would be warnings against props."

She sat up and looked at him out of the corners of her eyes, but he
continued to stare stonily into space.

"I would thump the cushions, and cry out, 'Be independent, independent,
independent! Don't talk so much, and do more. Go your own way, and let
your neighbour go his. Don't meddle with other people when you have all
your own work cut out for you being good yourself. Shake off all the
props----'"

"Anna, thou art talking folly."

"'--shake them off, the props tradition and authority offer you, and go
alone--crawl, stumble, stagger, but go alone. You won't learn to walk
without tumbles, and knocks, and bruises, but you'll never learn to walk
at all so long as there are props.' Oh," she said fervently, casting up
her eyes, "there is nothing, nothing like getting rid of one's props!"

"I never yet," observed Uncle Joachim, in his turn casting up his eyes,
"saw a girl who so greatly needs the guidance of a good man. Hast thou
never loved, then?" he added, turning on her suddenly.

"Yes," replied Anna promptly. If Uncle Joachim chose to ask such direct
questions she would give him straight answers.

"But----?"

"He went away and married somebody else. I had no money, and she had a
great deal. So you see he was a very sensible young man." And she
laughed, for she had long ago ceased to be anything but amused by the
remembrance of her one excursion into the rocky regions of love.

"That," said Uncle Joachim, "was not true love."

"Oh, but it was."

"Nay. One does not laugh at love."

"It was all I had, anyhow. There isn't any more left. It was very bad
while it lasted, and it took at least two years to get over it. What
things I did to please that young man and appear lovely in his eyes! The
hours it took to dress, and get my hair done just right. I endured
tortures if I didn't look as beautiful as I thought I could look, and
was always giving my poor maid notice. And plots--the way I plotted to
get taken to the places where he would be! I never was so artful before
or since. Poor Susie was quite helpless. It is a mercy it all ended as
it did."

"That," repeated Uncle Joachim, "was not true love."

"Yes, it was."

"No, my child."

"Yes, my uncle. I laugh now, but it was very dreadful at the time."

"Thou art but a goose," he said, shrugging his shoulders; but
immediately patted her hand lest her feelings should have been hurt.
And, declining further argument, he demanded to be taken to the Great
Vine.

It was in this fashion, Anna talking and Uncle Joachim making brief
comments, that he came to know her as thoroughly as though he had lived
with her all his life.

Soon after the excursion to Hampton Court a letter came that hurried his
departure, to Susie's ill-concealed relief.

"My swines are ill," he informed her, greatly agitated, his fragile
English going altogether to pieces in his perturbation; "my inspector
writes they perpetually die. God keep thee, Anna," and he embraced her
very tenderly, and bending hastily over Susie's hand muttered some
conventionalities, and then disappeared into his four-wheeler and out of
their lives.

They never saw him again.

"My swines are ill," mimicked Susie, when Anna, feeling that she had
lost her one friend, came slowly back into the room, "my swines
perpetually die--"

Anna was obliged to go and pray very hard at St. Paul's before she could
forgive her.




CHAPTER III


The old man died at Christmas, and in the following March, when Anna was
going about more sad and listless than ever, the news came that, though
his inherited estates had gone to his sons, he had bought a little place
some years before with the intention of retiring to it in his extreme
old age, and this little place he had left to his dear and only niece
Anna.

She was alone when the letters bringing the news arrived, sitting in the
drawing-room with a book in her hands at which she did not look, feeling
utterly downcast, indifferent, too hopeless to want anything or mind
anything, accepting her destiny of years of days like this, with herself
going through them lonely, useless, and always older, and telling
herself that she did not after all care. "What does it matter, so long
as I have a comfortable bed, and fires when I am cold, and meals when I
am hungry?" she thought. "Not to have those is the only real misery. All
the rest is purest fancy. What right have I to be happier than other
people? If they are contented by such things, I can be contented too.
And what does a useless being like me deserve, I should like to know? It
was detestably ungrateful of me to have been unhappy all this time."

She got up aimlessly, and looked out of the window into the sunny
street, where the dust was racing by on the gusty March wind, and the
women selling daffodils at the corner were more battered and blown about
and red-eyed than ever. She had often, in those moments when her whole
body tingled with a wild longing to be up and doing and justifying her
existence before it was too late, envied these poor women, because they
worked. She wondered vaguely now at her folly. "It is much better to be
comfortable," she thought, going back to the fire as aimlessly as she
had gone to the window, "and it is sheer idiocy quarrelling with a life
that other people would think quite tolerable."

Then the door opened, and the letters were brought in--the wonderful
letters that struck the whole world into radiance--lying together with
bills and ordinary notes on a salver, carried by an indifferent servant,
handed to her as though they were things of naught--the wonderful
letters that changed her life.

At first she did not understand what it was that they meant, and pored
over the cramped German writing, reading the long sentences over and
over again, till something suddenly seemed to clutch at her heart. Was
this possible? Was this actual truth? Was Uncle Joachim, who had so much
objected to her longing for independence, giving it to her with both
hands, and every blessing along with it? She read them through again,
very carefully, holding them with shaking hands. Yes, it was true. She
began to cry, sobbing over them for very love and tenderness, her whole
being melted into gratitude and humbleness, awestruck by a sense of how
little she had deserved it, dazzled by the thousand lovely colours life,
in the twinkling of an eye, had taken on.

There were two letters--one from Uncle Joachim's lawyer, and one from
Uncle Joachim himself, written soon after his return from England, with
directions on the envelope that it was to be sent to Anna after his
death.

Uncle Joachim was not a man to express sentiment otherwise than by
patting those he loved affectionately on the back, and the letter over
which Anna hung with such tender gratitude, and such an extravagance of
humility, was a mere bald statement of facts. Since Anna, with a
perversity that he entirely disapproved, refused to marry, and appeared
to be possessed of the obstinacy that had always been a peculiarity of
her German forefathers, and which was well enough in a man, but
undesirable in a woman, whose calling it was to be gentle and yielding
(_sanft und nachgiebig_), and convinced from what he had seen
during his visit to London that she could never by any possibility be
happy with her brother and sister-in-law, and moreover considering that
it was beneath the dignity of his sister's daughter, a young lady of
good family, for ever to roll herself in the feathers with which the
middle-class goose-born Dobbs had furnished Peter's otherwise defective
nest, he had decided to make her independent altogether of them,
numerous though his own sons were, and angry as they no doubt would be,
by bestowing on her absolutely after his death the only property he
could leave to whomsoever he chose, a small estate near Stralsund, where
he hoped to pass his last years. It was in a flourishing condition, easy
to manage, bringing in a yearly average of forty thousand marks, and
with an experienced inspector whom he earnestly recommended her to keep.
He trusted his dear Anna would go and live there, and keep it up to its
present state of excellence, and would finally marry a good German
gentleman, of whom there were many, and return in this way altogether to
the country of her forefathers. The estate was not so far from Stralsund
as to make it impossible for her to drive there when she wished to
indulge any feminine desire she might have to trim herself (_sich
putzen_), and he recommended her to begin a new life, settling there
with some grave and sober female advanced in years as companion and
protectress, until such time as she should, by marriage, pass into the
care of that natural protector, her husband.

Then followed a short exposition of his views on women, especially those
women who go to parties all their lives and talk _Klatsch_; a spirited
comparing of such women with those whose interests keep them busy in
their own homes; and a final exhortation to Anna to seize this
opportunity of choosing the better life, which was always, he said, a
life of simplicity, frugality, and hard work.

Anna wept and laughed together over this letter--the tenderest laughter
and the happiest tears. It seemed by turns the wildest improbability
that she should be well off, and the most natural thing in the world.
Susie was out. Never had her absence been terrible before. Anna could
hardly bear the waiting. She walked up and down the room, for sitting
still was impossible, holding the precious letters tight in her little
cold hands, her cheeks burning, her eyes sparkling, in an agony of
impatience and anxiety lest something should have happened to delay
Susie at this supreme moment. At the window end of the room she stopped
each time she reached it and looked eagerly up and down the street, the
flower-women and the blessedness of selling daffodils having within an
hour become profoundly indifferent to her. At the other end of the room,
where a bureau stood, she came to a standstill too, and snatching up a
pen began a letter to Peter in Devonshire; but, hearing wheels, threw it
down and flew to the window again. It was not Susie's carriage, and she
went back to the letter and wrote another line; then again to the
window; then again to the letter; and it was the letter's turn as Susie,
fagged from a round of calls, came in.

Susie's afternoon had not been a success. She had made advances to a
woman of enviably high position with the intrepidity that characterised
all her social movements, and she had been snubbed for her pains with
more than usual rudeness. She had had, besides, several minor
annoyances. And to come in worn out, and have your sister-in-law, who
would hardly speak to you at luncheon, fall on your neck and begin
violently to kiss you, is really a little hard on a woman who is already
cross.

"Now what in the name of fortune is the matter now?" gasped Susie,
breathlessly disengaging herself.

"Oh, Susie! oh, Susie!" cried Anna incoherently, "what ages you have
been away--and the letters came directly you had gone--and I've been
watching for you ever since, and was so dreadfully afraid something had
happened----"

"But what are you talking about, Anna?" interrupted Susie irritably. It
was late, and she wanted to rest for a few minutes before dressing to go
out again, and here was Anna in a new mood of a violent nature, and she
was weary beyond measure of all Anna's moods.

"Oh, such a wonderful thing has happened!" cried Anna; "such a wonderful
thing! What will Peter say? And how glad you will be----" And she thrust
the letters with trembling fingers into Susie's unresponsive hand.

"What is it?" said Susie, looking at them bewildered.

"Oh, no--I forgot," said Anna, wildly as it seemed to Susie, pulling
them out of her hand again. "You can't read German--see here----" And
she began to unfold them and smooth out the creases she had made, her
hands shaking visibly.

Susie stared. Clearly something extraordinary had happened, for the
frosty Anna of the last few months had melted into a radiance of emotion
that would only not be ridiculous if it turned out to be justified.

"Two German letters," said Anna, sitting down on the nearest chair,
spreading them out on her lap, and talking as though she could hardly
get the words out fast enough, "one from Uncle Joachim----"

"Uncle Joachim?" repeated Susie, a disagreeable and creepy doubt as to
Anna's sanity coming over her. "You know very well he's dead and can't
write letters," she said severely.

"--and one from his lawyer," Anna went on, regardless of everything but
what she had to tell. "The lawyer's letter is full of technical words,
difficult to understand, but it is only to confirm what Uncle Joachim
says, and his is quite plain. He wrote it some time before he died, and
left it with his lawyer to send on to me."

Susie was listening now with all her ears. Lawyers, deceased uncles, and
Anna's sparkling face could only have one meaning.

"Uncle Joachim was our mother's only brother----"

"I know, I know," interrupted Susie impatiently.

"--and was the dearest and kindest of uncles to me----"

"Never mind what he was," interrupted Susie still more impatiently.
"What has he done for you? Tell me that. You always pretended, both of
you--Peter too--that he had miles of sandy places somewhere in the
desert, and dozens of boys. What could he do for you?"

"Do for me?" Anna rose up with a solemnity worthy of the great news
about to be imparted, put both her hands on Susie's little shoulders,
and looking down at her with shining eyes, said slowly, "He has left me
an estate bringing in forty thousand marks a year."

"Forty thousand!" echoed Susie, completely awestruck.

"Marks," said Anna.

"Oh, marks," said Susie, chilled. "That's francs, isn't it? I really
thought for a moment----"

"They're more than francs. It brings in, on an average, two thousand
pounds a year. Two--thousand--pounds--a--year," repeated Anna, nodding
her head at each word. "Now, Susie, what do you think of that?"

"What do I think of it? Why, that it isn't much. Where would you all
have been, I wonder, if I had only had two thousand a year?"

"Oh, congratulate me!" cried Anna, opening her arms. "Kiss me, and tell
me you are glad! Don't you see that I am off your hands at last? That we
need never think about husbands again? That you will never have to buy
me any more clothes, and never tire your poor little self out any more
trotting me round? I don't know which of us is to be congratulated
most," she added laughing, looking at Susie with her eyes full of tears.
Then she insisted on kissing her again, and murmured foolish things in
her ear about being so sorry for all her horrid ways, and so grateful to
her, and so determined now to be good for ever and ever.

"My _dear_ Anna," remonstrated Susie, who disliked sentiment and never
knew how to respond to exhibitions of feeling. "Of course I congratulate
you. It almost seems as if throwing away one's chances in the way you
have done was the right thing to do, and is being rewarded. Don't let us
waste time. You know we go out to dinner. What has he left Peter?"

"Peter?" said Anna wonderingly.

"Yes, Peter. He was his nephew, I suppose, just as much as you were his
niece."

"Well, but Susie, Peter is different. He--he doesn't need money as I do;
and of course Uncle Joachim knew that."

"Nonsense. He hasn't got a penny. Let me look at the letters."

"They're in German. You won't be able to read them."

"Give them to me. I learned German at school, and got a prize. You're
not the only person in the world who can do things."

She took them out of Anna's hand, and began slowly and painfully to read
the one from Uncle Joachim, determined to see whether there really was
no mention of Peter. Anna looked on, hot and cold by turns with fright
lest by some chance her early studies should not after all have been
quite forgotten.

"Here's something about Peter--and me," Susie said suddenly. "At least,
I suppose he means me. It is something Dobbs. Why does he call me that?
It hasn't been my name for fifteen years."

"Oh, it's some silly German way. He says the _geborene_ Dobbs, to
distinguish you from other Lady Estcourts."

"But there are no others."

"Oh, well, his sister was one. Give me the letter, Susie--I can tell you
what he says much more quickly than you can read it."

"'_Unter der Würde einer jünge Dame aus guter Familie_,'" read out Susie
slowly, not heeding Anna, and with the most excruciating pronunciation
that was ever heard, "'_sich ewig auf den Federn, mit welchen die
bürgerliche Gans geborene Dobbs Peters sonst mangelhaftes Nest
ausgestattet hat, zu wälzen_.' What stuff he writes. I can hardly
understand it. Yet I must have been good at it at school, to get the
prize. What is that bit about me and Peter?"

"Which bit?" said Anna, blushing scarlet. "Let me look." She got the
letter back into her possession. "Oh, that's where he says that--that he
doesn't think it fair that I should be a burden for ever on you and
Peter."

"Well, that's sensible enough. The old man had some sense in him after
all, absurd though he was, and vulgar. It _isn't_ fair, of course. I
don't mean to say anything disagreeable, or throw all I have done for
you in your face, but really, Anna, few mothers would have made the
sacrifices I have for you, and as for sisters-in-law--well, I'd just
like to see another."

"Dear Susie," said Anna tenderly, putting her arm round her, ready to
acknowledge all, and more than all, the benefits she had received, "you
have been only too kind and generous. I know that I owe you everything
in the world, and just think how lovely it is for me to feel that now I
can take my weight off your shoulders! You must come and live with _me_
now, whenever you are sick of things, and I'll feel so proud, having you
in my house!"

"Live with you?" exclaimed Susie, drawing herself away. "Where are you
going to live?"

"Why, there, I suppose."

"Live there! Is that a condition?"

"No, but Uncle Joachim keeps on saying he hopes I will, and that I'll
settle down and look after the place."

"Look after the place yourself? How silly!"

"Yes, you haven't taught me much about farming, have you? He wants me to
turn quite into a German."

"Good gracious!" cried Susie, genuinely horrified.

"He seems to think that I ought to work, and not spend my life talking
_Klatsch_."

"Talking what?"

"It's what German women apparently talk when they get together. We
don't. I'd never do anything with such an ugly name, and I'm positive
you wouldn't."

"Where is this place?"

"Near Stralsund."

"And where on earth is that?"

"Ah," said Anna, investigating cobwebby corners of her memory, "that's
what I should like to be able to remember. Perhaps," she added honestly,
"I never knew. Let me call Letty, and ask her to bring her atlas."

"Letty won't know," said Susie impatiently, "she only knows the things
she oughtn't to."

"Oh, she isn't as wise as all that," said Anna, ringing the bell.
"Anyhow she has maps, which is more than we have."

A servant was sent to request Miss Letty Estcourt to attend in the
drawing-room with her atlas.

"Whatever's in the wind now?" inquired Letty, open-mouthed, of her
governess. "They're not going to examine me this time of night, are
they, Leechy?" For she suffered greatly from having a brother who was
always passing examinations and coming out top, and was consequently
subjected herself, by an ambitious mother who was sure that she must be
equally clever if she would only let herself go, to every examination
that happened to be going for girls of her age; so that she and Miss
Leech spent their days either on the defensive, preparing for these
unprovoked assaults, or in the state of collapse which followed the
regularly recurring defeat, and both found their lives a burden too
great to be borne.

There was a preliminary scuffle of washing and brushing, and then Letty
marched into the drawing-room, her atlas under her arm and deep
suspicion on her face. But no bland and treacherous examiner was
visible, covering his preliminary movements with ghastly pleasantries;
only her mother and her pretty aunt.

"Where's Stralsund?" they cried together, as she opened the door.

Letty stopped short and stared. "What's that?" she asked.

"It's a place--a place in Germany."

"Letty, do you mean to tell me that you don't know where Stralsund is?"
asked Susie, in a voice that would have been of thunder if it had been
big enough. "Do you mean to say that after all the money I have spent on
your education you don't know _that_?"

Was this a new form of torture? Was she to find the examining spirit
lurking even in the familiar and hitherto harmless forms of her mother
and her aunt? She openly showed her disgust. "If it's a place, it's in
this atlas," she said, "and if this is going to be an examination, I
don't think it's fair; and if it's a game, I don't like it." And she
threw her atlas unceremoniously on to the nearest chair; for though her
mother could force her to do many things, she could never, somehow,
force her to be respectful.

"What a horror the child has of lessons!" cried Susie. "Don't be so
silly. We only want to see if you know where Stralsund is, that's all."

"Tell us where it is, Letty," said Anna coaxingly, kneeling down in front
of the chair and opening the atlas. "Let us find the map of Germany and
look for it. Why, you did Germany for your last exam.--you must have it
all at your fingers' ends."

"It didn't stay there, then," said Letty moodily; but she went over to
Anna, who was always kind to her, and began to turn over the
well-thumbed pages.

Oh, what recollections lurked in those dirty corners! Surely it is hard
on a person of fourteen, who is as fond of enjoying herself as anybody
else, to be made to wrestle with maps upstairs in a dreary room, when
the sun is shining, and the voices of the children passing come up
joyously to the prison windows, and all the world is out of doors! Letty
thought so, and Miss Leech thought it hard on a person of thirty, and
each tried to console the other, but neither knew how, for their case
seemed very hopeless. Did not unending vistas of classes and lectures
stretch away before and behind them, dotted at intervals, oh, so
frequent! with the black spots of examinations? Was not the pavement of
Gower Street, and Kensington Square, and of all those districts where
girls can be lectured into wisdom, quite worn by their patient feet? And
then the accomplishments! Oh, what a life it was! A man came twice a
week and insisted on teaching her to fiddle; a highly nervous man, who
jerked her elbow and rapped her knuckles with his bow whenever she
played out of tune, which was all the time, and made bitter remarks of a
killingly sarcastic nature to Miss Leech when she stumbled over the
accompaniments. On Wednesdays there was a dancing class, where a pinched
young lady played the piano with the energy of despair, and a hot and
agile master with unduly turned-out toes taught the girls the Lancers,
earning his bread in the sweat of his brow. He also was sarcastic, but
he clothed his sarcasms in the garb of kindly fun, laughing gently at
them himself, and expecting his pupils to laugh too; which they did
uneasily, for the fun was of a personal nature, evoked by the clumsiness
or stupidity of one or other of them, and none knew when her own turn
might not come. The lesson ended with what he called the March of Grace
round the room, each girl by herself, no music to drown the noise her
shoes made on the bare boards, the others looking on, and the master
making comments. This march was terrible to Letty. All her nightmares
were connected with it. She was a podgy, dull-looking girl, fat and pale
and awkward, and her mother made her wear cheap shoes that creaked.
"Miss Estcourt has new shoes on again," the dancing master would say,
gently smiling, when Letty was well on her way round the room, cut off
from all human aid, conscious of every inch of her body, desperately
trying to be graceful. And everybody tittered except the victim. "You
know, Miss Estcourt," he would say at every second lesson, "there is a
saying that creaking shoes have not been paid for. I beg your pardon?
Did you say they had been paid for? Miss Estcourt says she does not
know." And he would turn to his other pupils with a shrug and a gentle
smile.

On Saturday afternoons there were the Popular Concerts at St. James's
Hall to be gone to--Susie regarded them as educational, and
subscribed--and Letty, who always had chilblains on her feet in winter,
suffered tortures trying not to rub them; for as surely as she moved one
foot and began to rub the other with it, however gently, fierce
enthusiasts in the row in front would turn on her--old gentlemen of an
otherwise humane appearance, rapt ladies with eyeglasses and loose
clothes--and sh-sh her with furious hissings into immobility. "Oh,
Letty, _try_ and sit still," Miss Leech, who dreaded publicity, would
implore in a whisper; but who that has not had them can know the torture
of chilblains inside thick boots, where they cannot be got at? As soon
as the chilblains went, the Saturday concerts left off, and it seemed as
though Fate had nothing better to do than to be spiteful.

It was indeed a dreadful thing, thought Letty, as she bent over the map
of Germany, to be young and to have to be made clever at all costs. Here
was her aunt even, her pretty, kind aunt, asking her geography questions
at seven o'clock at night, when she thought that she had really done
with lessons for one more day, and had been so much enjoying Leechy's
description of the only man she ever loved, while she comfortably
toasted cheese at the schoolroom fire. Anna, who spent such lofty hours
of spiritual exaltation at St. Paul's, and came away with her soul
melted into pity for the unhappy, and yearned with her whole being to
help them, never thought of Letty as a creature who might perhaps be
helped to cheerfulness with a little trouble. Letty was too close at
hand; and enthusiastic philanthropists, casting about for objects of
charity, seldom see what is at their feet.

It was so difficult to find Stralsund that by the time Letty's wandering
finger had paused upon it Susie could only give one glance of horror at
its position, and hurry away with Anna to dress. Anna, too, would have
preferred it to be farther south, in the Black Forest, or some other
romantic region, where it would have amused her to go occasionally, at
least, for a few weeks in the summer. But there it was, as far north as
it could be, in a part of the world she had hardly heard of, except in
connection with dogs.

It did not, however, matter where it was. Uncle Joachim had merely
recommended and not enjoined. It would be rather extraordinary for her
to go there and set up housekeeping alone. She need not go; she was
almost sure she would not go. Anyhow there was no necessity to decide at
once. The money was what she wanted, and she could spend it where she
chose. Let Uncle Joachim's inspector, of whom he wrote in such praise,
go on getting forty thousand marks a year out of the place, and she
would be perfectly content.

She ran upstairs to put on her prettiest dress, and to have her hair
done in the curls and waves she had so long eschewed. Should she not
make herself as charming as possible for this charming world, where
everybody was so good and kind, and add her measure of beauty and
kindness to the rest? She beamed on Letty as she passed her on the
stairs, climbing slowly up with her big atlas, and took it from her and
would carry it herself; she beamed on Miss Leech, who was watching for
her pupil at the schoolroom door; she beamed on her maid, she beamed on
her own reflection in the glass, which indeed at that moment was that of
a very beautiful young woman. Oh happy, happy world! What should she do
with so much money? She, who had never had a penny in her life, thought
it an enormous, an inexhaustible sum. One thing was certain--it was all
to be spent in doing good; she would help as many people with it as she
possibly could, and never, never, never let them feel that they were
under obligations. Did she not know, after fifteen years of dependence
on Susie, what it was like to be under obligations? And what was more
cruelly sad and crushing and deadening than dependence? She did not yet
know what sort of people she would help, or in what way she would help,
but oh, she was going to make heaps of people happy forever! While
Hilton was curling her hair, she thought of slums; but remembered that
they would bring her into contact with the clergy, and most of her
offers of late had been from the clergy. Even the vicar who had prepared
her for confirmation, his first wife being then alive, and a second
having since been mourned, had wanted to marry her. "It's because I am
twenty-five and staid that they think me suitable," she thought; but she
could not help smiling at the face in the glass.

When she was dressed and ready to go down she was forced to ask herself
whether the person that she saw in the glass looked in the least like a
person who would ever lead the simple, frugal, hard-working life that
Uncle Joachim had called the better life, and in which he seemed to
think she would alone find contentment. Certainly she knew him to be
very wise. Well, nothing need be decided yet. Perhaps she would
go--perhaps she would not. "It's this white dress that makes me look
so--so unsuitable," she said to herself, "and Hilton's wonderful waves."

And she went downstairs trying not to sing, the sweetest of feminine
creatures, happiness and love and kindness shining in her eyes, a lovely
thing saved from the blight of empty years, and brought back to beauty,
by Uncle Joachim's timely interference.

Letty and Miss Leech heard the singing, and stopped involuntarily in
their conversation. It was a strange sound in that dull and joyless
house.

"I don't know what's the matter, Leechy," Letty had said, on her return
from the drawing-room, "but mamma and Aunt Anna are too weird to-night
for anything. What do you think they had me down for? They didn't know
where Stralsund was, and wanted to find out. They pretended they wanted
to see if _I_ knew, but I soon saw through that game. And Aunt Anna
looks frightfully happy. I believe she's going to be married, and wants
to go to Stralsund for the honeymoon."

And Letty took up her toasting fork, while Miss Leech, as in duty bound,
refreshed her pupil's memory in regard to Stralsund and Wallenstein and
the Hansa cities generally.




CHAPTER IV


Peter, meditating on the banks of the river at Estcourt, came to the
conclusion that a journey to London would be made unnecessary by the
equal efficacy of a congratulatory letter.

He had been greatly moved by the news of his sister's good fortune, and
in the first flush of pleasure and sympathy had ordered his things to be
packed in readiness for his departure by the night train. Then he had
gone down to the river, and there, thinking the matter over quietly,
amid the soothing influences of grey sky, grey water, and green grass,
he gradually perceived that a letter would convey all that he felt quite
well, perhaps better than any verbal expressions of joy, and as he would
in any case only stay a few hours in town the long journey seemed hardly
worth while. He sent a letter, therefore, that very evening--a kind,
brotherly letter, in which, after heartily congratulating his dear
little sister, he said that it would be necessary for her to go over to
Germany, see the lawyer, and take possession of her property. When she
had done that, and made all arrangements as to the future payment of the
income derived from the estate, she would of course come back to them;
for Estcourt was always to be her home, and now that she was independent
she would no longer be obliged to be wherever Susie was, but would, he
hoped, come to him, and they could go fishing together,--"and there's
nothing to beat fishing," concluded Peter, "if you want peace."

But Anna did not want peace; at least, not that kind of peace just at
that moment. Sitting in a punt was not what she wanted. She was thrilled
by the love of her less fortunate fellow-creatures, and the sense of
power to help them, and the longing to go and do it. What she really
wanted of Peter was that he should take her to Germany and help her
through the formalities; for before his letter arrived she too had seen
that that was the first thing to be done.

Of this, however, he did not write a word. She thought he must have
forgotten, so natural did it appear to her that her brother should go
with her; and she wrote him a little note, asking when he would be able
to get away. She received a long letter in reply, full of regrets,
excuses, and good reasons, which she read wonderingly. Had she been
selfish, or was Peter selfish? She thought it all out carefully, and
found that it was she who had been selfish to expect Peter, always a
hater of business and a lover of quiet, to go all that way and worry
himself with tiresome money arrangements. Besides, perhaps he was not
feeling well. She knew he suffered from rheumatism; and when you have
rheumatism the mere thought of a long journey is appalling.

Susie, whose head was very clear on all matters concerning money, had
also recognised the necessity of Anna's going to Germany, and had also
regarded Peter as the most natural companion and guide; but she was not
surprised when Anna told her that he could not go. "It was too much to
expect," apologised Anna. "He often has rheumatism in the spring, and
perhaps he has it now."

Susie sniffed.

"The question is," said Anna after a pause, "what am I to do, helpless
virgin, in spite of my years,--never able to do a thing for myself?"

"I'll go with you."

"You? But what about your engagements?"

"Oh, I'll throw them over, and take you. Letty can come too. It will do
her German good. Herr Schumpf says he's ashamed of her."

Susie had various reasons for offering herself so amiably, one being
certainly curiosity. But the chief one was that the same woman who had
been so rude to her the day Anna's news came, had sent out invitations
to all the world to her daughter's wedding after Easter, and had not
sent one to Susie.

This was one of those trials that cannot be faced. If she, being in
London at the time, carefully explained to her friends that she was ill
that day, and did actually stay in bed and dose herself the days
preceding and following, who would believe her? Not if she waved a
doctor's certificate in their faces would they believe her. They would
know that she had not been invited, and would rejoice. She felt that she
could not bear it. An unavoidable business journey to the Continent was
exactly what she wanted to help her out of this desperate situation. On
her return she would be able to hear the wedding discussed and express
her disappointment at having missed it with a serene brow and a quiet
mind.

It is doubtful whether she would have gone with Anna, however urgent
Anna's need, if she had been included in those invitations. But Anna,
who could not know the secret workings of her mind, once more remembered
her former treatment of Susie, so kind and willing to do all she could,
and hung her head with shame.

They left London a day or two before Easter, Letty and Miss Leech, both
of them nearly ill with suppressed delight at the unexpected holiday,
going with them. They had announced their coming to Uncle Joachim's
lawyer, and asked him to make arrangements for their accommodation at
Kleinwalde, Anna's new possession. Susie proposed to stay a day in
Berlin, which would give Anna time to talk everything over with the
lawyer, and would enable Letty to visit the museums. She had a hopeful
idea that Letty would absorb German at every pore once she was in the
country itself, and that being brought face to face with the statues of
Goethe and Schiller on their native soil would kindle the sparks of
interest in German literature that she supposed every well-taught child
possessed, into the roaring flame of enthusiasm. She could not believe
that Letty had no sparks. One of her children being so abnormally
clever, it must be sheer obstinacy on the part of the other that
prevented it from acquiring the knowledge offered daily in such
unstinted quantities. She had no illusions in regard to Letty's person,
and felt that as she would never be pretty it was of importance that she
should at least be cultured. She sat opposite her daughter in the train,
and having nothing better to do during the long hours that they were
jolting across North Germany, looked at her; and the more she looked the
more unreasoningly angry she became that Peter's sister should be so
pretty and Peter's daughter so plain. And then so fat! What a horrible
thing to have to take a fat daughter about with you in society. Where
did she get it from? She herself and Peter were the leanest of mortals.
It must be that Letty ate too much, which was not only a disgusting
practice but an expensive one, and should be put down at once with
rigour. Susie had not had such an opportunity of thoroughly inspecting
her child for years, and the result of this prolonged examination of her
weak points was that she would not let any of the party have anything to
eat at all, declaring that it was vulgar to eat in trains, expressing
amazement that people should bring themselves to touch the
horrid-looking food offered, and turning her back in impatient disgust
on two stout German ladies who had got in at Oberhausen, and who were
enjoying their lunch quite unmoved by her contempt--one eating a chicken
from beginning to end without a fork, and the other taking repeated sips
of an obviously satisfactory nature from a big wine bottle, which was
used, in the intervals, as a support to her back.

By the time Berlin was reached, these ladies, having been properly fed
all day, were very cheerful, whereas Susie's party was speechless from
exhaustion; especially poor Miss Leech, who was never very strong, and
so nearly fainted that Susie was obliged to notice it, and expressed a
conviction to Anna in a loud and peevish aside that Miss Leech was going
to be a nuisance.

"It is strange," thought Anna, as she crept into bed, "how travelling
brings out one's worst passions."

It is indeed strange; for it is certain that nothing equals the
expectant enthusiasm and mutual esteem of the start except the cold
dislike of the finish. Many are the friendships that have found an
unforeseen and sudden end on a journey, and few are those that survive
it. But if Horace Walpole and Grey fell out, if Byron and Leigh Hunt
were obliged to part, if a host of other personages, endowed with every
gift that makes companionship desirable, could not away with each other
after a few weeks together abroad, is it to be wondered at that weaker
vessels such as Susie and Anna, Letty and Miss Leech, should have found
the short journey from London to Berlin sufficient to enable them to see
one another's failings with a clearness of vision that was startling?

On the lawyer, a keen-eyed man with a conspicuously fine face, Anna made
an entirely favourable impression. When he saw this gracious young lady,
so simple and so friendly, and looked into her frank and charming eyes,
he perfectly understood that old Joachim should have been bewitched. But
after a little conversation, it appeared that she had no present
intention of carrying out her uncle's wishes, but, setting them coolly
aside, proposed to spend all the good German money she could extract
from her property in that replete and bloated land, England.

This annoyed him; first because he hated England and then because his
father had managed old Joachim's affairs before he himself had stepped
into the paternal shoes, and the feeling of both father and son for the
old man had been considerably warmer than is usual between lawyer and
client. Still he could not believe, judging after the manner of men,
that anything so pretty could also be unkind; and scrutinising Lady
Estcourt, because she was unattractive and had a sharp little face and a
restless little body, he was convinced that she it was who was the cause
of this setting aside of a dead benefactor's wishes. Susie, for her
part, patronised him because his collar turned down.

Whenever Letty thought afterwards of Berlin, she thought of it as a
place where all the houses are museums, and where you drink so many cups
of chocolate with whipped cream on the top that you see things double
for the rest of the time.

Anna thought of it as a charming place, where delightful lawyers fill
your purse with money.

Susie thought of it with satisfaction as the one place abroad where, by
dint of sternest economy, walks from sight to sight in the rain, and
promiscuous cakes instead of the more satisfactory but less cheap meals
Letty called square, she had successfully defended herself from being,
as she put it, fleeced.

To Miss Leech, it was merely a place where your feet get wet, and your
clothes are spoilt.

Early the next morning they started for Kleinwalde.




CHAPTER V


Stralsund is an old town of gabled houses, ancient churches, and quaint,
roughly paved streets, forming an island, and joined to the mainland by
dikes. It looks its best in the early summer, when the green and marshy
plains on whose edge it stands are strewn with kingcups, and the little
white clouds hang over them almost motionless, and the cattle are out,
and the larks sing, and the orange and red sails of the fishing-smacks
on the narrow belt of sea that divides the town from the island of Rügen
make brilliant points of contrasting colour between the blue of water
and sky. There is a divine freshness and brightness about the
surrounding stretches of coarse grass and common flowers at that blest
season of the year. The air is full of the smell of the sea. The sun
beats down fiercely on plain and city. The people come out of the rooms
in which most of their life is spent, and stand in the doorways and
remark on the heat. An occasional heavy cart bumps over the stones,
heard in that sleepy place for several minutes before and after its
passing. There is an honest, tarry, fishy smell everywhere; and the
traveller of poetic temperament in search of the picturesque, and not
too nice about his comforts, could not fail, visiting it for the first
time in the month of June, to be wholly delighted that he had come.

But in winter, and especially in those doubly gloomy days at the end of
winter, when spring ought to have shown some signs of its approach and
has not done so, those days of howling winds and driving rain and
frequent belated snowstorms, this plain is merely a bleak expanse of
dreariness, with a forlorn old town huddling in its farthest corner.

It was at its very bleakest and dreariest on the morning that Susie and
her three companions travelled across it. "What a place!" exclaimed
Susie, as mile after mile was traversed, and there was still the same
succession of flat ploughed fields, marshes, and ploughed fields again,
with a rare group of furiously swaying pine trees or of silver birches
bent double before the wind. "What a part of the world to come and live
in! That old uncle of yours was as cracked as he could be to think you'd
ever stay here for good. And imagine spending even a single shilling
buying land here. I wouldn't take a barrowful at a gift."

"Well, I am taking a great many barrowfuls," said Anna, "and I am sure
Uncle Joachim was right to buy a place here--he was always right."

"Oh, of course, it's your duty now to praise him up. Perhaps it gets
better farther on, but I don't see how anybody can squeeze two thousand
a year out of a desert like this."

The prospect from the railway that day was certainly not attractive; but
Anna told herself that any place would look dreary such weather, and was
much too happy in the first flush of independence to be depressed by
anything whatever. Had she not that very morning given the chambermaid
at the Berlin hotel so bounteous a reward for services not rendered that
the woman herself had said it was too much? Thus making amends for those
innumerable departures from hotels when Susie had escaped without giving
anything at all. Had she not also asked, and readily obtained,
permission of Susie at the station in Berlin to pay for the tickets of
the whole party? And had it not been a delightful and warming feeling,
buying those tickets for other people instead of having tickets bought
by other people for herself? At Pasewalk, a little town half way between
Berlin and Stralsund, where the train stopped ten minutes, she insisted
on getting out, defying the sleet and the puddles, and went into the
refreshment room, and bought eggs and rolls and cakes,--everything she
could find that was least offensive. Also a guidebook to Stralsund,
though she was not going to stop in Stralsund; also some postcards with
views on them, though she never used postcards with views on them, and
came back loaded with parcels, her face glowing with childish pleasure
at spending money.

"My _dear_ Anna," said Susie; but she was hungry, and ate a roll with
perfect complacency, allowing Letty to do the same, although only two
days had elapsed since she had so energetically lectured her on the
grossness of eating in trains.

Susie was in a particularly amiable frame of mind, and in spite of the
weather was looking forward to seeing the place Uncle Joachim had
thought would be a fit home for his niece; and as she and Anna were
sitting together at one end of the carriage, and Letty and Miss Leech
were at the other, and there was no one else in the compartment, she was
neither upset by the too near contemplation of her daughter, nor by the
aspect of other travellers lunching. Miss Leech, always mindful of her
duties, was making the most of her five hours' journey by endeavouring,
in a low voice, to clear away the haze that hung in her pupil's mind
round the details of her last winter's German studies. "Don't you
remember anything of Professor Smith's lectures, Letty?" she inquired.
"Why, they were all about just this part of Germany, and it makes it so
much more interesting if one knows what happened at the different
places. Stralsund, you know, where we shall be presently, has had a most
turbulent and interesting past."

"Has it?" said Letty. "Well, I can't help it, Leechy."

"No; but my dear, you should try to recollect something at least of what
you heard at the lectures. Have you forgotten the paper you wrote about
Wallenstein?"

"I remember I did a paper. Beastly hard it was, too."

"Oh, Letty, don't say beastly--it really isn't a ladylike word."

"Why, mamma's always saying it."

"Oh, well. Don't you know what Wallenstein said when he was besieging
Stralsund and found it such a difficult task?"

"I suppose he said too that it was beastly hard."

"Oh, Letty--it was something about chains. Now do you remember?"

"Chains?" repeated Letty, looking bored. "Do _you_ know, Leechy?"

"Yes, I still remember that, though I confess that I have forgotten the
greater part of what I heard."

"Then what do you ask me for, when you know I don't know? What did he
say about chains?"

"He said that he'd take the city, if it were rivetted to heaven with
chains of iron," said Miss Leech dramatically.

"What a goat."

"Oh, hush--don't say those horrible words. Where do you learn them? Not
from me, certainly not from me," said Miss Leech, distressed. She had a
profound horror of slang, and was bewildered by the way in which these
weeds of rhetoric sprang up on all occasions in Letty's speech.

"Well, and was it?"

"Was it what, my dear?"

"Chained to heaven?"

"The city? Why, how can a city be chained to heaven, Letty?"

"Then what did he say it for?"

"He was using a metaphor."

"Oh," said Letty, who did not know what a metaphor was, but supposed it
must be something used in sieges, and preferred not to inquire too
closely.

"He was obliged to retire," said Miss Leech, "leaving enormous numbers
of slain on the field."

"Poor beasts. I say, Leechy," she whispered, "don't let's bother about
history now. Go on with Mr. Jessup. You'd got to where he called you Amy
for the first time."

Mr. Jessup was the person already alluded to in these pages as the only
man Miss Leech had ever loved, and his history was of absorbing interest
to Letty, who never tired of hearing his first appearance on Miss
Leech's horizon described, with his subsequent advances before the stage
of open courting was reached, the courting itself, and its melancholy
end; for Mr. Jessup, a clergyman of the Church of England, with a
vicarage all ready to receive his wife, had suddenly become a prey to
new convictions, and had gone over to the Church of Rome; whereupon Miss
Leech's father, also a clergyman of the Church of England, had talked a
great deal about the Scarlet Woman of Babylon, and had shut the door in
Mr. Jessup's face when next he called to explain. This had happened when
Miss Leech was twenty. Now, at thirty, an orphan resigned to the world's
buffets, she found a gentle consolation in repeating the story of her
ill-starred engagement to her keenly interested friend and pupil; and
the oftener she repeated it the less did it grieve her, till at last she
came actually to enjoy the remembrance of it, pleased to have played the
principal part even in a drama that was hissed off her little stage,
glad to find a sympathetic listener, dwelling much and fondly on every
incident of that short period of importance and glory.

It is doubtful whether she would ever have extracted the same amount of
pleasure from Mr. Jessup had he remained fixed in the faith of his
fathers and married her in due season. By his secession he had
unconsciously become a sort of providence to Letty and herself, saving
them from endless hours of dulness, furnishing their lonely schoolroom
life with romance and mystery; and if in Miss Leech's mind he gradually
took on the sweet intangibility of a pleasant dream, he was the very
pith and marrow of Letty's existence. She glowed and thrilled at the
thought that perhaps she too would one day have a Mr. Jessup of her own,
who would have convictions, and give up everything, herself included,
for what he believed to be right.

As usual, they at once became absorbed in Mr. Jessup, forgetting in the
contemplation of his excellencies everything else in the world, till
they were roused to realities by their arrival at Stralsund; and Susie,
thrusting books and bags and umbrellas into their passive hands, pushed
them out of the carriage into the wet.

Hilton, the maid shared by Susie and Anna, had then to be found and
urged to clamber down quickly on to the low platform, where she stood
helplessly, the picture of injured superiority, hustled by the hurrying
porters and passengers, out of whose way she scorned to move, while Anna
went to look for the luggage and have it put into the cart that had been
sent for it.

This cart was an ordinary farm cart, used for bringing in the hay in
June, but also used for carrying out the manure in November; and on a
sack of straw lying in the bottom it was expected that Hilton should
sit. The farm boy who drove it, and who helped the porter to tie the
trunks to its sides lest they should too violently bump against each
other and Hilton on the way, said so; the coachman of the carriage
waiting for the _Herrschaften_ pointed with his whip first at Hilton and
then at the cart, and said so; the porter, who seemed to think it quite
natural, said so; and everybody was waiting for Hilton to get in, who,
when she had at length grasped the situation, went to Susie, who was
looking frightened and pretending to be absorbed by the sky, and with a
voice shaken by passion, and a face changing from white to red,
announced her intention of only going in that cart as a corpse, when
they might do with her as they pleased, but as a living body with breath
in it, never.

Here was a difficulty. And idlers, whose curiosity was not
extinguishable by wind and sleet, began to press round, and people who
had come by the same train stopped on their way out to listen. The farm
boy patted the sack and declared that it was clean straw, the coachman
stood up on his box and swore that it was a new sack, the porter assured
the Fräulein that it was as comfortable as a feather bed, and nobody
seemed to understand that what she was being offered was an insult.

Susie was afraid of Hilton, who had been in the service of duchesses,
and who held these duchesses over her mistress's head whenever her
mistress wanted to do anything that was inconvenient to herself; quoting
their sayings, pointing out how they would have acted in any given case,
and always, it appeared, they had done exactly what Hilton desired.
Susie's admiration for duchesses was slavish, and Hilton was treated
with an indulgent liberality that was absurd compared to the stinginess
displayed towards everyone else. Hilton was not more horrified than her
mistress when she saw the farm cart, and understood that it was for the
luggage and the maid. It was impossible to take her with them in what
the porter called the _herrschaftliche Wagen_, for it was a kind of
victoria, and how to get their four selves into it was a sufficient
puzzle. "What shall we do?" said Susie, in despair, to Anna.

"Do? Why, she'll have to go in it. Hilton, don't be a foolish person,
and don't keep us here in the wet. This isn't England, and nobody thinks
anything here of driving in farm carts. It is patriarchal simplicity,
that's all. People are staring at you now because you are making such a
fuss. Get in like a good soul, and let us start."

"Only as a corpse, m'm," reiterated Hilton with chattering teeth, "never
as a living body."

"Nonsense," said Anna impatiently.

"What shall we do?" repeated Susie. "Poor Hilton--what barbarians they
must be here."

"We must send her in a _Droschky_, then, if it isn't too far, and we can
get one to go."

"A _Droschky_ all that distance! It will be ruinous."

"Well, we can't stand here amusing these people for ever."

"Oh, I wish we had never come to this horrible place!" cried Susie,
really made miserable by Hilton's rage.

But Anna did not stay to listen either to her laments or to Hilton's
monotonous "Only as a corpse, m'lady," and was already arranging with an
unwilling driver, who had no desire whatever to drive to Kleinwalde, but
consented to do so on being promised twenty marks, a rest and feed of
oats for his horses, and any little addition in the shape of refreshment
and extra money that might suggest itself to Anna's generosity.

"You know, Anna, you can't expect _me_ to pay for the fly," said Susie
uneasily, when the appeased Hilton had been put into it and was out of
earshot. "That dreadful cart is your property, I suppose."

"Of course it is," said Anna, smiling, "and of course the fly is my
affair. How magnificent I feel, disposing of carts and _Droschkies_.
Now, will you please to get into my carriage? And do you observe the
extreme respectfulness of my coachman?"

The coachman, a strange-looking, round-shouldered being, with a long
grizzled beard, a dark-blue cloth cap on his head, and a body clothed in
a fawn-coloured suit and gaiters, on which a great many tarnished silver
buttons adorned with Uncle Joachim's coat of arms were fastened at short
intervals, removed his cap while his new mistress and her party were
entering the carriage, and did not put it on again till they were ready
to start.

"Quite as though we were royalties," said Susie.

"But the rest of him isn't," replied Anna, who was greatly amused by the
turn-out. "Do you like my horses, Susie? Or do you suspect them of
having been ploughing all the morning? Oh, well," she added quickly,
ashamed of laughing at any part of her dear uncle's gift, "I suppose one
has to have heavily built horses in this part of the world, where the
roads are probably frightfully bad."

"Their tails might be a little shorter," said Susie.

"They might," agreed Anna serenely.

With the aid of the porter, who knew all about Uncle Joachim's will and
was deeply interested, they were at last somehow packed into the
carriage, and away they rattled over the rough stones, threading the
outskirts of the town on the mainland, the hail and wind in their faces,
out into the open country, with their horses' heads turned towards the
north. The fly containing Hilton followed more leisurely behind, and the
farm cart containing the unused sack of straw followed the fly.

"We can't see much of Stralsund," said Anna, trying to peep round the
hood at the old town across the lakes separating it from the mainland.

"It's a very historical town," observed Susie, who had happened to
notice, as she idly turned over the pages of her Baedeker on the way
down, that there was a long description of it with dates. "As of course
you know," she added, turning sharply to her daughter.

"Rather," said Letty. "Wallenstein said he'd take it if it were chained
to heaven, and when he found it wasn't he was frightfully sick, and went
away and left them all in the fields."

Miss Leech, who was on the little seat, struggling to defend herself
from the fury of the elements with an umbrella, looked anxious, but
Susie only said in a gratified voice, "I'm glad you remember what you've
been taught." To which Letty, who was in great spirits, and thought this
drive in the wet huge fun, again replied heartily, "Rather," and her
mother congratulated herself on having done the right thing in bringing
her to Germany, home of erudition and profundity, already evidently
beginning to do its work.

The carriage smelt of fish, which presently upset Susie, who,
unfortunately for her, had a nose that smelt everything. While they were
in the town she thought the smell was in the streets, and bore it; but
out in the open, where there was not a house to be seen, she found that
it was in the carriage.

She fidgeted, and looked about, feeling with her foot under the opposite
seat, expecting to find a basket somewhere, and determined if she found
one to push it out quietly and say nothing; for that she should drive
for two hours with her handkerchief up to her nose was more than anybody
could expect of her. Already she had done more than anybody ought to
expect of her, she reflected, in going to the expense of the journey and
the inconvenience of the absence from home for Anna's sake, and she
hoped that Anna felt grateful. She had never yet shrunk from her duty
towards Anna, or indeed from her duty towards anyone, and she was sure
she never would; but her duty certainly did not include the passive
endurance of offensive smells.

"What are you looking for?" asked Anna.

"Why, the fish."

"Oh, do you smell it too?"

"Smell it? I should think I did. It's killing me."

"Oh, poor Susie!" laughed Anna, who was possessed by an uncontrollable
desire to laugh at everything. The conveyance (it could hardly be called
a carriage) in which they were seated, and which she supposed was the
one destined for her use if she lived at Kleinwalde, was unlike anything
she had yet seen. It was very old, with enormous wheels, and bumped
dreadfully, and the seat was so constructed that she was continually
slipping forward and having to push herself back again. It was lined
throughout, including the hood, with a white and black shepherd's plaid
in large squares, the white squares mellowed by the stains of use and
time to varying shades of brown and yellow; when Miss Leech's umbrella
was blown aside by a gust of wind Anna could see her coachman's drab
coat, with a little end of white tape that he had forgotten to tie, and
whose uses she was unable to guess, fluttering gaily between its tails
in the wind; on the left side of the box was a very big and gorgeous
coat of arms in green and white, Uncle Joachim's colours; and whichever
way she turned her head, there was the overpowering smell of fish. "We
must be taking our dinner home with us," she said, "but I don't see it
anywhere."

"There isn't anything under the seats. Perhaps the man has got it on the
box. Ask him, Anna; I really can't stand it."

Anna did not quite know how to attract his attention. It seemed
undignified to poke him, but she did not know his name, and the wind
blew her voice back in the direction of Stralsund when she had cleared
it, and coughed, and called out rather shyly, "Oh, _Kutscher!
Kutscher!_"

Then she remembered that oh was not German, and that Uncle Joachim had
used sonorous achs in its place, and she began again, "_Ach, Kutscher!
Kutscher!_"

Letty giggled. "Go it, Aunt Anna," she said encouragingly, "dig him in
the ribs with your umbrella--or I will, if you like."

Her mother, with her handkerchief to her nose, exhorted her not to be
vulgar. Letty explained at some length that she was only being nice, and
offering assistance.

"I really shall have to poke him," said Anna, her faint cries of
_Kutscher_ quite lost in the rattling of the carriage and the howling of
the wind. "Or perhaps you would touch his arm, Miss Leech."

Miss Leech turned, and very gingerly touched his sleeve. He at once
whistled to his horses, who stopped dead, snatched off his cap, and
looking down at Anna inquired her commands.

It was done so quickly that Anna, whose conversational German was
exceedingly rusty, was quite unable to remember the word for fish, and
sat looking up at him helplessly, while she vainly searched her brains.

"What _is_ fish in German?" she said, appealing to Susie, distressed
that the man should be waiting capless in the rain.

"Letty, what's the word for fish?" inquired Susie sternly.

"Fish?" repeated Letty, looking stupid.

"Fish?" echoed Miss Leech, trying to help.

"_Fisch?_" said the coachman himself, catching at the word.

"Oh, yes; how utterly silly I am," cried Anna blushing and showing her
dimples, "it's _Fisch_, of course. _Kutscher, wo ist Fisch?_"

The man looked blank; then his face brightened, and pointing with his
whip to the rolling sea on their right, visible across the flat
intervening fields, he said that there was much fish in it, especially
herrings.

"What does he say?" asked Susie from behind her handkerchief.

"He says there are herrings in the sea."

"Is the man a fool?"

Letty laughed uproariously. The coachman, seeing Letty and Anna laugh,
thought he must have said the right thing after all, and looked very
pleasant.

"_Aber im Wagen_," persisted Anna, "_wo ist Fisch im Wagen?_"

The coachman stared. Then he said vaguely, in a soothing voice, not in
the least knowing what she meant, "_Nein, nein, gnädiges Fräulein_," and
evidently hoped she would be satisfied.

"_Aber es riecht, es riecht!_" cried Anna, not satisfied at all, and
lifting up her nose in unmistakeable displeasure.

His face brightened again. "_Ach so--jawohl, jawohl_," he exclaimed
cheerfully; and hastened to explain that there were no fish nearer than
the sea, but that the grease he had used that morning to make the
leather of the hood and apron shine certainly had a fishy smell, as he
himself had noticed. "The gracious Miss loves not the smell?" he
inquired anxiously; for he had seven children, and was very desirous
that his new mistress should be pleased.

Anna laughed and shook her head, and though she said with great emphasis
that she did not love it at all, she looked so friendly that he felt
reassured.

"What does he say?" asked Susie.

"Why, I'm afraid we shall have it all the way. It's the grease he's been
rubbing the leather with."

"Barbarian!" cried Susie angrily, feeling sick already, and certain that
she would be quite ill by the end of the drive. "And you laugh at him
and encourage him, instead of taking up your position at once and
showing him that you won't stand any nonsense. He ought to be--to be
unboxed!" she added in great wrath; for she had heard of delinquent
clergymen being unfrocked, and why should not delinquent coachmen be
unboxed?

Anna laughed again. She tried not to, but she could not help it; and
Susie, made still more angry by this childish behaviour, sulked during
the rest of the drive.

"Go on--_avanti_!" said Anna, who knew hardly any Italian, and when she
was in Italy and wanted her words never could find them, but had been
troubled the last two days by the way in which these words came to her
lips every time she opened them to speak German.

The coachman understood her, however, and they went on again along the
straight high-road, that stretched away before them to a distant bend.
The high-road, or _chaussée_, was planted on either side with maples,
and between the maples big whitewashed stones had been set to mark the
way at night, and behind the rows of trees and stones, ditches had been
dug parallel with the road as a protection to the crops in summer from
the possible wanderings of erring carts. If a cart erred, it tumbled
into the ditch. The arrangement was simple and efficacious. On the
right, across some marshy land, they could see the sea for a little
while, with the flat coast of Rügen opposite; and then some rising
ground, bare of trees and brilliantly green with winter corn, hid it
from view. On the left was the dreary plain, dotted at long intervals
with farms and their little groups of trees, and here and there with
windmills working furiously in the gale. The wind was icy, and the
December snow still lay in drifts in the ditches. In that leaden
landscape, made up of grey and brown and black, the patches of winter
rye were quite startling in their greenness.

Susie thought it the most God-forsaken country she had ever seen, and
expressed this opinion plainly on her face and in her attitudes without
any need for opening her lips, shuddering back ostentatiously into her
corner, wrapping herself with elaborate care in her furs, and behaving
as slaves to duty sometimes do when the paths they have to tread are
rough.

After driving along the _chaussée_ for about an hour, they passed a big
house standing among trees back from the road on the right, and a little
farther on came to a small village. The carriage, pulled up with a jerk,
and looking eagerly round the hood Anna found they had come to a
standstill in front of a new red-brick building, whose steps were
crowded with children. Two or three men and some women were with the
children. Two of the men appeared to be clergymen, and the elder, a
middle-aged, mild-faced man, came down the steps, and bowing profoundly
proceeded to welcome Anna solemnly, on behalf of those children from
Kleinwalde who attended this school, to her new home. He concluded that
Anna was the person to be welcomed because he could see nothing of the
lady in the other corner but her eyes, and they looked anything but
friendly; whereas the young lady on the left was leaning forward and
smiling and holding out her hand.

He took it, and shook it slowly up and down, while he begged her to
allow the hood of the carriage to be put back, so that the children from
her village, who had walked three miles to welcome her, might be able to
see her; and on Anna's readily agreeing to this, himself helped the
coachman with his own white-gloved hands to put it down. Susie was
therefore exposed to the full fury of the blast, and shrank still
farther into her corner--an interesting and tantalising object to the
school-children, a dark, mysterious combination of fur, cocks' feathers,
and black eyebrows.

Then the clergyman, hat in hand, made a speech. He spoke distinctly, as
one accustomed to speaking often and long, and Anna understood every
word. She was wholly taken aback by these ceremonies, and had no idea of
what she should say in reply, but sat smiling vaguely at him, looking
very pretty and very shy. She soon found that her smiles were
inappropriate, and they died away; for, warming as he proceeded, the
parson, it appeared, was taking it for granted that she intended to live
on her property, and was eloquently descanting on the comfort she was
going to be to the poor, assuring those present that she would be a
mother to the sick, nursing them with her tender woman's hands, an angel
of mercy to the hungry, feeding them in the hour of their distress, a
friend and sister to the little children, succouring them, caring for
them, pitiful of their weakness and their sins. His face lit up with
enthusiasm as he went on, and Anna was thankful that Susie could not
understand. This crowd of children, the women, the young parson, her
coachman, were all hearing promises made on her behalf that she had no
thought of fulfilling. She looked down, and twisted her fingers about
nervously, and felt uncomfortable.

At the end of his speech, the parson, his eyes full of the tears drawn
forth by his own eloquence, held up his hand and solemnly blessed her,
rounding off his blessing with a loud Amen, after which there was an
awkward pause. Susie heard the Amen, and guessed that something in the
nature of a blessing was being invoked, and made a movement of
impatience. The parson was odious in her eyes, first because he looked
like the ministers of the Baptist chapels of her unmarried youth, but
principally because he was keeping her there in the gale and prolonging
the tortures she was enduring from the smell of fish. Anna did not know
what to say after the Amen, and looked up more shyly than ever, and
stammered in her confusion _Danke sehr_, hoping that it was a proper
remark to make; whereupon the parson bowed again, as one who should say
Pray don't mention it. Then another man, evidently the schoolmaster,
took out a tuning-fork, gave out a note, and the children sang a
_chorale_, following it up with other more cheerful songs, in which the
words _Frühling_ and _Willkommen_ were repeated a great many times,
while the wind howled flattest contradiction.

When this was over, the parson begged leave to introduce the other
clerical-looking person, a tall narrow youth, also in white kid gloves,
buttoned up tightly in a long coat of broadcloth, with a pallid face and
thick, upright flaxen hair.

"Herr Vicar Klutz," said the elder parson, with a wave of the hand; and
the Herr Vicar, making his bow, and having his limp hand heartily
grasped by that other little hand, and his furtive eyes smiled into by
those other friendly eyes, became on the spot desperately enamoured;
which was very natural, seeing that he had not spoken to a woman under
forty for six months, and was himself twenty and a poet. He spent the
rest of the afternoon shut up in his bedroom, where, refusing all
nourishment, he composed a poem in which _berauschten Sinn_ was made to
rhyme with _Engländerin_, while the elder parson, in whose house he
lived, thought he was writing his Good Friday sermon.

Then the schoolmaster was introduced, and then came the two women--the
schoolmaster's wife and the parson's wife; and when Anna had smiled and
murmured polite and incoherent little speeches to each in turn, and had
nodded and bowed at least a dozen times to each of these ladies, who
could by no means have done with their curtseys, and had introduced them
to the dumb figure in the corner, during which ceremonies Letty stared
round-eyed and open-mouthed at the school-children, and the
school-children stared round-eyed and open-mouthed at Letty, and Miss
Leech looked demure, and Susie's brows were contracted by suffering, she
wondered whether she might not now with propriety continue her journey,
and if so whether it were expected that she should give the signal.

Everybody was smiling at everybody else by way of filling up this pause
of hesitation, except Susie, who shut her eyes with great dignity, and
shivered in so marked a manner that the parson himself came to the
rescue, and bade the coachman help him put up the hood again, explaining
to Anna as he did so that her _Frau Schwester_ was not used to the
climate.

Evidently the moment had come for going on, and the bows that had but
just left off began again with renewed vigour. Anna was anxious to say
something pleasant at the finish, so she asked the parson's wife, as she
bade her good-bye, whether she and her husband would come to Kleinwalde
the next day to dinner.

This invitation produced a very deep curtsey and a flush of
gratification, but the recipient turned to her lord before accepting it,
to inquire his pleasure.

"I fear not to-morrow, gracious Miss," said the parson, "for it is Good
Friday."

"_Ach ja_," stammered Anna, ashamed of herself for having forgotten.

"_Ach ja_," exclaimed the parson's wife, still more ashamed of herself
for having forgotten.

"Perhaps Saturday, then?" suggested Anna.

The parson murmured something about quiet hours preparatory to the
Sabbath; but his wife, a person who struck Anna as being quite
extraordinarily stout, was burning with curiosity to examine those
foreign ladies more conveniently, and especially to see what manner of
being would emerge from the pile of fur and feathers in the corner; and
she urged him, in a rapid aside, to do for once without quiet hours.
Whereupon he patted her on the cheek, smiled indulgently, and said he
would make an exception and do himself the honour of appearing.

This being settled, Anna said _Gehen Sie_ to her coachman, who again
showed his intelligence by understanding her; and in a cloud of smiles
and bows they drove away, the school-girls making curtseys, the
schoolboys taking off their caps, and the parson standing hat in hand
with his arm round his wife's waist as serenely as though it had been a
summer's day and no one looking.

Anna became used to these displays of conjugal regard in public later
on; but this first time she turned to Susie with a laugh, when the hood
had hidden the group from view, and asked her if she had seen it. But
Susie had seen nothing, for her eyes were shut, and she refused to
answer any questions otherwise than by a feeble shake of the head.

On the other side of the village the _chaussée_ came to an end, and two
deep, sandy roads took its place. There was a sign-post at their
junction, one arm of which, pointing to the right-hand road that ran
down close to the sea, had Kleinwalde scrawled on it; and beside this
sign-post a man on a horse was waiting for them.

"Good gracious! More rot?" ejaculated Susie as the carriage stopped
again, shaken out of the dignity of sulks by these repeated shocks.

"Oberinspector Dellwig," said the man, introducing himself, and sweeping
off his hat and bowing lower and more obsequiously than anyone had yet
done.

"This must be the inspector Uncle Joachim hoped I'd keep," said Anna in
an undertone.

"I don't care who he is, but for heaven's sake don't let him make a
speech. I can't stand this sort of thing any longer. You'll have me ill
on your hands if you're not careful, and you won't like _that_, so you
had better stop him."

"I can't stop him," said Anna, perplexed. She also had had enough of
speeches.

"_Gestatten gnädiges Fräulein dass ich meine gehorsamste Ehrerbietung
ausspreche_," began the glib inspector, bowing at every second word over
his horse's ears.

There was no escape, and they had to hear him out. The man had prepared
his speech, and say it he would. It was not so long as the parson's, but
was quite as flowery in another way, overflowing with respectful
allusions to the deceased master, and with expressions of unbounded
loyalty, obedience, and devotion to the new mistress.

Susie shut her eyes again when she found he was not to be stopped, and
gave herself up for lost. What could Hilton, who must be close behind
waiting in the cold, uncomforted by any food since leaving Berlin, think
of all this? Susie dreaded the moment when she would have to face her.

The inspector finished all he had intended saying, and then, assuming a
more colloquial tone, informed Anna that from the sign-post onward she
would be driving through her own property, and asked permission to ride
by her side the rest of the way. So they had his company for the last
two miles and his conversation, of which there was much; for he had a
ready tongue, and explained things to Anna in a very loud voice as they
went along, expatiating on the magnificence of the crops the previous
summer, and assuring her that the crops of the coming summer would be
even more magnificent, for he had invented a combination of manures
which would give such results that all Pomerania's breath would be taken
away.

The road here was terrible, and the horses could hardly drag the
carriage through the sand. It lurched and heaved from side to side,
creaking and groaning alarmingly. Miss Leech was in imminent peril. Anna
held on with both hands, and hardly had leisure to put in appropriate
_achs_ and _jas_ and questions of a becoming intelligence when the
inspector paused to take breath. She did not like his looks, and wished
that she could follow Susie's example and avoid the necessity of seeing
him by the simple expedient of shutting her eyes. But somehow, she did
not quite know how, responsibilities and obligations were suddenly
pressing heavily upon her. These people had all made up their minds that
she was going to be and do certain things; and though she assured
herself that it did not in the least matter how they had made up their
minds, yet she felt obliged to behave in the way that was expected of
her. She did not want to talk to this unpleasant-looking man, and what
he told her about the crops and their marvellousness was half
unintelligible to her and wholly a bore. Yet she did talk to him, and
looked friendly, and affected to understand and be deeply interested in
all he said.

They passed through a plantation of young beeches, planted, Dellwig
explained, by Uncle Joachim on his last visit; and after a few more
yards of lurching in the sand came to some woods and got on to a fair
road.

"The park," said Dellwig superbly, with a wave of the hand.

Susie opened her eyes at the word park, and looked about. "It isn't a
park," she said peevishly, "it's a forest--a horrid, gloomy, damp
wilderness."

"Oh, it's lovely!" cried Letty, giving a jump of delight as she peered
down the serried ranks of pine trees.

It was a thick wood of pines and beeches, railed off from the road on
either side by wooden rails painted in black and white stripes. Uncle
Joachim had been the loyalest of Prussians, and his loyalty overflowed
even into his fences. Æsthetic instincts he had none, and if he had been
brought to see it, would not have cared at all that the railings made
the otherwise beautiful avenue look like the entrance to a restaurant or
a railway station. The stripes, renewed every year, and of startling
distinctness, were an outward and visible sign of his staunch devotion
to the King of Prussia, the very lining of the carriage with its white
and black squares was symbolic; and when they came to the gate within
which the house itself stood, two Prussian eagles frowned down at them
from the gate-posts.




CHAPTER VI


A low, white, two-storied house, separated from the forest only by a
circular grass plot and a ditch with half-melted snow in it and muddy
water, a house apparently quite by itself among the creaking pines,
neither very old nor very new, with a great many windows, and a
brown-tiled roof, was the home bestowed by Uncle Joachim on his dear and
only niece Anna.

"So _this_ is where I was to lead the better life?" she thought, as the
carriage drew up at the door, and the moaning of the uneasy trees, and
all the lonely sounds of a storm-beaten forest replaced the rattling of
the wheels in her ears. "The better life, then, is a life of utter
solitude, Uncle Joachim thought? I wish I knew--I wish I knew----" But
what it was she wished she knew was hardly clear in her mind; and her
thoughts were interrupted by a very untidy, surprised-looking
maid-servant, capless, and in felt slippers, who had darted down the
steps and was unfastening the leather apron and pulling out the rugs
with hasty, agitated hands, and trying to pull Susie out as well.

The doorway was garlanded with evergreen wreaths, over which a green and
white flag flapped; and curtseying and smiling beneath the wreaths stood
Dellwig's wife, a short lady with smooth hair, weather-beaten face, and
brown silk gloves, who would have been the stoutest person Anna had ever
seen if she had not just come from the presence of the parson's wife.

"I never saw so many bows in my life," grumbled Susie, pushing the
servant aside, and getting out cautiously, feeling very stiff and cold
and miserable. "Letty, you are on my dress--oh, how d'you do--how d'you
do," she murmured frostily, as the Frau Inspector seized her hand and
began to talk German to her. "Anna, are you coming? This--er--person
thinks I'm you, and is making me a speech."

Dellwig, who had sent his horse away in charge of a small boy, rapidly
explained to his wife that the young lady now getting out of the
carriage was their late master's niece, and that the other one must be
the sister-in-law mentioned in the lawyer's letter; upon which Frau
Dellwig let Susie go, and transferred her smiles and welcome to Anna.
Susie went into the house to get out of the cold, only to find herself
in a square hall whose iciness was the intolerable iciness of a place in
which no sun had been allowed to shine and no windows had been opened
for summers without number. When Uncle Joachim came down he lived in two
rooms at the back of the house, with a door leading into the garden
through which he went to the farm, and the hall had never been used, and
the closed shutters never opened. There was no fireplace, or stove, or
heating arrangement of any sort. Glass doors divided it from an inner
and still more spacious hall, with a wide wooden staircase, and doors
all round it. The walls in both halls were painted grass green; and from
little chains in the ceiling stuffed hawks and eagles, shot by Uncle
Joachim, and grown with years very dusty and moth-eaten, hung swinging
in the draught. The floor was boarded, and was still damp from a recent
scrubbing. There was no carpet. A wooden bracket on the wall, with brass
hooks, held a large assortment of whips and hunting crops; and in one
corner stood an arrangement for coats, with Uncle Joachim's various
waterproofs and head-coverings hanging monumentally on its pegs.

"Oh, how dreadful!" thought Susie, shivering more violently than ever.
"And what a musty smell--it's damp, of course, and I shall be laid up.
Poor Hilton! What will she think of this? Oh, how d'you do," she added
aloud, as a female figure in a white apron suddenly emerged from the
gloom and took her hand and kissed it; "Anna, who's this? Anna! Aren't
you coming? Here's somebody kissing my hand."

"It's the cook," said Anna, coming into the inner hall with the others,
Dellwig and his wife keeping one on either side of her, and both talking
at once in their anxiety to make a good impression.

"The cook? Then tell her to give us some food. I shall die if I don't
have something soon. Do you know what time it is? Past four. Can't you
get rid of these people? And where's Hilton?"

Susie hardly seemed to see the Dellwigs, and talked to Anna while they
were talking to her as though they did not exist. If Anna felt an
obligation to be polite to these different persons she felt none at all.
They did not understand English, but if they had it would not have
mattered to her, and she would have gone on talking about them as though
they had not been there.

Both the Dellwigs had very loud voices, so Susie had to raise hers in
order to be heard, and there was consequently such a noise in the empty,
echoing house, that after looking round bewildered, and trying to answer
everybody at once, Anna gave it up, and stood and laughed.

"I don't see anything to laugh at," said Susie crossly, "we are all
starving, and these people won't go."

"But how can I make them go?"

"They're your servants, I suppose. I should just say that I'd send for
them when I wanted them."

"They'd be very much astonished. The man is so far from being my servant
that I believe he means to be my master."

The two Dellwigs, perplexed by Anna's laughter when nobody had said
anything amusing, and uneasy lest she should be laughing at something
about themselves, looked from her to Susie suspiciously, and for that
brief moment were quiet.

"_Wir sind hungrig_," said Anna to the wife.

"The food comes immediately," she replied; and hastened away with the
cook and the other servant through a door evidently leading to the
kitchen.

"_Und kalt_," continued Anna plaintively to the husband, who at once
flung open another door, through which they saw a table spread for
dinner. "_Bitte, bitte_," he said, ushering them in as though the place
belonged to him.

"Does this person live in the house?" inquired Susie, eying him with
little goodwill.

"He told me he lives at the farm. But of course he has always looked
after everything here."

When they were all in the dining-room, driven in by Dellwig, as Susie
remarked, like a flock of sheep by a shepherd determined to stand no
nonsense, he helped them with officious politeness to take off their
wraps, and then, bowing almost to the ground, asked permission to
withdraw while the _Herrschaften_ ate, a permission that was given with
alacrity, Anna's face falling, however, upon his informing her that he
would come round later on in order to lay his plans for the summer
before her.

"What does he say?" asked Susie, as the door shut behind him.

"He's coming round again later on."

"That man's going to be a nuisance--you see if he isn't," said Susie
with conviction.

"I believe he is," agreed Anna, going over to the white porcelain stove
to warm her hands.

"He's the limpet, and you're going to be the rock. Don't let him fleece
you too much."

"But limpets don't fleece rocks," said Anna.

"He wouldn't be able to fleece me, _I_ know, if I could talk German as
well as you do. But you'll be soft and weak and amiable, and he'll do as
he likes with you."

"Soft, and weak, and amiable!" repeated Anna, smiling at Susie's
adjectives, "why, I thought I was obstinate--you always said I was."

"So you are. But you won't be to that man. He'll get round you."

"Uncle Joachim said he was excellent."

"Oh, I daresay he wasn't bad with a man over him who knew all about
farming, but mark my words, _you_ won't get two thousand a year out of
the place."

Anna was silent. Susie was invariably shrewd and sensible, if inclined,
Anna thought, to be over suspicious, in matters where money was
concerned. Dellwig's face was not one to inspire confidence: and his way
of shouting when he talked, and of talking incessantly, was already
intolerable to her. She was not sure, either, that his wife was any more
satisfactory. She too shouted, and Anna detested noise. The wife did not
appear again, and had evidently gone home with her husband, for a great
silence had fallen upon the house, broken only by the monotonous sighing
of the forest, and the pattering of rain against the window.

The dining-room was a long narrow room, with one big window forming its
west end looking out on to the grass plot, the ditch, and the gate-posts
with the eagles on them. It was a study in chocolate--brown paper, brown
carpet, brown rep curtains, brown cane chairs. There were two wooden
sideboards painted brown facing each other down at the dark end, with a
collection of miscellaneous articles on them: a vinegar cruet that had
stood there for years, with remains of vinegar dried up at the bottom;
mustard pots containing a dark and wicked mixture that had once been
mustard; a broken hand-bell used at long-past dinners, to summon
servants long since dead; an old wine register with entries in it of a
quarter of a century back; a mouldy bottle of Worcester sauce, still
boasting on its label that it would impart a relish to viands otherwise
dull; and some charming Dresden china fruit-dishes, adorned with
cheerful shepherds and shepherdesses, incurable optimists, persistently
pleased with themselves and their surroundings through all the days and
nights of all the cold silent years that they had been smiling at each
other in the dark. On the round dinner-table was a pot of lilies of the
valley, enveloped in crinkly pink tissue paper tied round with pink
satin ribbon, with ears of the paper drawn up between the flower-stalks
to produce a pleasing contrast of pink and white.

"Well, it's warm enough here, isn't it?" said Susie, going round the
room and examining these things with an interest far exceeding that
called forth by the art treasures of Berlin.

"Rather," said Letty, answering for everybody, and rubbing her hands.
She frolicked about the room, peeping into all the corners, opening the
cupboards, trying the sofa, and behaving in so frisky a fashion that her
mother, who seldom saw her at home, and knew her only as a naughty
gloomy girl, turned once or twice from the interesting sideboards to
stare at her inquiringly through her lorgnette.

The servant with the surprised eyebrows, who presently brought in the
soup, had put on a pair of white cotton gloves for the ceremony of
waiting, but still wore her felt slippers. She put the plates in a pile
on the edge of the table, murmured something in German, and ran out
again; nor did she come back till she brought the next course, when she
behaved in a precisely similar manner, and continued to do so throughout
the meal; the diners, having no bell, being obliged to sit patiently
during the intervals, until she thought that they might perhaps be ready
for some more.

It was an odd meal, and began with cold chocolate soup with frothy white
things that tasted of vanilla floating about in it. Susie was so much
interested in this soup that she forgot all about Hilton, who had been
driven ignominiously to the back door and was left sitting in the
kitchen till the two servants should have time to take her upstairs, and
was employing the time composing a speech of a spirited nature in which
she intended giving her mistress notice the moment she saw her again.

Her mistress meanwhile was meditatively turning over the vanilla balls
in her soup. "Well, I don't like it," she said at last, laying down her
spoon.

"Oh, it's ripping!" cried her daughter ecstatically. "It's like having
one's pudding at the other end."

"How can you look at chocolate after Berlin, greedy girl?" asked her
mother, disgusted by her child's obvious tendency towards a too free
indulgence in the pleasures of the table. But Letty was feeling so
jovial that in the face of this question she boldly asked for more--a
request that was refused indignantly and at once.

There was such a long pause after the soup that in their hunger they
began to eat the stewed apples and bottled cherries that were on the
table. The brown bread, arranged in thin slices on a white crochet mat
in a japanned dish, felt so damp and was so full of caraway seeds that
it was uneatable. After a while some roach, caught on the estate, and
with a strong muddy flavour and bewildering multitudes of bones, was
brought in; and after that came cutlets from Anna's pigs; and after that
a queer red gelatinous pudding that tasted of physic; and after that,
the meal being evidently at an end, Susie, who was very hungry, remarked
that if all the food were going to be like those specimens they had
better return at once to England, or they would certainly be starved.
"It's a good thing you are not going to stay here, Anna," she said, "for
you'd have to make a tremendous fuss before you'd get them to leave off
treating you like a pig. Look here--teaspoons to eat the pudding with,
and the same fork all the way through. It's a beastly hole"--Letty's
eyebrows telegraphed triumphantly across to Miss Leech, "Well, did you
hear that?"--"and we ought to have stayed in Berlin. There was nothing
to be gained at all by coming here."

"Perhaps the dinner to-night will be better," said Anna, trying to
comfort her, and little knowing that they had just eaten the dinner; but
people who are hungry are surprisingly impervious to the influence of
fair words. "It couldn't be worse, anyhow, so it really will probably be
better. I'm very glad though that we did come, for I like it."

"Oh, yes, so do I, Aunt Anna!" cried Letty. "It's frightfully nice. It's
like a picnic that doesn't leave off. When are we going over the house,
and out into the garden? I do so want to go--oh, I do so want to go!"
And she jumped up and down impatiently on her chair, till her ardour was
partially quenched by her mother's forbidding her to go out of doors in
the rain. "Well, let's go over the house, then," said Letty, dying to
explore.

"Oh, yes, you may go over the house," said her mother with a shrug of
displeasure; though why she should be displeased it would have puzzled
anyone who had dined satisfactorily to explain. Then she suddenly
remembered Hilton, and with an exclamation started off in search of her.

The others put on their furs before going into the Arctic atmosphere of
the hall, and began to explore, spending the next hour very pleasantly
rambling all over the house, while Susie, who had found Hilton, remained
shut up in the bedroom allotted her till supper time.

The cook showed Anna her bedroom, and when she had gone, Anna gave one
look round at the evergreen wreaths with which it was decorated and
which filled it with a pungent, baked smell, and then ran out to see
what her house was like. Her heart was full of pride and happiness as
she wandered about the rooms and passages. The magic word _mine_ rang in
her ears, and gave each piece of furniture a charm so ridiculously great
that she would not have told any one of it for the world. She took up
the different irrelevant ornaments that were scattered through the
rooms, collected as such things do collect, nobody knew when or why, and
she put them down again somewhere else, only because she had the right
to alter things and she loved to remind herself of it. She patted the
walls and the tables as she passed; she smoothed down the folds of the
curtains with tender touches; she went up to every separate
looking-glass and stood in front of it a moment, so that there should be
none that had not reflected the image of its mistress. She was so
childishly delighted with her scanty possessions that she was thankful
Susie remained invisible and did not come out and scoff.

What if it seemed an odd, bare place to eyes used to the superfluity of
hangings and stuffings that prevailed at Estcourt? These bare boards,
these shabby little mats by the side of the beds, the worn foxes' skins
before the writing-tables, the cane or wooden chairs, the white calico
curtains with meek cotton fringes, the queer little prints on the walls,
the painted wooden bedsteads, seemed to her in their very poorness and
unpretentiousness to be emblematical of all the virtues. As she lingered
in the quiet rooms, while Letty raced along the passages, Anna said to
herself that this Spartan simplicity, this absence of every luxury that
could still further soften an already languid and effeminate soul, was
beautiful. Here, as in the whitewashed praying-places of the Puritans,
if there were any beauty and any glory it must all come from within, be
all of the spirit, be only the beauty of a clean life and the glory of
kind thoughts. She pictured herself waking up in one of those unadorned
beds with the morning sun shining on her face, and rising to go her
daily round of usefulness in her quiet house, where there would be no
quarrels, and no pitiful ambitions, and none of those many bitter
heartaches that need never be. Would they not be happy days, those days
of simple duties? "The better life--the better life," she repeated
musingly, standing in the middle of the big room through whose tall
windows she could see the garden, and a strip of marshy land, and then
the grey sea and the white of the gulls and the dark line of the Rügen
coast over which the dusk was gathering; and she counted on her fingers
mechanically, "Simplicity, frugality, hard work. Uncle Joachim said
_that_ was the better life, and he was wise--oh, he was very wise--but
still----And he loved me, and understood me, but still----"

Looking up she caught sight of herself in a long glass opposite, a slim
figure in a fur cloak, with bare head and pensive eyes, lost in
reflection. It reminded her of the day the letter came, when she stood
before the glass in her London bedroom dressed for dinner, with that
same sentence of his persistently in her ears, and how she had not been
able to imagine herself leading the life it described. Now, in her
travelling dress, pale and tired and subdued after the long journey,
shorn of every grace of clothes and curls, she criticised her own
fatuity in having held herself to be of too fine a clay, too delicate,
too fragile, for a life that might be rough. "Oh, vain and foolish one!"
she said aloud, apostrophising the figure in the glass with the familiar
_Du_ of the days before her mother died, "Art thou then so much better
than others, that thou must for ever be only ornamental and an expense?
Canst thou not live, except in luxury? Or walk, except on carpets? Or
eat, except thy soup be not of chocolate? Go to the ants, thou sluggard;
consider their ways, and be wise." And she wrapped herself in her cloak,
and frowned defiance at that other girl.

She was standing scowling at herself with great disapproval when the
housemaid, who had been searching for her everywhere, came to tell her
that the Herr Oberinspector was downstairs, and had sent up to know if
his visit were convenient.

It was not at all convenient; and Anna thought that he might have spared
her this first evening at least. But she supposed that she must go down
to him, feeling somehow unequal to sending so authoritative a person
away.

She found him standing in the inner hall with a portfolio under his arm.
He was blowing his nose, making a sound like the blast of a trumpet, and
waking the echoes. Not even that could he do quietly, she thought, her
new sense of proprietorship oddly irritated by a nose being blown so
aggressively in her house. Besides, they were her echoes that he was
disturbing. She smiled at her own childishness.

She greeted him kindly, however, in response to his elaborate
obeisances, and shook hands on seeing that he expected to be shaken
hands with, though she had done so twice already that afternoon; and
then she let herself be ushered by him into the drawing-room, a room on
the garden side of the house, with French windows, and bookshelves, and
a huge round polished table in the middle.

It had been one of the two rooms used by Uncle Joachim, and was full of
traces of his visits. She sat down at a big writing-table with a green
cloth top, her feet plunged in the long matted hairs of a grey rug, and
requested Dellwig to sit down near her, which he did, saying
apologetically, "I will be so free."

The servant, Marie, brought in a lamp with a green shade, shut the
shutters, and went out again on tiptoe; and Anna settled herself to
listen with what patience she could to the loud voice that jarred so on
her nerves, fortifying herself with reminders that it was her duty, and
really taking pains to understand him. Nor did she say a word, as she
had done to the lawyer, that might lead him to suppose she did not
intend living there.

But Dellwig's ceaseless flow of talk soon wearied her to such an extent
that she found steady attention impossible. To understand the mere words
was in itself an effort, and she had not yet learned the German for rye
and oats and the rest, and it was of these that he chiefly talked. What
was the use of explaining to her in what way he had ploughed and manured
and sown certain fields, how they lay, how big they were, and what their
soil was, when she had not seen them? Did he imagine that she could keep
all these figures and details in her head? "I know nothing of farming,"
she said at last, "and shall understand your plans better when I have
seen the estate."

"_Natürlich, natürlich_," shouted Dellwig, his voice in strangest
contrast to hers, which was particularly sweet and gentle. "Here I have
a map--does the gracious Miss permit that I show it?"

The gracious Miss inclined her tired head, and he unrolled it and spread
it out on the table, pointing with his fat forefinger as he explained
the boundaries, and the divisions into forest, pasture, and arable.

"It seems to be nearly all forest," said Anna.

"Forest! The forest covers two-thirds of the estate. It is the only
forest on the entire promontory. Such care as I have bestowed on the
forest has seldom been seen. It is _grossartig--colossal_!" And he
lifted his hands the better to express his admiration, and was about to
go into lengthy raptures when the map rolled itself up again with loud
cracklings, and cut him short. He spread it out once more, and securing
its corners began to describe the effects of the various sorts of
artificial manure on the different crops, his cleverness in combining
them, and his latest triumphant discovery of the superlative mixture
that was to strike all Pomerania with awe.

"_Ja_," said Anna, balancing a paper-knife on one finger, and profoundly
bored. "Whose land is that next to mine?" she asked, pointing.

"The land on the north and west belongs to peasants," said Dellwig. "On
the east is the sea. On the south it is all Lohm. The gracious one
passed through the village of Lohm this afternoon."

"The village where the school is?"

"Quite correct. The pastor, Herr Manske, a worthy man, but, like all
pastors, taking ells when he is offered inches, serves both that church
and the little one in Kleinwalde village, of which the gracious Miss is
patroness. Herr von Lohm, who lives in the house standing back from the
road, and perhaps noticed by the gracious Miss, is Amtsvorsteher in both
villages."

"What is Amtsvorsteher?" asked Anna, languidly. She was leaning back in
her chair, idly balancing the paper-knife, and listening with half an
ear only to Dellwig, throwing in questions every now and then when she
thought she ought to say something. She did not look at him, preferring
much to look at the paper-knife, and he could examine her face at his
ease in the shadow of the lamp-shade, her dark eyelashes lowered, her
profile only turned to him, with its delicate line of brow and nose, and
the soft and gracious curves of the mouth and chin and throat. One hand
lay on the table in the circle of light, a slender, beautiful hand, full
of character and energy, and the other hung listlessly over the arm of
the chair. Anna was very tired, and showed it in every line of her
attitude; but Dellwig was not tired at all, was used to talking, enjoyed
at all times the sound of his voice, and on this occasion felt it to be
his duty to make things clear. So he went into the lengthiest details as
to the nature and office of Amtsvorstehers, details that were perfectly
incomprehensible and wholly indifferent to Anna, and spared neither
himself nor her. While he talked, however, he was criticising her,
comparing the laziness of her attitude with the brisk and respectful
alertness of other women when he talked. He knew that these other women
belonged to a different class; his wife, the parson's wife, the wives of
the inspectors on other estates, these were not, of course, in the same
sphere as the new mistress of Kleinwalde; but she was only a woman, and
dress up a woman as you will, call her by what name you will, she is
nothing but a woman, born to help and serve, never by any possibility
even equal to a clever man like himself. Old Joachim might have lounged
as he chose, and put his feet on the table if it had seemed good to him,
and Dellwig would have accepted it with unquestioning respect as an
eccentricity of _Herrschaften_; but a woman had no sort of right, he
said to himself, while he so fluently discoursed, to let herself go in
the presence of her natural superior. Unfortunately, old Joachim, so
level-headed an old gentleman in all other respects, had placed the
power over his fortunes in the hands of this weak female leaning back so
unbecomingly in her chair, playing with the objects on the table, never
raising her eyes to his, and showing indeed, incredible as it seemed,
every symptom of thinking of something else. The women of his
acquaintance were, he was certain, worth individually fifty such
affected, indifferent young ladies. They worked early and late to make
their husbands comfortable; they were well practised in every art
required of women living in the country; they were models of thrift and
diligence; yet, with all their virtues and all their accomplishments,
they never dreamed of lounging or not listening when a man was speaking,
but sat attentively on the edge of their chairs, straight in the back
and seemly, and when he had finished said _Jawohl_.

Anna certainly did sit very much at her ease, and instead of attending,
as she ought to have done, to his description of Amtsvorstehers, was
thinking of other things. Dellwig had thick lips that could not be
hidden entirely by his grizzled moustache and beard, and he had the sort
of eyes known to the inelegant but truthful as fishy, and a big
obstinate nose, and a narrow obstinate forehead, and a long body and
short legs; and though all this, Anna told herself, was not in the least
his fault and should not in any way prejudice her against him, she felt
that she was justified in wishing that his manners were less offensive,
less boastful and boisterous, and that he did not bite his nails. "I
wonder," she thought, her eyes carefully fixed on the paper-knife, but
conscious of his every look and movement, "I wonder if he is as artful
as he looks. Surely Uncle Joachim must have known what he was like, and
would never have told me to keep him if he had not been honest. Perhaps
he is perfectly honest, and when I meet him in heaven how ashamed I
shall be of myself for having had doubts!" And then she fell to musing
on what sort of an appearance a chastened and angelic Dellwig would
probably present, and looked up suddenly at him with new interest.

"I trust I have made myself comprehensible?" he was asking, having just
come to the end of what he felt was a masterly _résumé_ of Herr von
Lohm's duties.

"I beg your pardon?" said Anna, bringing her thoughts back with
difficulty from the consideration of nimbuses, "Oh, about
Amtsvorstehers--no," she said, shaking her head, "you have not. But that
is my fault. I can't understand everything at once. I shall do better
later on."

"_Natürlich, natürlich_," Dellwig vehemently assured her, while he made
inward comments on the innate incapacity of all _Weiber_, as he called
them, to grasp the simplest fact connected with law and justice.

"Tell me about the livestock," said Anna, remembering Uncle Joachim's
frequent and affectionate allusions to his swine. "Are there many pigs?"

"Pigs?" repeated Dellwig, lifting up his hands as though mere words were
insufficient to express his feelings, "such pigs as the gracious Miss
now possesses are nowhere else to be found in Pomerania. They are the
pride, and at the same time the envy, of the whole province. 'Let my
sausages,' said the Herr Landrath last winter, when the time for killing
drew near, 'let my sausages consist solely of the pigs reared at
Kleinwalde by my friend the Oberinspector Dellwig.' The Frau Landräthin
was deeply injured, for she too breeds and fattens pigs, but not like
ours--not like ours."

"Who is the Herr Landrath?" asked Anna absently; but immediately
remembering the description of the Amtsvorsteher she added quickly,
"Never mind--don't explain. I suppose he is some sort of an official,
and I shall not be quite clear about these different officials till I
have lived here some time."

"_Natürlich, natürlich_," agreed Dellwig; and leaving the Landrath
unexplained he launched forth into a dissertation on Anna's pigs, whose
excellencies, it appeared, were wholly due to the unrivalled skill he
had for years displayed in their treatment. "I have no children," he
said, with a resigned and pious upward glance, "and my wife's maternal
instincts find their satisfaction in tending and fattening these fine
animals. She cannot listen to their cries the day they are killed, and
withdraws into the cellar, where she prepares the stuffing. The gracious
Miss ate the cutlets of one this very day. It was killed on purpose."

"Was it? I wish it hadn't been," said Anna, frowning at the remembrance
of that meal. "I--I don't want things killed on my account. I--don't
like pig."

"Not like pig?" echoed Dellwig, dropping his lower jaw in his amazement.
"Did I understand aright that the gracious one does not eat pig's flesh
gladly? And my wife and I who thought to prepare a joy for her!" He
clasped his hands together and stared at her in dismay. Indeed, he was
so much overcome by this extraordinary and wilful spurning of nature's
best gifts that for a moment he was silent, and knew not how he should
proceed. Were there not concentrated in the body of a single pig a
greater diversity of joys than in any other form of pleasure that he
could call to mind? Did it not include, besides the profounder delights
of its roasted ribs, such solid satisfactions as hams, sausages, and
bacon? Did not its liver, discreetly manipulated, rival the livers of
Strasburg geese in delicacy? Were not its brains a source of mutual
congratulation to an entire family at supper? Did not its very snout,
boiled with peas, make an otherwise inferior soup delicious? The ribs of
this particular pig were reposing at that moment in a cool place,
carefully shielded from harm by his wife, reserved for the Easter Sunday
dinner of their new mistress, who, having begun at her first meal with
the lesser joys of cutlets, was to be fed with different parts in the
order of their excellence till the climax of rejoicing was reached on
Easter Day in the dish of _Schweinebraten_, and who was now declaring,
in a die-away, affected sort of voice, that she did not want to eat pig
at all. Where, then, was her vulnerable point? How would he ever be able
to touch her, to influence her, if she was indifferent to the chief
means of happiness known to the dwellers in those parts? That was the
real aim and end of his labours, of the labours, as far as he could see,
of everyone else--to make as much money as possible in order to live as
well as possible; and what did living well mean if it did not mean the
best food? And what was the best food if not pig? Not to be killed on
her account! On whose account, then, could they be killed? With an owner
always about the place, and refusing to have pigs killed, how would he
and his wife be able to indulge, with satisfactory frequency, in their
favourite food, or offer it to their expectant friends on Sundays? He
mourned old Joachim, who so seldom came down, and when he did ate his
share of pork like a man, more sincerely at that moment than he would
have thought possible. "_Mein seliger Herr_," he burst out brokenly,
completely upset by the difference between uncle and niece, "_mein
seliger Herr_----" And then, unable to go on, fell to blowing his nose
with violence, for there were real tears in his eyes.

Anna looked up, surprised. She thought he had been speaking of pigs, and
here he was on a sudden bewailing his late master. When she saw the
tears she was deeply touched. "Poor man," she said to herself, "how
unjust I have been. Of course he loved dear Uncle Joachim; and my coming
here, an utter stranger, taking possession of everything, must be very
dreadful for him." She got up, at once anxious, as she always was, to
comfort and soothe anyone who was sad, and put her hand gently on his
arm. "I loved him too," she said softly, "and you who knew him so long
must feel his death dreadfully. We will try and keep everything just as
he would have liked it, won't we? You know what his wishes were, and
must help me to carry them out. You cannot have loved him more than I
did--dear Uncle Joachim!"

She felt very near tears herself, and condoned the sonorous nose-blowing
as the expression of an honourable emotion.

And Dellwig, when he presently reached his home and was met at the door
by his wife's eager "Well, how was she?" laconically replied "Mad."




CHAPTER VII


When Anna woke next morning she had a confused idea that something
annoying had happened the evening before, but she had slept so heavily
that she could not at once recollect what it was. Then, the sun on her
face waking her up more thoroughly, she remembered that Susie had stayed
upstairs with Hilton till supper time, had then come down, glanced with
unutterable disgust at the raw ham, cold sausage, eggs, and tepid coffee
of which the evening meal was composed, refused to eat, refused to
speak, refused utterly to smile, and afterwards in the drawing-room had
announced her fixed intention of returning to England the next day.

Anna had protested and argued in vain; nothing could shake this sudden
determination. To all her expostulations and entreaties Susie replied
that she had never yet dwelt among savages and she was not going to
begin now; so Anna was forced to conclude that Hilton had been making a
scene, and knowing the effect of Hilton's scenes she gave up attempting
to persuade, but told her with outward firmness and inward quakings that
she herself could not possibly go too.

Susie had been very angry at this, and still more angry at the reason
Anna gave, which was that, having invited the parson and his wife to
dinner on Saturday, she could not break her engagement. Susie told her
that as she would never see either of them again--for surely she would
never again want to come to this place?--it was absurd to care twopence
what they thought of her. What on earth did it matter if two inhabitants
of the desert were offended or not offended once she was on the other
side of the sea? And what did it matter at all how she treated them? She
heaped such epithets as absurd, stupid, and idiotic on Anna's head, but
Anna was not to be moved. She threatened to take Miss Leech and Letty
away with her, and leave Anna a prey to the criticisms of Mrs. Grundy,
and Anna said she could not prevent her doing so if she chose. Susie
became more and more excited, more and more Dobbs, goaded by the
recollection of what she had gone through with Hilton, and Anna, as
usual under such circumstances, grew very silent. Letty sat listening in
an agony of fright lest this cup of new experiences were about to be
dashed prematurely from her eager lips; and Miss Leech discreetly left
the room, though not in the least knowing where to go, finally seeking
to drive away the nervous fears that assailed her in her lonely,
creaking bedroom, where rats were gnawing at the woodwork, by thinking
hard of Mr. Jessup, who on this occasion proved to be but a broken reed,
pitted against the stern reality of rats.

The end of it, after Susie had poured out the customary reproaches of
gross ingratitude and forgetfulness of all she had done for Anna for
fifteen long years, was that Miss Leech and Letty were to stay on as
originally intended, and come home with Anna towards the end of the
holidays, and Susie would leave with Hilton the very next day.

Anna's attempt to make it up when she said good-night was repulsed with
energy. Anna was for ever doing aggravating things, and then wanting to
make it up; but makings up without having given in an inch seemed to
Susie singularly unsatisfactory ceremonies. Oh, these Estcourts and
their obstinacy! She marched off to bed in high indignation, an
indignation not by any means allowed to cool by Hilton during the
process of undressing; and Anna, worn out, fell asleep the moment she
lay down, and woke up, as she had pictured herself doing in that odd
wooden bed, with the morning sun shining full on her face.

It was a bright and lovely day, and on the side of the house where she
slept she could not hear the wind, which was still blowing from the
north-west. She opened one of her three big windows and let the cold air
rush into her room, where the curious perfume of the baked evergreen
wreaths festooned round the walls and looking-glass and dressing-table,
joined to the heat from the stove, produced a heavy atmosphere that made
her gasp. Somebody must already have been in her room, for the stove had
been lit again, and she could see the peat blazing inside its open door.
But outside, what a divine coldness and purity! She leaned out, drinking
it in in long breaths, the warm March sun shining on her head. The
garden, a mere uncared-for piece of rough grass with big trees, was
radiant with rain-drops; the strip of sea was a deep blue now, with
crests of foam; the island coast opposite was a shadowy streak stretched
across the feet of the sun. Oh, it was beautiful to stand at that open
window in the freshness, listening to the robin on the bare lilac bush a
few yards away, to the quarrelling of the impudent sparrows on the path
below, to the wind in the branches of the trees, to all the happy
morning sounds of nature. A joyous feeling took possession of her heart,
a sudden overpowering delight in what are called common things--mere
earth, sky, sun, and wind. How lovely life was on such a morning, in
such a clean, rain-washed, wind-scoured world. The wet smell of the
garden came up to her, a whiff of marshy smell from the water, a long
breath from the pines in the forest on the other side of the house. How
had she ever breathed at Estcourt? How had she escaped suffocation
without this life-giving smell of sea and forest? She looked down with
delight at the wildness of the garden; after the trim Estcourt lawns,
what a relief this was. This was all liberty, freedom from
conventionality, absolute privacy; that was an everlasting clipping, and
trimming, and raking, a perpetual stumbling upon gardeners at every
step, for Susie would not be outdone by her greater neighbours in these
matters. What was Hill Street looking like this fine March morning? All
the blinds down, all the people in bed--how far away, how shadowy it
was; a street inhabited by sleepy ghosts, with phantom milkmen rattling
spectral cans beneath their windows. What a dream that life lived up to
three days ago seemed in this morning light of reality. White clouds,
like the clouds in Raphael's backgrounds, were floating so high overhead
that they could not be hurried by the wind; a black cat sat in a patch
of sunshine on the path washing itself; somebody opened a lower window,
and there was a noise of sweeping, presently made indistinguishable by
the chorale sung by the sweeper, no doubt Marie, in a pious, Good Friday
mood. "_Lob Gott ihr Christen allzugleich_," chanted Marie, keeping time
with her broom. Her voice was loud and monotonous, but Anna listened
with a smile, and would have liked to join in, and so let some of her
happiness find its way out.

She dressed quickly. There was no hot water, and no bell to ring for
some, and she did not choose to call down from the window and interrupt
the hymn, so she used cold water, assuring herself that it was bracing.
Then she put on her hat and coat and stole out, afraid of disturbing
Susie, who was lying a few yards away filled with smouldering wrath,
anxious to have at least one quiet hour before beginning a day that she
felt sure was going to be a day of worries. "There will be great peace
to-night when she is gone," she thought, and immediately felt ashamed
that she should look forward to being without her. "But I have never
been without her since I was ten," she explained apologetically to her
offended conscience, "and I want to see how I feel."

"_Guten Morgen_," said Marie, as Anna came into the drawing-room on her
way out through its French windows.

"_Guten Morgen_," said Anna cheerfully.

Marie leaned on her broom and watched her go down the garden, greedily
taking in every detail of her clothes, profoundly interested in a being
who went out into the mud where nobody could see her with such a dress
on, and whose shoes would not have been too big for Marie's small sister
aged nine.

The evening before, indeed, Marie had beheld such a vision as she had
never yet in her life seen, or so much as imagined; her new mistress had
appeared at supper in what was evidently a _herrschaftliche Ballkleid_,
with naked arms and shoulders, and the other ladies were attired in much
the same way. The young Fräulein, it is true, showed no bare flesh, but
even she was arrayed in white, and her hair magnificently tied up with
ribbons. Marie had rushed out to tell the cook, and the cook, refusing
to believe it, had carried in a supererogatory dish of compot as an
excuse for securing the assurance of her own eyes; and Bertha from the
farm, coming round with a message from the Frau Oberinspector, had seen
it too through the crack of the kitchen door as the ladies left the
dining-room, and had gone off breathlessly to spread the news; and the
post cart just leaving with the letters had carried it to Lohm, and
every inhabitant of every house between Kleinwalde and Stralsund knew
all about it before bedtime. "What did I tell thee, wife?" said Dellwig,
who, in spite of his superiority to the sex that served, listened as
eagerly as any member of it to gossip; and his wife was only too ready
to label Anna mad or eccentric as a slight private consolation for
having passed out of the service of a comprehensible German gentleman
into that of a woman and a foreigner.

Unconscious of the interest and curiosity she was exciting for miles
round, pleased by Marie's artless piety, and filled with kindly feelings
towards all her neighbours, Anna stood at the end of the garden looking
over the low hedge that divided it from the marsh and the sea, and
thought that she had never seen a place where it would be so easy to be
good. Complete freedom from the wearisome obligations of society, an
ideal privacy surrounded by her woods and the water, a scanty population
of simple and devoted people--did not Dellwig shed tears at the
remembrance of his master?--every day spent here would be a day that
made her better, that would bring her nearer to that heaven in which all
good and simple souls dwelt while still on earth, the heaven of a serene
and quiet mind. Always she had longed to be good, and to help and
befriend those who had the same longing but in whom it had been
partially crushed by want of opportunity and want of peace. The healthy
goodness that goes hand in hand with happiness was what she meant; not
that tragic and futile goodness that grows out of grief, that lifts its
head miserably in stony places, that flourishes in sick rooms and among
desperate sorrows, and goes to God only because all else is lost. She
went round the house and crossed the road into the forest. The fresh
wind blew in her face, and shook down the drops from the branches on her
as she passed. The pine needles of other years made a thick carpet for
her feet. The sun gleamed through the straight trunks and warmed her.
The restless sighing overheard in the tree tops filled her ears with
sweetest music. "I do believe the place is pleased that I have come!"
she thought, with a happy laugh. She came to a clearing in the trees,
opening out towards the north, and she could see the flat fields and the
wide sky and the sunshine chasing the shadows across the vivid green
patches that she had learned were winter rye. A hole at her feet, where
a tree had been uprooted, still had snow in it; but the larks were
singing above in the blue, as though from those high places they could
see Spring far away in the south, coming up slowly with the first
anemones in her hands, her face turned at last towards the patient
north.

The strangest feeling of being for the first time in her life at home
came over Anna. This poor country, how sweet and touching it was. After
the English country, with its thickly scattered villages, and gardens,
and fields that looked like parks, it did seem very poor and very empty,
but intensely lovable. Like the furniture of her house, it struck her as
symbolic in its bareness of the sturdier virtues. The people who lived
in it must of necessity be frugal and hard-working if they would live at
all, wresting by sheer labour their life from the soil, braced by the
long winters to endurance and self-denial, their vices and their
languors frozen out of them whether they would or no. At least so
thought Anna, as she stood gazing out across the clearing at the fields
and sky. "Could one not be good here? Could one not be so, so good?" she
kept on murmuring. Then she remembered that she had been asking herself
vague questions like this ever since her arrival; and with a sudden
determination to face what was in her mind and think it out honestly,
she sat down on a tree stump, buttoned her coat up tight, for the wind
was blowing full on her, and fell to considering what she meant to do.

       *       *       *       *       *

Susie did not go down to breakfast, but stayed in her bedroom on the
sofa drinking a glass of milk into which an egg had been beaten, and
listening to Hilton's criticisms of the German nation, delivered with
much venom while she packed. But Hilton, though her contempt for German
ways was so great as to be almost unutterable, was reconciled to a
mistress who had so quickly given in to her wish to be taken back to
Hill Street, and the venom was of an abstract nature, containing no
personal sting of unfavourable comparisons with duchesses; so that Susie
was sipping her milk in a fairly placid frame of mind when there was a
knock at the door, and Anna asked if she might come in.

"Oh, yes, come in. Have you looked out the trains?"

"Yes. There's only one decent one, and you'll have to leave directly
after luncheon. Won't you stay, Susie? You'll be so tired, going home
without resting."

"Can't we leave before luncheon?"

"Yes, of course, if you prefer to lunch at Stralsund."

"Much. Have you ordered the shandrydan?"

"Yes, for half-past one."

"Then order it for half-past twelve. Hilton can drive with me."

"So I thought."

"Has that wretch been rubbing fish oil on it again?"

"I don't think so, after what I said yesterday."

"I shouldn't think what you said yesterday could have frightened him
much. You beamed at him as though he were your best friend."

"Did I?"

Anna was looking odd, Susie thought, and answering her remarks with a
nervous, abstracted air. She had apparently been out, for her dress was
muddy, and she was quite rosy, and her hair was not so neat as usual.
She stood about in an undecided sort of way, and glanced several times
at Hilton on her knees before a trunk.

"Is that all the breakfast you are going to have?" she asked, becoming
aware of the glass of milk.

"What other breakfast is there to have?" snapped Susie, who was hungry,
and would have liked a great deal more.

"Well, the eggs and butter are very nice, anyway," said Anna, quite
evidently thinking of other things.

"Now what has she got into her head?" Susie asked herself, watching her
sister-in-law with misgiving. Anna's new moods were never by any chance
of a sort to give Susie pleasure. Aloud she said tartly, "I can't eat
eggs and butter by themselves. I shouldn't have had anything at all if
it hadn't been for Hilton, who went into the kitchen and made me this
herself."

"Excellent Hilton," said Anna absently. "Haven't you done packing yet,
Hilton?"

"No, m'm."

Anna sat down on the end of the sofa and began to twist the frills of
Susie's dressing-gown round her fingers.

"I haven't closed my eyes all night," said Susie, putting on her martyr
look, "nor has Hilton."

"Haven't you? Why not? I slept the sleep of the just--better, indeed,
than any just that I ever heard of."

"What, didn't that man go into your room?"

"What man? Oh, yes, Miss Leech was telling me about it. He lit the
stoves, didn't he? I never heard a sound."

"You must have slept like a log then. Any one in the least sensitive
would have been frightened out of their senses. I was, and so was
Hilton. I wouldn't spend another night in this house for anything you
could give me."

It appeared that Susie really had just cause for complaint. She had been
nervous the night before after Hilton had left her, unable to sleep, and
scared by the thought of their defencelessness--six women alone in that
wild place. She wished then with all her heart that Dellwig did live in
the house. Rats scampering about in the attic above added to her
terrors. The wind shook the windows of her room and howled
disconsolately up and down. She bore it as long as she could, which was
longer than most women would have borne it, and then knocked on the wall
dividing her room from Hilton's. But Hilton, with the bedclothes over
her head and all the candles she had been able to collect alight, would
not have stirred out of her room to save her mistress from dying; and
Susie, desperate at the prospect of the awful hours round midnight, made
one great effort of courage and sallied out to fetch her. Poor Susie,
standing shivering before her maid's bolted door, scantily clothed,
anxiously watching the flame of her candle that threatened each second
to be blown out, alone on the wide, draughty landing, frightened at the
sound of her own calls mingling weirdly with the creakings and hangings
of the tempest-shaken house, was an object deserving of pity. It took
some minutes to induce Hilton to open the door, and such minutes Susie
had not, in the course of an ordered and normal existence, yet passed.
They both went into Susie's room, locked themselves in, and Hilton lay
down on the sofa; and after a long time they fell into an uneasy sleep.
At half-past three Susie started up in bed; some one was trying to open
the door and knocking. The candles had burnt themselves out, and she
could not tell what time it was, but thought it must be early morning
and that the servant wanted to bring her hot water; and she woke Hilton
and bade her open the door. Hilton did so, gave a faint scream, and
flung herself back on the sofa, where she lay as one dead, her face
buried in the pillow. A man with a lantern and no shoes on was at the
door, and came in noiselessly. Susie was never nearer fainting in her
life. She sat in her bed, her cold hands clasped tightly round her
knees, her eyes fixed on this dreadful apparition, unable to speak or
move, paralysed by terror. This was the end, then, of all her hopes and
ambitions--to come to Pomerania and die like a dog. Then the sickening
feeling of fear gave way to one of overwhelming wrath when she found
that all the man wanted was to light her stove. On the same principle
that a child is shaken who has not after all been lost or run over, she
was speechless with rage now that she found that she was not, after all,
to be murdered. He was a very old man, and the light from the lantern
cast strange reflections on his face and figure as he crouched before
the stove. He mumbled as he worked, talking to the fire he was making as
though it were a person. "_Du willst nicht, brennen, Lump? Was? Na,
warte mal!_" And when he had finished, crept out again without glancing
at the occupants of the room, still mumbling.

"It's the custom of the country, I suppose," said Anna.

"Is it? Well the sooner we get out of such a country the better. You are
determined to stay in spite of everything? I can tell you I don't at all
like my child being here, but you force me to leave her because you know
very well that I can't let you stay here alone."

Anna glanced at Hilton, folding a dress with immense deliberation.

"Oh, Hilton knows what I think," said Susie, with a shrug.

"But she doesn't know what _I_ think," said Anna. "I must talk to you
before you leave, so please let her finish packing afterwards. Go and
have your breakfast, Hilton."

"Did you say breakfast, m'm?" inquired Hilton with an innocent look.

"Breakfast?" repeated Susie; "poor thing, I'd like to know how and where
she is to get any."

"Well, then, go and don't have your breakfast," said Anna impatiently.
She had something to tell Susie that must be told soon, and was not in a
mood to bear with Hilton's ways.

"How hospitable," remarked Susie as the door closed. "Really you are a
delightful hostess."

Anna laughed. "I don't mean to be brutal," she said, "but if we can
exist on the food without looking tragic I suppose she can too,
especially as it is only for one day."

"My one consolation in leaving Letty here is that she will be dieted in
spite of herself. I expect you to bring her back quite thin."

Anna got up restlessly and went to the window.

"And whatever you do, don't forget that the return tickets only last
till the 24th. But you'll be sick of it long before then."

Anna turned round and leaned her back against the window. The strong
morning light was on her hair, and her face was in shadow, yet Susie had
a feeling that she was looking guilty.

"Susie, I've been thinking," she said with an effort.

"Really? How nice."

"Yes, it was, for I found out what it is that I must do if I mean to be
happy. But I'm afraid that _you_ won't think it nice, and will scold me.
Now don't scold me."

"Well, tell me what it is." Susie lay staring at Anna's form against the
light, bracing herself to hear something disagreeable. She knew very
well from past experience that Anna's new plan, whatever it was, was
certain to be wild and foolish.

"I am going to stay here."

"I know you are, and I know that nothing I can say will make you change
your mind. Peter is just like you--the more I show him what a fool he's
going to make of himself the more he insists on doing it. He calls it
determination. Average people like myself, with smaller and more easily
managed brains than you two wonders have got, call it pigheadedness."

"I don't mean only for Letty's holidays; I mean for good."

"For good?" Susie opened her mouth and stared in much the same blank
consternation that Dellwig had shown on hearing that she did not like
eating pig.

"Don't be angry with me," said Anna, coming over to the sofa and sitting
on the floor by Susie's side; and she caught hold of her hand and began
to talk fast and eagerly. "I always intended spending this money in
helping poor people, but didn't quite know in what way--now I see my way
clearly, and I must, _must_ go it. Don't you remember in the catechism
there's the duty towards God and the duty towards one's neighbour----"

"Oh, if you're going to talk religion----" said Susie, pulling away her
hand in great disgust.

"No, no, do listen," said Anna, catching it again and stroking it while
she talked, to Susie's intense irritation, who hated being stroked.

"If you are going into the catechism," she said, "Hilton had better come
in again. It might do her good."

"No, no--I only wanted to say that there's another duty not in the
catechism, greater than the duty towards one's neighbour----"

"My dear Anna, it isn't likely that you can improve on the catechism.
And fancy wanting to, at breakfast time. Don't stroke my hand--it gives
me the fidgets."

"But I want to explain things--do listen. The duty the catechism leaves
out is the duty towards oneself. You can't get away from your duties,
you know, Susie----" And she knit her brows in her effort to follow out
her thought.

"My goodness, as though I ever tried! If ever a poor woman did her duty,
I'm that woman."

"--and I believe that if I do those two duties, towards my neighbour and
myself, I shall be doing my duty towards God."

Susie gave her body an impatient twist. She thought it positively
indecent to speak of sacred things so early in the morning in cold
blood. "What has this drivel to do with your stopping here?" she asked
angrily.

"It has everything to do with it--my duty towards myself is to be as
happy and as good as possible, and my duty towards my neighbour----"

"Oh, bother your neighbour and your duty!" cried Susie in exasperation.

"--is to help him to be good and happy too."

"Him? Her, I hope. Don't forget decency, my dear. A girl has no duties
whatever towards male neighbours."

"Well, I do mean her," said Anna, looking up and laughing.

"So you think that by living here you'll make yourself happy?"

"Yes, I do--I do think so. Perhaps I am wrong, and shall find out I'm
wrong, but I must try."

"You'll leave all your friends and relations and stay in this
God-forsaken place where you can't even live like a lady?"

"Uncle Joachim said it was my one chance of leading the better life."

"Unutterable old fool," said Susie with bitterest contempt. "That money,
then, is going to be thrown away on Germans? As though there weren't
poor people enough in England, if your ambition is to pose as a
benefactress!"

"Oh, I don't want to pose as anything--I only want to help unhappy
wretches," cried Anna, laying her cheek caressingly on Susie's unwilling
hand. "Now don't scold me--forgive me if I'm silly, and be patient with
me till I find out that I've made a goose of myself and come creeping
back to you and Peter. But I _must_ do it--I _must_ try--I _will_ do
what I think is right."

"And who are the wretches, pray, who are to be made happy?"

"Oh, those I am sorriest for--that no one else helps--the genteel ones,
if I can only get at them."

"I never heard of genteel wretches," said Susie.

Anna laughed again. "I was thinking it all out in the forest this
morning," she said, "and it suddenly flashed across me that this big
roomy house was never meant not to be used, and that instead of going to
see poor people and giving them money in the ordinary way, it would be
so much better to let women of the better classes, who have no money,
and who are dependent and miserable, come and live with me and share
mine, and have everything that I have--exactly the same, with no
difference of any sort. There is room for twelve at least, and wouldn't
it be beautiful to make twelve people, who had lost all hope and all
courage, happy for the rest of their days?"

"Oh, the girl's mad!" cried Susie, springing up from the sofa, no longer
able to bear herself. She began to walk about the room, not knowing what
to say or do, absolutely without sympathy for beneficent impulses, at
all times possessed of a fine scorn for ideals, feeling that no argument
would be of any avail with an Estcourt whose mind was made up, shocked
that good money, so hard to get, and so very precious when got, should
be thrown away in such a manner, bewildered by the difficulties of the
situation, for how could a girl of Anna's age live alone, and direct a
house full of objects of charity? Would the objects themselves be a
sufficient chaperonage? Would her friends at home think so? Would they
not blame her, Susie, for having allowed all this? As though she could
prevent it! Or would they expect her to stay with Anna in this place
till she should marry? As though anybody would ever marry such a
lunatic! "Mad, mad, mad!" cried Susie, wringing her hands.

"I was afraid that you wouldn't like it," said the culprit on the floor,
watching her with a distressed face.

"Like it? Oh--mad, mad!" And she continued to walk and wring her hands.

"Well, you'll stay, then," she said, suddenly stopping in front of Anna,
"I know you well enough, and shall waste no breath arguing. That
infatuated old man's money has turned your head--I didn't know it was so
weak. But look into your heart when I am gone--you'll have time enough
and quiet enough--and ask yourself honestly whether what you are going
to do is a proper way of paying back all I have done for you, and all
the expense you have been. You know what my wishes are about you, and
you don't care one jot. Gratitude! There isn't a spark of it in your
whole body. Never was there a more selfish creature, and I can't believe
that ingratitude and selfishness are the stuff that makes saints. Don't
dare to talk any more rot about duty to your neighbour to me. An
Englishwoman to come and spend her money on German charities----"

"It's German money," murmured Anna.

"And to _live_ here--to live _here_--oh, mad, mad!" And Susie's
indignation threatening to choke her, she resumed her walk and her
gesticulations, her high heels tapping furiously on the bare boards.

She longed to take Letty and Miss Leech away with her that very morning,
and punish Anna by leaving her entirely alone; but she did not dare
because of Peter. Peter was always on Anna's side when there were
differences, and would be sure to do something dreadful when he heard of
it--perhaps come and live here too, and never go back to his wife any
more. Oh, these half Germans! Why had she married into a family with
such a taint in its blood? "You will have to have some one here," she
said, turning on Anna, who still sat on the floor by the sofa, a look on
her face of apology and penitence mixed with firmness that Susie well
knew. "How can you stay here alone? I shall leave Miss Leech with you
till the end of the holidays, though I hate to seem to encourage you;
but then you see I do my duty and always have, though I don't talk about
it. When I get home I shall look for some elderly woman who won't mind
coming here and seeing that you don't make yourself too much of a
by-word, and the day she comes you are to send me back my child."

"It is good of you to let me keep Letty, dear Susie----"

"Dear Susie!"

"But I don't mean to be a by-word, as you call it," continued Anna, the
ghost of a smile lurking in her eyes, "and I don't want an Englishwoman.
What use would she be here? She wouldn't understand if it was a German
by-word that I turned into. I thought about asking the parson how I had
better set about getting a German lady--a grave and sober female,
advanced in years, as Uncle Joachim wrote."

"Oh, Uncle Joachim----" Susie could hardly endure to hear the name. It
was that odious old man who had filled Anna's head with these ideas. To
leave her money was admirable, but to influence a weak girl's mind with
his wishy-washy German philosophy about the better life and such
rubbish, as he evidently had done during those excursions with her, was
conduct so shameful that she found no words strong enough to express her
opinion of it. Everyone would blame her for what had happened, everyone
would jeer at her, and say that the moment an opportunity of escape had
presented itself Anna had seized it, preferring an existence of
loneliness and hardship--any sort of existence--to all the pleasures of
civilised life in Susie's company. Peter would certainly be very angry
with her, and reproach her with not having made Anna happy enough. Happy
enough! The girl had cost her at least three hundred a year, what with
her expensive education and all her clothes since she came out; and if
three hundred good pounds spent on a girl could not make her happy,
she'd like to know what could. And no one--not one of those odious
people in London whom she secretly hated--would have a single word of
censure for Anna. No one ever had. All her vagaries and absurdities
during the last few years when she had been so provoking had been smiled
at, had been, Susie knew, put down to her treatment of her. Treatment of
her, indeed! The thought of these things made Susie writhe. She had been
looking forward to the next season, to having her pretty sister-in-law
with her in the happy mood she had been in since she heard of her good
fortune, and had foreseen nothing but advantages to herself from Anna's
presence in her house--an Anna spending and not being spent upon, and no
doubt to be persuaded to share the expenses of housekeeping. And now she
must go home by herself to blame, scoldings, and derision. The prospect
was almost more than she could bear. She went to the door, opened it,
and turning to Anna fired a parting shot. "Let no one," she said, her
voice shaken by deepest disgust, "who wants to be happy, ever spend a
penny on her husband's relations."

And then she called Hilton; nor did she leave off calling till Hilton
appeared, and so prevented Anna from saying another word.




CHAPTER VIII


But if Susie's rage was such that she refused to say good-bye, and
terrified Miss Leech while she was waiting in the hall for the carriage
by dark allusions to strait-waistcoats, when the parson was taken into
Anna's confidence after dinner on the following night his raptures knew
no bounds. "_Liebes, edeldenkendes Fräulein!_" he burst out, clasping
his hands and gazing with a moist, ecstatic eye at this young sprig of
piety. He was a good man, not very learned, not very refined,
sentimental exceedingly, and much inclined to become tearfully eloquent
on such subjects as _die liebe kleine Kinder, die herrliche Natur, die
Frau als Schutzengel_, and the sacredness of _das Familienleben_.

Anna felt that he was the only person at hand who could perhaps help her
to find twelve dejected ladies willing to be made happy, and had
unfolded her plan to him as tersely as possible in her stumbling German,
with none of those accompanying digressions into the question of
feelings that Susie stigmatised as drivel; and she sat uncomfortable
enough while he burst forth into praises that would not end of her
goodness and nobleness. It is hard to look anything but fatuous when
somebody is extolling your virtues to your face, and she could not help
both looking and feeling foolish during his extravagant glorification.
She did not doubt his sincerity, and indeed he was absolutely sincere,
but she wished that he would be less flowery and less long, and would
skip the raptures and get on to the main subject, which was practical
advice.

She wore the simple white dress that had caused such a sensation in the
neighbourhood, a garment that hung in long, soft folds, accentuating her
slender length of limb. Her bright hair was parted and tucked behind her
ears. Everything about her breathed an absolute want of
self-consciousness and vanity, a perfect freedom from the least thought
of the impression she might be making; yet she was beautiful, and the
good man observing her beauty, and supposing from what she had just told
him an equal beauty of character, for ever afterwards when he thought of
angels on quiet Sunday evenings in his garden, clothed them as Anna was
clothed that night, not even shrinking from the pretty, bare shoulders
and scantily sleeved arms, but facing them with a courage worthy of a
man, however doubtfully it might become a pastor.

His wife, in her best dress, which was also her tightest, sat on the
edge of a chair some way off, marvelling greatly at many things. She
could not hear what it was Anna had said to set her husband off
exclaiming, because the governess persisted in trying to talk German to
her, and would not be satisfied with vague replies. She was disappointed
by the sudden disappearance of the sister-in-law, gone before she had
shown herself to a single soul; astonished that she had not been
requested to sit on the sofa, in which place of honour the young
Fräulein sprawled in a way that would certainly ruin her clothes;
disgusted that she had not been pressed at table, nay, not even asked,
to partake of every dish a second time; indeed, no one had seemed to
notice or care whether she ate anything at all. These were strange ways.
And where were the Dellwigs, those great people accustomed to patronise
her because she was the parson's wife? Was it possible that they had not
been invited? Were there then quarrels already? She could not of course
dream that Anna would never have thought of asking her inspector and his
wife to dinner, and that in her ignorance she regarded the parson as a
person on an altogether higher social level than the inspector. These
things, joined to conjectures as to the probable price by the yard of
Anna's, Letty's, and Miss Leech's clothes, gave Frau Manske more food
for reflection than she had had for years; and she sat turning them over
slowly in her mind in the intervals between Miss Leech's sentences,
while her dress, which was of silk, creaked ominously with every painful
breath she drew.

"The best way to act," said the parson, when he had exhausted the
greater part of his raptures, "will be to advertise in a newspaper of a
Christian character."

"But not in my name," said Anna.

"No, no, we must be discreet--we must be very discreet. The
advertisement must be drawn up with skill. I will make, simultaneously,
inquiries among my colleagues in the holy office, but there must also be
an advertisement. What would the gracious Miss's opinion be of the
desirability of referring all applicants, in the first instance, to me?"

"Why, I think it would be an excellent plan, if you do not mind the
trouble."

"Trouble! Joy fills me at the thought of taking part in this good work.
Little did I think that our poor corner of the fatherland was to become
a holy place, a blessed refuge for the world-worn, a nook fragrant with
charity----"

"No, not charity," interposed Anna.

"Whose perfume," continued the parson, determined to finish his
sentence, "whose perfume will ascend day and night to the attentive
heavens. But such are the celestial surprises Providence keeps in
reserve and springs upon us when we least expect it."

"Yes," said Anna. "But what shall we put in the advertisement?"

"_Ach ja_, the advertisement. In the contemplation of this beautiful
scheme I forget the advertisement." And again the moisture of ecstasy
suffused his eyes, and again he clasped his hands and gazed at her with
his head on one side, almost as though the young lady herself were the
beautiful scheme.

Anna got up and went to the writing-table to fetch a pencil and a sheet
of paper, anxious to keep him to the point; and the parson watching the
graceful white figure was more than ever struck by her resemblance to
his idea of angels. He did not consider how easy it was to look like a
being from another world, a creature purified of every earthly
grossness, to eyes accustomed to behold the redundant exuberance of his
own excellent wife.

She brought the paper, and sat down again at the table on which the lamp
stood. "How does one write any sort of advertisement in German?" she
said. "I could not write one for a housemaid. And this one must be done
so carefully."

"Very true; for, alas, even ladies are sometimes not all that they
profess to be. Sad that in a Christian country there should be
impostors. Doubly sad that there should be any of the female sex."

"Very sad," said Anna, smiling. "You must tell me which are the
impostors among those that answer."

"_Ach_, it will not be easy," said the parson, whose experience of
ladies was limited, and who began to see that he was taking upon himself
responsibilities that threatened to become grave. Suppose he recommended
an applicant who afterwards departed with the gracious Miss's spoons in
her bag? "_Ach_, it will not be easy," he said, shaking his head.

"Oh, well," said Anna, "we must risk the impostors. There may not be any
at all. How would you begin?"

The parson threw himself back in his chair, folded his hands, cast up
his eyes to the ceiling, and meditated. Anna waited, pencil in hand,
ready to write at his dictation. Frau Manske at the other end of the
room was straining her ears to hear what was going on, but Miss Leech,
desirous both of entertaining her and of practising her German, would
not cease from her spasmodic talk, even expecting her mistakes to be
corrected. And there were no refreshments, no glasses of cooling beer
being handed round, no liquid consolation of any sort, not even seltzer
water. She regarded her evening as a failure.

"A Christian lady of noble sentiments," dictated the parson, apparently
reading the words off the ceiling, "offers a home in her house----"

"Is this the advertisement?" asked Anna.

"--offers a home in her house----"

"I don't quite like the beginning," hesitated Anna. "I would rather
leave out about the noble sentiments."

"As the gracious one pleases. Modesty can never be anything but an
ornament. 'A Christian lady----'"

"But why a _Christian_ lady? Why not simply a lady? Are there, then,
heathen ladies about, that you insist on the Christian?"

"Worse, worse than heathen," replied the parson, sitting up straight,
and fixing eyeballs suddenly grown fiery on her; and his voice fell to a
hissing whisper, in strange contrast to his previous honeyed tones. "The
heathen live in far-off lands, where they keep quiet till our
missionaries gather them into the Church's fold--but here, here in our
midst, here everywhere, taking the money from our pockets, nay, the very
bread from our mouths, are the _Jews_."

Impossible to describe the tone of fear and hatred with which this word
was pronounced.

Anna gazed at him, mystified. "The Jews?" she echoed. One of her
greatest friends at home was a Jew, a delightful person, the mere
recollection of whom made her smile, so witty and charming and kind was
he. And of Jews in general she could not remember to have heard anything
at all.

"But not only money from our pockets and bread from our mouths,"
continued the parson, leaning forward, his light grey eyes opened to
their widest extent, and speaking in a whisper that made her flesh begin
the process known as creeping, "but blood--blood from our veins."

"Blood from your veins?" she repeated faintly. It sounded horrid. It
offended her ears. It had nothing to do with the advertisement. The
strange light in his eyes made her think of fanaticism, cruelty, and the
Middle Ages. The mildest of men in general, as she found later on,
rabidness seized him at the mere mention of Jews.

"Blood," he hissed, "from the veins of Christians, for the performance
of their unholy rites. Did the gracious one never hear of ritual
murders?"

"No," said Anna, shrinking back, the nearer he leaned towards her,
"never in my life. Don't tell me now, for it--it sounds interesting. I
should like to hear about it all another time. 'A Christian lady offers
her home,'" she went on quickly, scribbling that much down, and then
looking at him inquiringly.

"_Ach ja_," he said in his natural voice, leaning back in his chair and
reducing his eyes to their normal size, "I forgot again the
advertisement. 'A Christian lady offers her home to others of her sex
and station who are without means----'"

"And without friends, and without hope," added Anna, writing.

"_Gut, gut, sehr gut._"

"She has room in her house in the country," Anna went on, writing as she
spoke, "for twelve such ladies, and will be glad to share with them all
that she possesses of fortune and happiness."

"_Gut, gut, sehr gut._"

"Is the German correct?"

"Quite correct. I would add, 'Strictest inquiries will be made before
acceptance of any application by Herr Pastor Manske of Lohm, to whom all
letters are to be addressed. Applicants must be ladies of good family,
who have fallen on evil days by the will of God.'"

Anna wrote this down as far as "days," after which she put a full stop.

"It pleases me not entirely," said Manske, musing; "the language is not
sufficiently noble. Noble schemes should be alluded to in noble words."

"But not in an advertisement."

"Why not? We ought not to hide our good thoughts from our fellows, but
rather open our hearts, pour out our feelings, spend freely all that we
have in us of virtue and piety, for the edification and exhilaration of
others."

"But not in an advertisement. I don't want to exhilarate the public."

"And why not exhilarate the public, dear Miss? Is it not composed of
units of like passions to ourselves? Units on the way to heaven, units
bowed down by the same sorrows, cheered by the same hopes, torn asunder
by the same temptations as the gracious one and myself?" And immediately
he launched forth into a flood of eloquence about units; for in Germany
sermons are all extempore, and the clergy, from constant practice,
acquire a fatal fluency of speech, bursting out in the week on the least
provocation into preaching, and not by any known means to be stopped.

"Oh--words, words, words!" thought Anna, waiting till he should have
finished. His wife, hearing the well-known rapid speech of his inspired
moments, glowed with pride. "My Adolf surpasses himself," she thought;
"the Miss must wonder."

The Miss did wonder. She sat and wondered, her elbows on the arms of the
chair, her finger tips joined together, and her eyes fixed on her finger
tips. She did not like to look at him, because, knowing how different
was the effect produced on her to that which he of course imagined, she
was sorry for him.

"It is so good of you to help me," she said with gentle irrelevance when
the longed-for pause at length came. "There was something else that I
wanted to consult you about. I must look for a companion--an elderly
German lady, who will help me in the housekeeping."

"Yes, yes, I comprehend. But would not the twelve be sufficient
companions, and helps in the housekeeping?"

"No, because I would not like them to think that I want anything done
for me in return for their home. I want them to do exactly what makes
them happiest. They will all have had sad lives, and must waste no more
time in doing things they don't quite like."

"Ah--noble, noble," murmured the parson, quite as unpractical as Anna,
and fascinated by the very vagueness of her plan of benevolence.

"The companion I wish to find would be another sort of person, and would
help me in return for a salary."

"Certainly, I comprehend."

"I thought perhaps you would tell me how to advertise for such a
person?"

"Surely, surely. My wife has a sister----"

He paused. Anna looked up quickly. She had not reckoned with the
possibility of his wife's having sisters.

"_Lieber Schatz_," he called to his wife, "what does thy sister Helena
do now?"

Frau Manske got up and came over to them with the alacrity of relief.
"What dost thou say, dear Adolf?" she asked, laying her hand on his
shoulder. He took it in his, stroked it, kissed it, and finally put his
arm round her waist and held it there while he talked; all to the
exceeding joy of Letty, to whom such proceedings had the charm of
absolute freshness.

"Thy sister Helena--is she at present in the parental house?" he asked,
looking up at her fondly, warmed into an affection even greater than
ordinary by the circumstance of having spectators.

Frau Manske was not sure. She would write and inquire. Anna proposed
that she should sit down, but the parson playfully held her closer.
"This is my guardian angel," he explained, smiling beatifically at her,
"the faithful mother of my children, now grown up and gone their several
ways. Does the gracious Miss remember the immortal lines of Schiller,
'_Ehret die Frauen, sie flechten und weben himmlische Rosen in's
irdische Leben_'? Such has been the occupation of this dear wife, only
interrupted by her occasional visits to bathing resorts, since the day,
more than twenty-five years ago, when she consented to tread with me the
path leading heavenwards. Not a day has there been, except when she was
at the seaside, without its roses."

"Oh," said Anna. She felt that the remark was not at the height of the
situation, and added, "How--how interesting." This also struck her as
inadequate; but all further inspiration failing her, she was reduced to
the silent sympathy of smiles.

"Ten children did the Lord bless us with," continued the parson,
expanding into confidences, "and six it was His will again to remove."

"The drains--" murmured Frau Manske.

"Yes, truly the drains in the town where we lived then were bad, very
bad. But one must not question the wisdom of Providence."

"No, but one might mend----" Anna stopped, feeling that under some
circumstances even the mending of drains might be impious. She had heard
so much about piety and Providence within the last two hours that she
was confused, and was no longer clear as to the exact limit of conduct
beyond which a flying in the face of Providence might be said to begin.

But the parson, clasping his wife to his side, paid no heed to anything
she might be saying, for he was already well on in a detailed account of
the personal appearance, habits, and career of his four remaining
children, and dwelt so fondly on each in turn that he forgot sister
Helena and the second advertisement; and when he had explained all their
numerous excellencies and harmless idiosyncrasies, including their
preferences in matters of food and drink, he abruptly quitted this
topic, and proceeded to expound Anna's scheme to his wife, who had
listened with ill-concealed impatience to the first part of his
discourse, consumed as she was with curiosity to hear what it was that
Anna had confided to him.

So Anna had to listen to the raptures all over again. The eager interest
of the wife disturbed her. She doubted whether Frau Manske had any real
sympathy with her plan. Her inquisitiveness was unquestionable; but Anna
felt that opening her heart to the parson and opening it to his wife
were two different things. Though he was wordy, he was certainly
enthusiastic; his wife, on the other hand, appeared to be chiefly
interested in the question of cost. "The cost will be colossal," she
said, surveying Anna from head to foot. "But the gracious Miss is rich,"
she added.

Anna began to examine her finger tips again.

On the way home through the dark fields, after having criticised each
dish of the dinner and expressed the opinion that the entertainment was
not worthy of such a wealthy lady, Frau Manske observed to her husband
that it was true, then, what she had always heard of the English, that
they were peculiarly liable to prolonged attacks of craziness.

"Craziness! Thou callest this craziness? It is my wife, the wife of a
pastor, that I hear applying such a word to so beautiful, so Christian,
a scheme?"

"But the good money--to give it all away. Yes, it is very Christian, but
it is also crazy."

"Woman, shut thy mouth!" cried the parson, beside himself with
indignation at hearing such sentiments from such lips.

Clearly Frau Manske was not at that moment engaged with her roses.




CHAPTER IX


The next morning early, Anna went over to the farm to ask Dellwig to
lend her any newspapers he might have. She was anxious to advertise as
soon as possible for a companion, and now that she knew of the existence
of sister Helena, thought it better to write this advertisement without
the parson's aid, copying any other one of the sort that she might see
in the papers. Until she had secured the services of a German lady who
would tell her how to set about the reforms she intended making in her
house, she was perfectly helpless. She wanted to put her home in order
quickly, so that the twelve unhappy ones should not be kept waiting; and
there were many things to be done. Servants, furniture, everything, was
necessary, and she did not know where such things were to be had. She
did not even know where washerwomen were obtainable, and Frau Dellwig
never seemed to be at home when she sent for her, or went to her seeking
information. On Good Friday, after Susie's departure, she had sent a
message to the farm desiring the attendance of the inspector's wife,
whom she wished to consult about the dinner to be prepared for the
Manskes, all provisions apparently passing through Frau Dellwig's hands;
and she had been told that the lady was at church. On Saturday morning,
disturbed by the emptiness of her larder and the imminence of her
guests, she had gone herself to the farm, but was told that the lady was
in the cow-sheds--in which cow-shed nobody exactly knew. Anna had been
forced to ask Dellwig about the food. On Sunday she took Letty with her,
abashed by the whisperings and starings she had had to endure when she
went alone. Nor on this occasion did she see the inspector's wife, and
she began to wonder what had become of her.

The Dellwigs' wrath and amazement when they found that the parson and
his wife had been invited to dinner and they themselves left out was
indescribable. Never had such an insult been offered them. They had
always been the first people of their class in the place, always held
their heads up and condescended to the clergy, always been helped first
at table, gone first through doors, sat in the right-hand corners of
sofas. If he was furious, she was still more so, filled with venom and
hatred unutterable for the innocent, but it must be added overjoyed,
Frau Manske; and though her own interest demanded it, she was altogether
unable to bring herself to meet Anna for the purpose, as she knew, of
being consulted about the menu to be offered to the wretched upstart.
Indeed, Frau Dellwig's position was similar to that painful one in which
Susie found herself when her influential London acquaintance left her
out of the invitations to the wedding; on which occasion, as we know,
Susie had been constrained to flee to Germany in order to escape the
comments of her friends. Frau Dellwig could not flee anywhere. She was
obliged to stay where she was and bear it as best she might, humiliated
in the eyes of the whole neighbourhood, an object of derision to her
very milkmaids. Philosophers smile at such trials; but to persons who
are not philosophers, and at Kleinwalde these were in the majority, they
are more difficult to endure than any family bereavement. There is no
dignity about them, and friends, instead of sympathising, rejoice more
or less openly according to the degree of their civilisation. The degree
of civilisation among Frau Dellwig's friends was not great, and the
rejoicings on the next Sunday when they all met would be but
ill-concealed; there was no escape from them, they had to be faced, and
the malicious condolences accepted with what countenance she could.
Instead of making sausages, therefore, she shut herself in her bedroom
and wept.

And so it came about that the unconscious Anna, whose one desire was to
live at peace with her neighbours, made two enemies within two days.
"All women," said Dellwig to his wife, "high and low, are alike. Unless
they have a husband to keep them in their right places, they become
religious and run after pastors. Manske has wormed himself in very
cleverly, truly very cleverly. But we will worm him out again with equal
cleverness. As for his wife, what canst thou expect from so great a
fool?"

"No, indeed, from her I expect nothing," replied his wife, tossing her
head, "but from the niece of our late master I expected the behaviour of
a lady." And at that moment, the niece of her late master being
announced, she fled into her bedroom.

Anna, friendly as ever, specially kind to Dellwig since his tears on the
night of her arrival, came with Letty into the gloomy little office
where he was working, with all the morning sunshine in her face. Though
she was perplexed by many things, she was intensely happy. The perfect
freedom, after her years of servitude, was like heaven. Here she was in
her own home, from which nobody could take her, free to arrange her life
as she chose. Oh, it was a beautiful world, and this the most beautiful
corner of it! She was sure the sky was bluer at Kleinwalde than in other
places, and that the larks sang louder. And then was she not on the very
verge of realising her dreams of bringing the light of happiness into
dark and hopeless lives? Oh, the beautiful, beautiful world! She came
into Dellwig's room with the love of it shining in her eyes.

He was as obsequious as ever, for unfortunately his bread and butter
depended on this perverse young woman; but he was also graver and less
talkative, considering within himself that he could not be expected to
pass over such a slight without some alteration in his manner. He ought,
he felt, to show that he was pained, and he ought to show it so
unmistakably that she would perhaps be led to offer some explanation of
her conduct. Accordingly he assumed the subdued behaviour of one whose
feelings have been hurt, and Anna thought how greatly he improved on
acquaintance.

He would have given much to know why she wanted the papers, for surely
it was unusual for women to read newspapers? When there was a murder, or
anything of that sort, his wife liked to see them, but not at other
times. "Is the gracious Miss interested in politics?" he inquired, as he
put several together.

"No, not particularly," said Anna; "at least, not yet in German
politics. I must live here a little while first."

"In--in literature, perhaps?"

"No, not particularly. I know so little about German books."

"There are some well-written articles occasionally on the modes in
ladies' dresses."

"Really?"

"My wife tells me she often gets hints from them as to what is being
worn. Ladies, we know," he added with a superior smile, checked,
however, on his remembering that he was pained, "are interested in these
matters."

"Yes, they are," agreed Anna, smiling, and holding out her hand for the
papers.

"Ah, then, it is that that the gracious Miss wishes to read?" he said
quickly.

"No, not particularly," said Anna, who began to see that he too suffered
from the prevailing inquisitiveness. Besides, she was too much afraid of
his having sisters, or of his wife's having sisters, eager to come and
be a blessing to her, to tell him about her advertisement.

On the steps of his house, to which Dellwig accompanied the two girls,
stood a man who had just got off his horse. He was pulling off his
gloves as he watched it being led away by a boy. He had his back to
Anna, and she looked at it interested, for it was unlike any back she
had yet seen in Kleinwalde, in that it was the back of a gentleman.

"It is Herr von Lohm," said Dellwig, "who has business here this
morning. Some of our people unfortunately drink too much on holidays
like Good Friday, and there are quarrels. I explained to the gracious
one that he is our Amtsvorsteher."

Herr von Lohm turned at the sound of Dellwig's voice, and took off his
hat. "Pray present me to these ladies," he said to Dellwig, and bowed as
gravely to Letty as to Anna, to her great satisfaction.

"So this is my neighbour?" thought Anna, looking down at him from the
higher step on which she stood with her papers under her arm.

"So this is old Joachim's niece, of whom he was always talking?" thought
Lohm, looking up at her. "Wise old man to leave the place to her instead
of to those unpleasant sons." And he proceeded to make a few
conventional remarks, hoping that she liked her new home and would soon
be quite used to the country life. "It is very quiet and lonely for a
lady not used to our kind of country, with its big estates and few
neighbours," he said in English. "May I talk English to you? It gives me
pleasure to do so."

"Please do," said Anna. Here was a person who might be very helpful to
her if ever she reached her wits' end; and how nice he looked, how
clean, and what a pleasant voice he had, falling so gratefully on ears
already aching with Dellwig's shouts and the parson's emphatic oratory.

He was somewhere between thirty and forty, not young at all, she
thought, having herself never got out of the habit of feeling very
young; and beyond being long and wiry, with not even a tendency to fat,
as she noticed with pleasure, there was nothing striking about him. His
top boots and his green Norfolk jacket and green felt hat with a little
feather stuck in it gave him an air of being a sportsman. It was
refreshing to come across him, if only because he did not bow. Also,
considering him from the top of the steps, she became suddenly conscious
that Dellwig and the parson neglected their persons more than was
seemly. They were both no doubt very excellent; but she did like nicely
washed men.

Herr von Lohm began to talk about Uncle Joachim, with whom he had been
very intimate. Anna came down the steps and he went a few yards with
her, leaving Dellwig standing at the door, and followed by the eyes of
Dellwig's wife, concealed behind her bedroom curtain.

"I shall be with you in one moment," called Lohm over his shoulder.

"_Gut_," said Dellwig; and he went in to tell his wife that these
English ladies were very free with gentlemen, and to bid her mark his
words that Lohm and Kleinwalde would before long be one estate.

"And us? What will become of us?" she asked, eying him anxiously.

"I too would like to know that," replied her husband. "This all comes of
leaving land away from the natural heirs." And with great energy he
proceeded to curse the memory of his late master.

Lohm's English was so good that it astonished Anna. It was stiff and
slow, but he made no mistakes at all. His manner was grave, and looking
at him more attentively she saw traces on his face of much hard work and
anxiety. He told her that his mother had been a cousin of Uncle
Joachim's wife. "So that there is a slight relationship by marriage
existing between us," he said.

"Very slight," said Anna, smiling, "faint almost beyond recognition."

"Does your niece stay with you for an indefinite period?" he asked. "I
cannot avoid knowing that this young lady is your niece," he added with
a smile, "and that she is here with her governess, and that Lady
Estcourt left suddenly on Good Friday, because all that concerns you is
of the greatest interest to the inhabitants of this quiet place, and
they talk of little else."

"How long will it take them to get used to me? I don't like being an
object of interest. No, Letty is going home as soon as I have found a
companion. That is why I am taking the inspector's newspapers home with
me. I can't construct an advertisement out of my stores of German, and
am going to see if I can find something that will serve as model."

"Oh, may I help you? What difficulties you must meet with every hour of
the day!"

"I do," agreed Anna, thinking of all there was to be done before she
could open her doors and her arms to the twelve.

"Any service that I can render to my oldest friend's niece will give me
the greatest pleasure. Will you allow me to send the advertisement for
you? You can hardly know how or where to send it."

"I don't," said Anna. "It would be very kind--I really would be
grateful. It is so important that I should find somebody soon."

"It is of the first importance," said Lohm.

"Has the parson told him of my plans already?" thought Anna. But Lohm
had not seen Manske that morning, and was only picturing this little
thing to himself, this dainty little lady, used to such a different
life, alone in the empty house, struggling with her small supply of
German to make the two raw servants understand her ways. Anna was not a
little thing at all, and she would have been half-amused and
half-indignant if she had known that that was the impression she had
made on him.

"My sister, Gräfin Hasdorf," he began--"Heavens," she thought, "has _he_
got an unattached sister?"--"sometimes stays with me with her children,
and when she is here will be able to help you in many ways if you will
allow her to. She too knew your uncle from her childhood. She will be
greatly interested to know that you have had the courage to settle
here."

"Courage?" echoed Anna. "Why, I love it. It's the most beautiful place
in the world."

Lohm looked doubtfully at her for a moment; but there was no mistaking
the sincerity of those eyes. "It is pleasant to hear you say so," he
said. "My sister Trudi would scarcely credit her ears if she were
present. To her it is a terrible place, and she pities me with all her
heart because my lot is cast in it."

Anna laughed. She thought she knew very well what sister Trudis were
like. "I do not pity you," she said; "I couldn't pity any being who
lived in this air, and under this sky. Look how blue it is--and the
geese--did you ever see such white geese?"

A flock of geese were being driven across the sunny yard, dazzling in
their whiteness. Anna lifted up her face to the sun and drew in a long
breath of the sharp air. She forgot Lohm for a moment--it was such a
glorious Easter Sunday, and the world was so full of the abundant gifts
of God.

Dellwig, who had been watching them from his wife's window, thought that
the brawlers who were going to be fined had been kept waiting long
enough, and came out again on to the steps.

Lohm saw him, and felt that he must go. "I must do my business," he
said, "but as you have given me permission I will send an advertisement
to the papers to-night. Of course you desire to have an elderly lady of
good family?"

"Yes, but not too elderly--not so elderly that she won't be able to
work. There will be so much to do, so very much to do."

Lohm went away wondering what work there could possibly be, except the
agreeable and easy work of seeing that this young lady was properly fed,
and properly petted, and in every way taken care of.




CHAPTER X


He sent the advertisement by the evening post to two or three of the
best newspapers. He had seen the pastor after morning church, who had at
once poured into his ears all about Anna's twelve ladies, garnishing the
story with interjections warmly appreciative of the action of Providence
in the matter. Lohm had been considerably astonished, but had said
little; it was not his way to say much at any time to the parson, and
the ecstasies about the new neighbour jarred on him. Miss Estcourt's
need of advice must have been desperate for her to have confided in
Manske. He appreciated his good qualities, but his family had never been
intimate with the parson; perhaps because from time immemorial the Lohms
had been chiefly males, and the attitude of male Germans towards parsons
is, at its best, one of indulgence. This Lohm restricted his dealings
with him, as his father had done before him, to the necessary
deliberations on the treatment of the sick and poor, and to official
meetings in the schoolhouse. He was invariably kind to him, and lent as
willing an ear as his slender purse allowed to applications for
assistance; but the idea of discussing spiritual experiences with him,
or, in times of personal sorrow, of dwelling conversationally on his
griefs, would never have occurred to him. The easy familiarity with
which Manske spoke of the Deity offended his taste. These things, these
sacred and awful mysteries, were the secrets between the soul and its
God. No man, thought Lohm, should dare to touch with profane questioning
the veil shrouding his neighbour's inner life. Manske, however, knew no
fear and no compunction. He would ask the most tremendous questions
between two mouthfuls of pudding, backing himself up with the whole
authority of the Lutheran Church, besides the Scriptures; and if the
poor people and the partly educated liked it, and were edified, and
enjoyed stirring up and talking over their religious emotions almost as
much as they did the latest village scandal, Lohm, who had no taste
either for scandal or emotions, kept the parson at arm's length.

He thought a good deal about what Manske had told him during the
afternoon. She had gone to the parson, then, for help, because there was
no one else to go to. Poor little thing. He could imagine the sort of
speeches Manske had made her, and the sort of advertisement he would
have told her to write. Poor little thing. Well, what he could do was to
put her in the way of getting a companion as quickly as possible, and a
very sensible, capable woman it ought to be. No wonder she was not to be
past hard work. Work there would certainly be, with twelve women in the
house undergoing the process of being made happy. Lohm could not help
smiling at the plan. He thought of Miss Estcourt courageously trying to
demolish the crust of dejection that had formed in the course of years
over the hearts of her patients, and he trusted that she would not
exhaust her own youth and joyousness in the effort. Perhaps she would
succeed. He did not remember having heard of any scheme quite analogous,
and possibly she would override all obstacles in triumph, and the
patients who entered her home with the burden of their past misery heavy
upon them, would develop in the sunshine of her presence into twelve
riotously jovial ladies. But would not she herself suffer? Would not her
own strength and hopefulness be sapped up by those she benefited? He
could not think that it would be to the advantage of the world at large
to substitute twelve, nay fifty, nay any number of jolly old ladies, for
one girl with such sweet and joyous eyes.

This, of course, was the purely masculine point of view. The women to be
benefited--why he thought of them as old is not clear, for you need not
be old to be unhappy--would have protested, probably, with indignant
cries that individually they were well worth Miss Estcourt, in any case
were every bit as good as she was, and collectively--oh, absurd.

He thought of his sister Trudi. Perhaps she knew of some one who would
be both kind and clever, and protect Miss Estcourt in some measure from
the twelve. Trudi's friends, it is true, were not the sort among whom
staid companions are found. Their husbands were chiefly lieutenants, and
they spent their time at races. They lived in flats in Hanover, where
the regiment was quartered, and flats are easy to manage, and none of
these young women would endure, he supposed, to have an elderly
companion always hanging round. Still, there was a remote possibility
that some one of them might be able to recommend a suitable person. If
Trudi were staying with him now she would be a great help; not so much
because of what she would do, but because he could go with her to
Kleinwalde, and Miss Estcourt could come to his house when she wanted
anything, and need not depend solely on the parson. It was his duty,
considering old Joachim's unchanging kindness towards him, and the pains
the old man had taken to help him in the management of his estate, and
to encourage him at a time when he greatly needed help and
encouragement, to do all that lay in his power for old Joachim's niece.
When he heard that she was coming he had decided that this was his plain
duty: that she was so pretty, so adorably pretty and simple and friendly
only made it an unusually pleasant one. "I will write to Trudi," he
thought, "and ask her to come over for a week or two."

He sat down at his writing-table in the big window overlooking the
farmyard, and began the letter. But he felt that it would be absurd to
ask her to come on Miss Estcourt's account. Why should she do anything
for Miss Estcourt, and why should he want his sister to do anything for
her? That would be the first thing that would strike the astute Trudi.
So he merely wrote reminding her that she had not stayed with him since
the previous summer, and suggested that she should come for a few days
with her children, now that the spring was coming and the snow had gone.
"The woods will soon be blue with anemones," he wrote, though he well
knew that Trudi's attitude towards anemones was cold. Perhaps her little
boys would like to pick them; anyhow, some sort of an inducement had to
be held out.

Outside his window was a duck-pond, thin sheets of ice still floating in
broken pieces on its surface; behind the duck-pond was the dairy; and on
either side of the yard were cow-sheds and pig-styes. The farm carts
stood in a peaceful Sunday row down one side, and at the other end of
the yard, shutting out the same view of the sea and island that Anna saw
from her bedroom window, was a mountainous range of manure. When Trudi
came, she never entered the rooms on this side of the house, because, as
she explained, it was one of her peculiarities not to like manure; and
she slept and ate and aired her opinions on the west side, where the
garden lay between the house and the road. She never would have come to
Lohm at all, not being burdened with any undue sentiment in regard to
ties of blood, if it had not been necessary to go somewhere in the
summer, and if the other places had not been beyond the resources of the
family purse, always at its emptiest when the racing season was over and
the card-playing at an end. As it was, this was a cheap and convenient
haven, and her brother Axel was kind to the little boys, and not too
angry when they plundered his apple-trees, damaged the knees of his
ponies, and did their best to twist off the tails of his disconcerted
sucking-pigs.

He was the eldest of three brothers, and she came last. She was
twenty-six, and he was ten years older. When the father died, the land
ought properly to have been divided between the four children, but such
a proceeding would have been extremely inconvenient, and the two younger
brothers, and the sister just married, agreed to accept their share in
money, and to leave the estate entirely to Axel. It was the best course
to take, but it threw Axel into difficulties that continued for years.
His father, with four times the money, had lived very comfortably at
Lohm, and the children had been brought up in prosperity. For eight
years his eldest son had farmed the estate with a quarter the means, and
had found it so far from simple that his hair had turned grey in the
process. It needed considerable skill and vigilance to enable a man to
extract a decent living from the soil of Lohm. Part of it was too boggy,
and part of it too sandy, and the trees had all been cut down thirty
years before by a bland grandfather, serenely indifferent to the opinion
of posterity. Axel's first work had been to make plantations of young
firs and pines wherever the soil was poorest, and when he rode through
the beautiful Kleinwalde forest he endeavoured to extract what pleasure
he could from the thought that in a hundred years Lohm too would have a
forest. But the pleasure to be extracted from this thought was of a
surprisingly subdued quality. All his pleasures were of a subdued
quality. His days were made up of hard work, of that effort to induce
both ends to meet which knocks the savour out of life with such a
singular completeness. He was born with an uncomfortably exact
conception of duty; and now at the end of the best half of his life,
after years of struggling on that poor soil against the odds of that
stern climate, this conception had shaped itself into a fixed belief
that the one thing entirely beautiful, the one thing wholly worthy of a
man's ambition, is the right doing of his duty. So, he thought, shall a
man have peace at the last.

It is a way of thinking common to the educated dwellers in solitary
places, who have not been very successful. Trudi scorned it. "Peace,"
she said, "at the last, is no good at all. What one wants is peace at
the beginning and in the middle. But you only think stuff like that
because you haven't got enough money. Poor people always talk about the
beauty of duty and peace at the last. If somebody left you a fortune
you'd never mention either of them again. Or if you married a girl with
money, now. I wish, I do wish, that _that_ duty would strike you as the
one thing wholly worth doing."

But a man who is all day and every day in his fields, who farms not for
pleasure but for his bare existence, has no time to set out in search of
girls with money, and none came up his way. Besides, he had been engaged
a few years before, and the girl had died, and he had not since had the
least inclination towards matrimony. After that he had worked harder
than ever; and the years flew by, filled with monotonous labour.
Sometimes they were good years, and the ends not only met but lapped
over a little; but generally the bare meeting of the ends was all that
he achieved. His wish was that his brother Gustav who came after him
should find the place in good order; if possible in better order than
before. But the working up of an estate for a brother Gustav, with
whatever determination it may be carried on, is not a labour that evokes
an unflagging enthusiasm in the labourer; and Axel, however beautiful a
life of duty might be to him in theory, found it, in practice, of an
altogether remarkable greyness. Two-thirds of his house were shut up. In
the evenings his servants stole out to court and be courted, and left
the place to himself and echoes and memories. It was a house built for a
large family, for troops of children, and frequent friends. Axel sat in
it alone when the dusk drove him indoors, defending himself against his
remembrances by prolonged interviews with his head inspector, or a
zealous study of the latest work on potato diseases.

"I see that Bibi Bornstedt is staying with your Regierungspräsident,"
Trudi had written a little while before. "Now, then, is your chance. She
is a true gold-fish. You cannot continue to howl over Hildegard's memory
for ever. Bibi will have two hundred thousand marks a year when the old
ones die, and is quite a decent girl. Her nose is a fiasco, but when you
have been married a week you will not so much as see that she has a
nose. And the two hundred thousand marks will still be there. _Ach_,
Axel, what comfort, what consolation, in two hundred thousand marks! You
could put the most glorious wreaths on Hildegard's tomb, besides keeping
racehorses."

Lohm suddenly remembered this letter as he sat, having finished his own,
looking out of the window at two girls in Sunday splendour kissing one
of the stable boys behind a farm cart. They were all three apparently
enjoying themselves very much, the girls laughing, the boy with an
expression at once imbecile and beatific. They thought the master's eye
could not see them there, but the master's eye saw most things. He took
up his pen again and added a postscript. "If you come soon you will be
able to enjoy the society of your friend Bibi. She came on Wednesday, I
believe." Then, feeling slightly ashamed of using the innocent Miss Bibi
as a bait to catch his sister, he wrote the advertisement for Anna, and
put both letters in the post-bag.

The effect of his postscript was precisely the one he had expected.
Trudi was drinking her morning coffee in her bedroom at twelve o'clock,
when the letter came. Her hair was being done by a _Friseur_, an artist
in hairdressing, who rode about Hanover every day on a bicycle, his
pockets bulging out with curling-tongs, and for three marks decorated
the heads of Trudi and her friends with innumerable waves. Trudi was
devoted to him, with the devotion naturally felt for the person on whom
one's beauty depends, for he was a true artist, and really did work
amazing transformations. "What! You have never had Herr Jungbluth?"
Trudi cried, on the last occasion on which she met Bibi, the daughter of
a Hanover banker, and quite outside her set but for the riches that
ensured her an enthusiastic welcome wherever she went, "_aber_ Bibi!"
There was so much genuine surprise and compassion in this "_aber_ Bibi"
that the young person addressed felt as though she had been for years
missing a possibility of happiness. Trudi added, as a special
recommendation, that Jungbluth smelt of soap. He had carefully studied
the nature of women, and if he had to do with a pretty one would find an
early opportunity of going into respectful raptures over what he
described as her _klassisches Profil_; and if it was a woman whose face
was not all she could have wished, he would tell her, in a tone of
subdued enthusiasm, that her profile, as to which she had long been in
doubt, was _höchst interessant_. The popularity of this young man in
Trudi's set was enormous; and as all the less aristocratic Hanoverian
ladies hastened to imitate, Jungbluth lived in great contentment and
prosperity with a young wife whose hair was reposefully straight, and a
baby whose godmother was Trudi.

"Blue woods! Anemones!" read Trudi with immense contempt. "Is the boy in
his senses? The idea of expecting me to go to that dreary place now. Ah,
now I understand," she added, turning the page, "it is Bibi--he is
really after her, and of course can get along quicker if I am there to
help. Excellent Axel! And why did he go to the pains of trotting out the
anemones? What is the use of not being frank with me? I can see through
him, whatever he does. He is so good-natured that I am sure he will lend
us heaps of Bibi's money once he has got it. _So, lieber Jungbluth_,"
she said aloud, "that will do to-day. Beautiful--beautiful--better than
ever. I am in a hurry. I travel to Berlin this very afternoon."

And the next day she arrived at Stralsund, and was met by her brother at
the station.

She greeted him with enthusiasm. "As we are here," she said, when they
were driving through the town, "let us pay our respects to the
Regierungspräsidentin. It will save our coming in again to-morrow."

"No, I cannot to-day. I must get back as quickly as possible. The hands
had their Easter ball yesterday, and when I left Lohm this morning half
of them were still in bed."

"Well, then, the horses will have to do the journey again to-morrow, for
no time should be lost."

"Yes, you can come in to-morrow, if you long so much to see your
friend."

"And you?" asked Trudi, in a tone of astonishment.

"And I? I am up to my ears now in work. Last week was the first week for
four months that we could plough. Now we have lost these three days at
Easter. I cannot spare a single hour."

"But, my dear Axel, Bibi is of far greater importance for the future of
Lohm than any amount of ploughing."

"I confess I do not see how."

"I don't understand you."

"Why didn't you bring the little boys?"

"What have you asked me to come here for?"

"Come, Trudi, you've not been near me for eight months. Isn't it natural
that you should pay me a little visit?"

"No, it isn't natural at all to come to such a place in winter, and
leave all the fun at home. I came because of Bibi."

"What! You'll come for Bibi, but not for your own brother?"

"Now, Axel, you know very well that I have come for you both."

"For us both? What would Miss Bibi say if she heard you talking of
herself and of me as 'you both'?"

"I wish you would not bother to go on like this. It's a great waste of
time."

"So it is, my dear. Any talk about Bibi Bornstedt, as far as I am
concerned, is a hopeless waste of time."

"Axel!"

"Trudi?"

"You don't mean to say that you are not thinking of her?"

"Thinking of her? I never let my thoughts linger round strange young
ladies."

"Then what in heaven's name have you got me here for?"

"The anemones are coming out----"

"_Ach_----"

"They really are."

"Suppose instead of teasing me as though I were still ten and you a
great bully, you talked sensibly. The Hohensteins give a _bal masqué_
to-night, and I gave it up to come to you."

"Oh, my dear, that was really kind," said Lohm, touched by the
tremendousness of this sacrifice.

"Then be a good boy," said Trudi caressingly, edging herself closer to
him, "and tell me you are going to be wise about Bibi. Don't throw such
a chance away--it's positively wicked."

"My dear Trudi, you'll have us in the ditch. It is very nice when you
lean against me, but I can't drive. By the way, you remember my old
Kleinwalde neighbour? The old man who spoilt you so atrociously?"

"Bibi will make a most excellent wife," said Trudi, ungratefully
indifferent to the memory of old Joachim. "Oh, what a cold wind there is
to-day. Do drive faster, Axel. What a taste, to live here and to like it
into the bargain!"

"You know that I must live here."

"But you needn't like it."

"You've heard that old Joachim left Kleinwalde to his English niece?"

"You have only seen Bibi once, and she grows on one tremendously."

"I want to talk about old Joachim."

"And I want to talk about Bibi."

"Well, Bibi can wait. She is the younger. You know about the old man's
will?"

"I should think I did. One of his unfortunate sons has just joined our
regiment. You should hear him on the subject."

"A most disagreeable, grasping lot," said Lohm decidedly. "They received
every bit of their dues, and are all well off. Surely the old man could
do as he liked with the one place that was not entailed?"

"It isn't the usual thing to leave one's land to a foreigner. Is she
coming to live in it?"

"She came last week."

"Oh?" This in a tone of sudden interest.

There was a pause. Then Trudi said, "Is she young?"

"Quite young."

"Pretty?"

"Exceedingly pretty."

Trudi looked up at him and smiled.

"Well?" said Axel, smiling back at her.

"Well?" said Trudi, continuing to smile.

Axel laughed outright. "My dear Trudi, your astuteness terrifies me. You
not only know already why I wrote to you, but you know more reasons for
the letter than I myself dream of. I want to be able to help this
extremely helpless young lady, and I can hardly be of any use to her
because I have no woman in the house. If I had a wife I could be of the
greatest assistance."

"Only then you wouldn't want to be."

"Certainly I should."

"Pray, why?"

"Because I have a greater debt of obligations to her uncle than I can
ever repay to his niece."

"Oh, nonsense--nobody pays their debts of obligations. The natural thing
to do is to hate the person who has forced you to be grateful, and to
get out of his way."

"My dear Trudi, this shrewdness----" murmured her brother. Then he
added, "I know perfectly well that your thoughts have already flown to a
wedding. Mine don't reach farther than an elderly companion."

"Who for? For you?"

"Miss Estcourt is looking for an elderly companion, and I would be
grateful to you if you would help her."

"But the elderly companion does not exclude the wedding."

"When you see Miss Estcourt you will understand how completely such a
possibility is outside her calculations. You won't of course believe
that it is outside mine. Why should you want to marry me to every girl
within reach? Five minutes ago it was Bibi, and now it is Miss Estcourt.
You do not in the least consider what views the girls themselves might
have. Miss Estcourt is absorbed at this moment in a search for twelve
old ladies."

"Twelve----?"

"Her ambition is to spend herself and her money on twelve old ladies.
She thinks happiness and money are as good for them as for herself, and
wants to share her own with persons who have neither."

"My dear Axel--is she mad?"

"She did not give me that impression."

"And you say she is young?"

"Yes."

"And really pretty?"

"Yes."

"And could be so well off in that flourishing place!"

"Of course she could."

"I'll go and call on her to-morrow," said Trudi decidedly.

"It will be kind of you," said Lohm.

"Kind! It isn't kindness, it's curiosity," said Trudi with a laugh. "Let
us be frank, and call things by their right names."

Anna was in the garden, admiring the first crocus, when Trudi appeared.
She drove Axel's cobs up to the door in what she felt was excellent
style, and hoped Miss Estcourt was watching her from a window and would
see that Englishwomen were not the only sportswomen in the world. But
Anna saw nothing but the crocus.

The wilderness down to the marsh that did duty as a garden was so
sheltered and sunny that spring stopped there first each year before
going on into the forest; and Anna loved to walk straight out of the
drawing-room window into it, bare-headed and coatless, whenever she had
time. Trudi saw her coming towards the house upon the servant's telling
her that a lady had called. "Nothing on, on a cold day like this!" she
thought. She herself wore a particularly sporting driving-coat, with an
immense collar turned up over her ears. "I wonder," mused Trudi,
watching the approaching figure, "how it is that English girls, so tidy
in the clothes, so trim in the shoes, so neat in the tie and collar,
never apparently brush their hair. A German Miss Estcourt vegetating in
this quiet place would probably wear grotesque and disconnected
garments, doubtful boots and striking stockings, her figure would
rapidly give way before the insidiousness of _Schweinebraten_, but her
hair would always be beautifully done, each plait smooth and in its
proper place, each little curl exactly where it ought to be, the parting
a model of straightness, and the whole well deserving to be dignified by
the name _Frisur_. English girls have hair, but they do not have
_Frisurs_."

Anna came in through the open window, and Trudi's face expanded into the
most genial smiles. "How glad I am to make your acquaintance!" she cried
enthusiastically. She spoke English quite as correctly as her brother,
and much more glibly. "I hope you will let me help you if I can be of
any use. My brother says your uncle was so good to him. When I lived
here he was very kind to me too. How brave of you to stay here! And what
wonderful plans you have made! My brother has told me about your twelve
ladies. What courage to undertake to make twelve women happy. I find it
hard enough work making one person happy."

"One person? Oh, Graf Hasdorf."

"Oh no, myself. You see, if each person devoted his energies to making
himself happy, everybody would be happy."

"No, they wouldn't," said Anna, "because they do, but they're not."

They looked at each other and laughed. "She only needs Jungbluth to be
perfect," thought Trudi; and with her usual impulsiveness began
immediately to love her.

Anna was delighted to meet someone of her own class and age after the
severe though short course she had had of Dellwigs and Manskes; and
Trudi was so much interested in her plans, and so pressing in her offers
of help, that she very soon found herself telling her all her
difficulties about servants, sheets, wall-papers, and whitewash. "Look
at this paper," she said, "could you live in the same room with it? No
one will ever be able to feel cheerful as long as it is here. And the
one in the dining-room is worse."

"It isn't beautiful," said Trudi, examining it, "but it is what we call
_praktisch_."

"Then I don't like what you call _praktisch_."

"Neither do I. All the hideous things are _praktisch_--oil-cloth, black
wall-papers, handkerchiefs a yard square, thick boots, ugly women--if
ever you hear a woman praised as a _praktische Frau_, be sure she's
frightful in every way--ugly and dull. The uglier she is the
_praktischer_ she is. Oh," said Trudi, casting up her eyes, "how
terrible, how tragic, to be an ugly woman!" Then, bringing her gaze down
again to Anna's face, she added, "My flat in Hanover is all pinks and
blues--the most becoming rooms you can imagine. I look so nice in them."

"Pinks and blues? That is just what I want here. Can't I get any in
Stralsund?"

Trudi was doubtful. She could not think it possible that anybody should
ever get anything in Stralsund.

"But I must do my shopping there. I am in such a hurry. It would be
dreadful to have to keep anyone waiting only because my house isn't
ready."

"Well, we can try," said Trudi. "You will let me go with you, won't
you?"

"I shall be more than grateful if you will come."

"What do you think if we went now?" suggested Trudi, always for prompt
action, and quickly tired of sitting still. "My brother said I might
drive into Stralsund to-day if I liked, and I have the cobs here now.
Don't you think it would be a good thing, as you are in such a hurry?"

"Oh, a very good thing," exclaimed Anna. "How kind you are! You are sure
it won't bore you frightfully?"

"Oh, not a bit. It will be rather amusing to go into those shops for
once, and I shall like to feel that I have helped the good work on a
little."

Anna thought Trudi delightful. Trudi's new friends always did think her
delightful; and she never had any old ones.

She drove recklessly, and they lurched and heaved through the sand
between Kleinwalde and Lohm at an alarming rate. They passed Letty and
Miss Leech, going for their afternoon walk, who stood on one side and
stared.

"Who's that?" asked Trudi.

"My brother's little girl and her governess."

"Oh yes, I heard about them. They are to stay and take care of you till
you have a companion. Your sister-in-law didn't like Kleinwalde?"

"No."

Trudi laughed.

They passed Dellwig, riding, who swept off his hat with his customary
deference, and stared.

"Do you like him?" asked Trudi.

"Who?"

"Dellwig. I know him from the days before I married."

"I don't know him very well yet," said Anna, "but he seems to be
very--very polite."

Trudi laughed again, and cracked her whip.

"My uncle had great faith in him," said Anna, slightly aggrieved by the
laugh.

"Your uncle was one of the best farmers in Germany, I have always heard.
He was so experienced, and so clever, that he could have led a hundred
Dellwigs round by the nose. Dellwig was naturally quite small, as we
say, in the presence of your uncle. He knew very well it would be
useless to be anything but immaculate under such a master. Perhaps your
uncle thought he would go on being immaculate from sheer habit, with
nobody to look after him."

"I suppose he did," said Anna doubtfully. "He told me to keep him. It's
quite certain that _I_ can't look after him."

They passed Axel Lohm, also riding. He was on Trudi's side of the road.
He looked pleased when he saw Anna with his sister. Trudi whipped up the
cobs, regardless of his feelings, and tore past him, scattering the sand
right and left. When she was abreast of him, she winked her eye at him
with perfect solemnity.

Axel looked stony.




CHAPTER XI


Neither Trudi nor Anna had ever worked so hard as they did during the
few days that ended March and began April. Everything seemed to happen
at once. The house was in a sudden uproar. There were people
whitewashing, people painting, people putting up papers, people bringing
things in carts from Stralsund, people trimming up the garden, people
coming out to offer themselves as servants, Dellwig coming in and
shouting, Manske coming round and glorifying--Anna would have been
completely bewildered if it had not been for Trudi, who was with her all
day long, going about with a square of lace and muslin tucked under her
waist-ribbon which she felt was becoming and said was an apron.

Trudi was enjoying herself hugely. She saw Jungbluth's waves slowly
straightening themselves out of her hair, and for the first time in her
life remained calm as she watched them go. She even began to have
aspirations towards Uncle Joachim's better life herself, and more than
once entered into a serious consideration of the advantages that might
result from getting rid at one stroke of Bill her husband, and Billy and
Tommy her two sons, and from making a fresh start as one of Anna's
twelve.

Frau Manske and Frau Dellwig could not face her infinite
superciliousness more than once, and kept out of the way in spite of
their burning curiosity. When Dellwig's shouts became intolerable, she
did not hesitate to wince conspicuously and to put up her hand to her
head. When Manske forgot that it was not Sunday, and began to preach,
she would interrupt him with a brisk "_Ja, ja, sehr schön, sehr schön,
aber lieber Herr Pastor_, you must tell us all this next Sunday in
church when we have time to listen--my friend has not a minute now in
which to appreciate the opinions of the _Apostel Paulus_."

"I believe you are being unkind to my parson," said Anna, who could not
always understand Trudi's rapid German, but saw that Manske went away
dejected.

"My dear, he must be kept in his place if he tries to come out of it.
You don't know what a set these pastors are. They are not like your
clergymen. If you are too kind to that man you'll have no peace. I
remember in my father's time he came to dinner every Sunday, sat at the
bottom of the table, and when the pudding appeared made a bow and went
away."

"He didn't like pudding?"

"I don't know if he liked it or not, but he never got any. It was a good
old custom that the pastor should withdraw before the pudding, and Axel
has not kept it up. My father never had any bother with him."

"But what has the pudding that he didn't get ten years ago to do with
your being unkind to him now?"

"I wanted to explain the proper footing for him to be on."

"And the proper footing is a puddingless one? Well, in my house neither
pudding nor kindness in suitable quantities shall be withheld from him,
so don't ill-use him more than you feel is absolutely necessary for his
good."

"Oh, you are a dear little thing!" said Trudi, putting her hands on
Anna's shoulders and looking into her eyes--they were both tall young
women, and their eyes were on a level--"I wonder what the end of you
will be. When you know all these people better you'll see that my way of
treating them, which you think unkind, is the only way. You must turn up
your nose as high as it will go at them, and they will burst with
respect. Don't be too friendly and confiding--they won't understand it,
and will be sure to think that something must be wrong about you, and
will begin to backbite you, and invent all sorts of horrid stories about
you. And as for the pastor, why should he be allowed to treat your rooms
as though they were so many pulpits, and you as though you had never
heard of the _Apostel Paulus_?"

Anna admitted that she was not always in the proper frame of mind for
these unprovoked sermons, but refused to believe in the necessity for
turning up her nose. She ostentatiously pressed Manske, the very next
time he came, to stay to the evening meal, which was rather of the
nature of a picnic in those unsettled days, but at which, for Letty's
sake, there was always a pudding; and she invited him to eat pudding
three times running, and each time he accepted the offer; and each time,
when she had helped him, she fixed her eyes with a defiant gravity on
Trudi's face.

Axel came in sometimes when he had business at the farm, and was shown
what progress had been made. Trudi was as interested as though it had
been her own house, and took him about, demanding his approval and
admiration with an enthusiasm that spread to Anna, and she and Axel soon
became good friends. The Stralsund wall-papers were so dreadful that
Anna had declared she would have most of the rooms whitewashed; the hall
had been done, exchanging its pea-green coat for one of virgin purity,
and she had thought it so fresh and clean, and so appropriate to the
simplicity of the better life, that to the amazement of the workmen she
insisted on the substitution of whitewash in both dining and
drawing-room for the handsome chocolate-coloured papers already in those
rooms.

"The twelve will think it frightful," said Trudi.

"But why?" asked Anna, who had fallen in love with whitewash. "It is
purity itself. It will be symbolical of the innocence and cleanliness
that will be in our hearts when we have got used to each other, and are
happy."

Trudi looked again at the hall, into which the afternoon sun was
streaming. It did look very clean, certainly, and exceedingly cheerful;
she was sure, however, that it would never be symbolical of any heart
that came into it. But then Trudi was sceptical about hearts.

At the end of Easter week, when Trudi was beginning to feel slightly
tired of whitewash and scrambled meals, and to have doubts as to the
permanent becomingness of aprons, and misgivings as to the effect on her
complexion of running about a cold house all day long, answers to the
advertisements began to arrive, and soon arrived in shoals. These
letters acted as bellows on the flickering flame of her zeal. She found
them extraordinarily entertaining, and would meet Manske in the hall
when he brought them round, and take them out of his hands, and run with
them to Anna, leaving him standing there uncertain whether he ought to
stay and be consulted, or whether it was expected of him that he should
go home again without having unburdened himself of all the advice he
felt that he contained. He deplored what he called _das impulsive
Temperament_ of the Gräfin. Always had she been so, since the days she
climbed his cherry-trees and helped the birds to strip them; and when,
with every imaginable precaution, he had approached her father on the
subject, and carefully excluding the word cherry hinted that the
climbing of trees was a perilous pastime for young ladies, old Lohm had
burst into a loud laugh, and had sworn that neither he nor anyone else
could do anything with Trudi. He actually had seemed proud that she
should steal cherries, for he knew very well why she climbed the trees,
and predicted a brilliant future for his only daughter; to which Manske
had listened respectfully as in duty bound, and had gone home
unconvinced.

But Anna did not let him stand long in the hall, and came to fetch him
and beg him to help her read the letters and tell her what he thought of
them. In spite of Trudi's advice and example she continued to treat the
pastor with the deference due to a good and simple man. What did it
matter if he talked twice as much as he need have done, and wearied her
with his habit of puffing Christianity as though it were a quack
medicine of which he was the special patron? He was sincere, he really
believed something, and really felt something, and after five days with
Trudi Anna turned to Manske's elementary convictions with relief. In
five days she had come to be very glad that Trudi stood in no need of a
place among the twelve.

Most of the women who wrote in answer to the advertisement sent
photographs, and their letters were pitiful enough, either because of
what they said or because of what they tried to hide; and Anna's
appreciation of Trudi received a great shock when she found that the
letters amused her, and that the photographs, especially those of the
old ones or the ugly ones, moved her to a mirth little short of
unseemly. After all, Trudi was taking a great deal upon herself, Anna
thought, reading the letters unasked, helping her to open them unasked,
hurrying down to fetch them unasked, and deluging her with advice about
them unasked. She saw she had made a mistake in allowing her to see them
at all. She had no right to expose the petitions of these unhappy
creatures to Trudi's inquisitive and diverted eyes. This fact was made
very patent to her when one of the letters that Trudi opened turned out
to be from a person she had known. "Why," cried Trudi, her face
twinkling with excitement, "here's one from a girl who was at school
with me. And her photo, too--what a shocking scarecrow she has grown
into! She is only two years older than I am, but might be forty. Just
look at her--and she used to think none of us were good enough for her.
Don't have her, whatever you do--she married one of the officers in
Bill's first regiment, and treated him so shamefully that he shot
himself. Imagine her boldness in writing like this!" And she began
eagerly to read the letter.

Anna got up and took it out of her hands. It was an unexpected action,
or Trudi would have held on tighter. "She never dreamed you would see
what she wrote," said Anna, "and it would be dishonourable of me to let
you. And the other letters too--I have been thinking it over--they are
only meant for me; and no one else, except perhaps the parson, ought to
see them."

"Except perhaps the parson!" cried Trudi, greatly offended. "And why
except perhaps the parson?"

"I can't always read the German writing," explained Anna.

"But surely a woman of your own age, who isn't such a simpleton as the
parson, is the best adviser you can have."

"But you laugh at the letters, and they are all so unhappy."

Trudi went back to Lohm early that day. "She has taken it into her head
that I am not to read the letters," she said to her brother with no
little indignation.

"It would be a great breach of confidence if she allowed you to," he
replied; which was so unsatisfactory that she drove into Stralsund that
very afternoon, and consoled herself with the pliable Bibi.

Bibi's nose seemed more unsuccessful than ever after having had Anna's
before her for nearly a week; but then the richness of the girl! And
such a good-natured, generous girl, who would adore her sister-in-law
and make her presents. Contemplating the good Bibi in her afternoon
splendour from Paris, Trudi's heart stirred within her at the thought of
all that was within Axel's reach if only he could be induced to put out
his hand and take it. Anna would never marry him, Trudi was
certain--would never marry anyone, being completely engrossed by her
philanthropic follies; but if she did, what was her probable income
compared to Bibi's? And Axel would never look at Bibi so long as that
other girl lived next door to him; nobody could expect him to. Anna was
too pretty; it was not fair. And Bibi was so very plain; which was not
fair either.

The Regierungspräsidentin, a cousin by marriage of Bibi's, but a member
of an ancient family of the Mark, was delighted to see Trudi and to
question her about the new and eccentric arrival. Trudi had offered to
take Anna to call on this lady, and had explained that it was her duty
to call; but Anna had said there was no hurry, and had talked of some
day, and had been manifestly bored by the prospect of making new
acquaintances.

"Is she quite--quite in her right senses?" asked the
Regierungspräsidentin, when Trudi had described all they had been doing
in Anna's house, and all Anna meant to do with her money, and had made
her description so smart and diverting that the Regierungspräsidentin,
an alert little lady, with ears perpetually pricked up in the hope of
catching gossip, felt that she had not enjoyed an afternoon so much for
years.

Bibi sat listening with her mouth wide open. It was an artless way of
hers when she was much interested in a conversation, and was deplored by
those who wished her well.

"Oh, yes, she is quite in her senses. Rather too sure she knows best,
always, but quite in her senses."

"Then she is very religious?"

"Not in the ordinary way, I should think. She goes in for nature. _Gott
in der Natur_, and that sort of thing. If the sun shines more than usual
she goes and stands in it, and turns up her eyes and gushes. There's a
crocus in the garden, and when we came to it yesterday she stopped in
front of it and rhapsodised for ten minutes about things that have
nothing to do with crocuses--chiefly about the _lieben Gott_. And all in
English, of course, and it sounds worse in English."

"But then, my dear, she _is_ religious?"

"Oh, well, the pastor would not call it religion. It's a sort of
huddle-muddle pantheism as far as it is anything at all." From which it
will be seen that Trudi was even more frank about her friends behind
their backs than she was to their faces.

She drove back to Lohm in a discontented frame of mind. "What's the good
of anything?" was the mood she was in. She had over-tired herself
helping Anna, and she was afraid that being so much in cold rooms and
passages, and washing in hard water, had made her skin coarse. She had
caught sight of herself in a glass as she was leaving the
Regierungspräsidentin, and had been disconcerted by finding that she did
not look as pretty as she felt. Nor was she consoled for this by the
consciousness that she had been unusually amusing at Anna's expense; for
she was only too certain that the Regierungspräsidentin, when repeating
all she had told her to her friends, would add that Trudi Hasdorf had
terribly _eingepackt_--dreadful word, descriptive of the faded state
immediately preceding wrinkles, and held in just abhorrence by every
self-respecting woman. Of what earthly use was it to be cleverer and
more amusing than other people if at the same time you had _eingepackt_?

"What a stupid world it is," thought Trudi, driving along the _chaussée_
in the early April twilight. A mist lay over the sea, and the pale
sickle of the young moon rose ghost-like above the white shroud. Inland
the stars were faintly shining, and all the earth beneath was damp and
fragrant. It was Saturday evening, and the two bells of Lohm church were
plaintively ringing their reminder to the countryside that the week's
work was ended and God's day came next. "Oh, the stupid world," thought
Trudi. "If I stay here I shall be bored to death--that Estcourt child
and her governess have got on to my nerves--horrid fat child with
turned-in toes, and flabby, boneless woman, only held together by her
hairpins. I am sick of governesses and children--wherever one goes,
there they are. If I go home, there are those noisy little boys and
Fräulein Schultz worrying all day, and then there's that tiresome Bill
coming in to meals. Anna and Bibi are just in the position I would like
to be in--no husbands and children, and lots of money." And staring
straight before her, with eyes dark with envy, she fell into gloomy
musings on the beauty of Bibi's dress, and the blindness of fate,
throwing away a dress like that on a Bibi, when it was so eminently
suited to tall, slim women like herself; and it was fortunate for Axel's
peace that when she reached Lohm the first thing she saw was a letter
from the objectionable Bill telling her to come home, because the
foreign prince who was honorary colonel of the regiment was expected
immediately in Hanover, and there were to be great doings in his honour.

She left, all smiles, the next morning by the first train.

"Miss Estcourt will miss you," said Axel, "and will wonder why you did
not say good-bye. I am afraid your journey will be unpleasant, too,
to-day. I wish you had stayed till to-morrow."

"Oh, I don't mind the Sunday people once in a way," said Trudi gaily.
"And please tell Anna how it was I had to go so suddenly. I have started
her, at least, with the workmen and people she wants. I shall see her in
a few weeks again, you know, when Bill is at the man[oe]uvres."

"A few weeks! Six months."

"Well, six months. You must both try to exist without me for that time."

"You seem very pleased to be off," he said, smiling, as she climbed
briskly into the dog-cart and took the reins, while her maid, with her
arms full of bags, was hoisted up behind.

"Oh, so pleased!" said Trudi, looking down at him with sparkling eyes.
"Princes and parties are jollier any day than whitewash and the better
life."

"And brothers."

"Oh--brothers. By the way, I never saw Bibi look better than she did
yesterday. She has improved so much nobody would know----"

"You will miss your train," said Axel, pulling out his watch.

"Well, good-bye then, _alter Junge_. Work hard, do your duty, and don't
let your thoughts linger too much round strange young ladies. They never
do, I think you said? Well, so much the better, for it's no good, no
good, no good!" And Trudi, who was in tremendous spirits, put her whip
to the brim of her hat by way of a parting salute, touched up the cobs,
and rattled off down the drive on the road to Jungbluth and glory. She
turned her head before she finally disappeared, to call back her
oracular "No good!" once again to Axel, who stood watching her from the
steps of his solitary house.




CHAPTER XII


So Anna was left to herself again. She was astonished at the rapidity of
Trudi's movements. Within one week she had heard of her, met her, liked
her, begun to like her less, and lost her. She had flashed across the
Kleinwalde horizon, and left a trail of workmen and new servants behind,
with whom Anna was now occupied, unaided, from morning till night. Miss
Leech and Letty did all they could, but their German being restricted to
quotations from the _Erl-König_ and the _Lied von der Glocke_, it could
not be brought to bear with any profitable results on the workmen. The
servants, too, were a perplexity to Anna. Their cheapness was
extraordinary, but their quality curious. Her new parlourmaid--for she
felt unequal to coping with German men-servants--wore her arms naked all
day long. Anna thought she had tucked up her sleeves in her zeal for
thoroughness, but when she appeared with the afternoon coffee--the local
tea was undrinkable--she still had bare arms; and, examining her more
closely, Anna saw that it was her usual state, for her dress was
sleeveless. Nor was her want of sleeves her only peculiarity. Anna began
to wonder whether her house would ever be ready for the twelve.

The answers to the philanthropic advertisement were in a proportion of
fifty to one answer to the advertisement for a companion. There were
fifty ladies without means willing to be idle, to one lady without means
willing to work. It worried Anna terribly, being obliged by want of room
and money to limit the number to twelve. She could hardly bear to read
the letters, knowing that nearly all had to be rejected. "See how many
sad lives are being dragged through while we are so comfortable," she
said to Manske, when he brought round fresh piles of letters to add to
those already heaped on her table.

He shook his head in perplexity. He was bewildered by the masses of
answers, by the apparent universality of impoverishment and hopelessness
among Christian ladies of good family.

He could not come himself more than once a day, and the letters arrived
by every post; so in the afternoon he sent Herr Klutz, the young cleric
of poetic promptings, who had celebrated Anna on her arrival in a poem
which for freshness and spontaneousness equalled, he considered, the
best sonnets that had ever been written. What a joy it was to a youth of
imagination, to a poet who thought his features not unlike Goethe's, and
who regarded it as by no means an improbability that his brain should
turn out to be stamped with the same resemblance, to walk daily through
the gleaming, whispering forest, swinging his stick and composing
snatches not unworthy of her of whom they treated, his face towards the
magic _Schloss_ and its enchanted princess, and his pockets full of her
letters! Herr Klutz's coat was clerical, but his brown felt hat and the
flower in his buttonhole were typical of the worldliness within. "A
poet," he assured himself often, "is a citizen of the world, and is not
to be narrowed down to any one circle or creed." But he did not expound
this view to the good man who was helping him to prepare for the
examination that would make him a full-fledged pastor, and received his
frequent blessings, and assisted at prayers and intercessions of which
he was the subject, with outward decorum.

The first time he brought the letters, Anna received him with her usual
kindness; but there was something in his manner that displeased her,
whether it was self-assurance, or conceit, or a way he had of looking at
her, she could not tell, nor did she waste many seconds trying to
decide; but the next day when he came he was not admitted to her
presence, nor the next after that, nor for some time to come. This
surprised Herr Klutz, who was of Dellwig's opinion that the most
superior woman was not equal to the average man; and take away any
advantage of birth or position or wealth that she might possess, why,
there she was, only a woman, a creature made to be conquered and brought
into obedience to man. Being young and poetic he differed from Dellwig
on one point: to Dellwig, woman was a servant; to Klutz, an admirable
toy. Clearly such a creature could only be gratified by opportunities of
seeing and conversing with members of the opposite sex. The Miss's
conduct, therefore, in allowing her servant to take the letters from him
at the door, puzzled him.

He often met Miss Leech and Letty on his way to or from Kleinwalde, and
always stopped to speak to them and to teach them a few German sentences
and practise his own small stock of English; and from them he easily
discovered all that the young woman he favoured with his admiration was
doing. Lohm, riding over to Kleinwalde to settle differences between
Dellwig and the labourers, or to try offenders, met these three several
times, and supposed that Klutz must be courting the governess.

The day Trudi left, Lohm had gone round to Anna and delivered his
sister's message in a slightly embellished form. "You will have
everything to do now unassisted," he said. "I do trust that in any
difficulty you will let me help you. If the workmen are insolent, for
instance, or if your new servants are dishonest or in any way give you
trouble. You know it is my duty as Amtsvorsteher to interfere when such
things happen."

"You are very kind," said Anna gratefully, looking up at the grave, good
face, "but no one is insolent. And look--here is some one who wants to
come as companion. It is the first of the answers to that advertisement
that pleases me."

Lohm took the letter and photograph and examined them. "She is a
Penheim, I see," he said. "It is a very good family, but some of its
branches have been reduced to poverty, as so many of our old families
have been."

"Don't you think she would do very well?"

"Yes, if she is and does all she says in her letter. You might propose
that she should come at first for a few weeks on trial. You may not like
her, and she may not appreciate philanthropic housekeeping."

Anna laughed. "I am doubly anxious to get someone soon," she said,
"because my sister-in-law wants Letty and Miss Leech."

Letty and Miss Leech heaved tragic sighs at this; they had no desire
whatever to go home.

"Will you not feel rather forlorn when they are gone, and you are quite
alone among strangers?"

"I shall miss them, but I don't mean to be forlorn," said Anna, smiling.

"The courage of the little thing!" thought Lohm. "Ready to brave
anything in pursuit of her ideals. It makes one ashamed of one's own
grumblings and discouragements."

Anna arranged with Frau von Penheim that she should come at once on a
three months' trial; and immediately this was settled she wrote to Susie
to ask what day Letty was to be sent home. She had had no communication
with Susie since that angry lady's departure. To Peter she had written,
explaining her plans and her reasons, and her hopes and yearnings, and
had received a hasty scrawl in reply dated from Estcourt, conveying his
blessing on herself and her scheme. "Susie came straight down here," he
wrote, "because of the Alderton wedding to which she was not asked, and
went to bed. You know, my dear little sister, anything that makes you
happy contents me. I wish you could have seen your way to benefiting
reduced English ladies, for you are a long way off; but of course you
have the house free over there. Don't let Miss Leech leave you till you
are perfectly satisfied with your companion. Yesterday I landed the
biggest----" etc. In a word, Peter, in accordance with his invariable
custom, was on her side.

The day before Frau von Penheim was to arrive, Susie's answer to Anna's
letter came. Here it is:--

     "DEAR ANNA,--Your letter surprised me, though I might have known by
     now what to expect of you.--Still, I was surprised that you should
     not even offer to make the one return in your power for all I have
     done for you. As I feel I have a right to some return I don't
     hesitate to tell you that I think you ought to keep Letty for a
     year or two, or even longer. Even if you kept her till she is
     eighteen, and dressed her and fed her (don't feed her too much), it
     would only be four years; and what are four years I should like to
     know, compared to the fifteen I had you on my hands? I was talking
     to Herr Schumpf about her the other day--his bills were so absurd
     that I made him take something off--and he said by all means let
     her stay in Germany. Everybody speaks German nowadays, and Letty
     will pick it up at once in that awful place of yours. I was so ill
     when I got back that I went to Estcourt, and had to stay in bed for
     days, the doctor coming every day, and sometimes twice. He said he
     didn't wonder, when I told him all I had gone through. Peter was
     quite sorry for me. Send Miss Leech back. Give her a month's notice
     for me the day you get this, and see if you can't find some German
     who will go to your place--I can't remember its wretched name
     without looking in my address book--and give Letty lessons every
     day. The rest of the time she can talk German to your twelve
     victims. I believe masters in Germany only charge about 6d. an
     hour, so it won't ruin you. Make her take lots of exercise, and let
     her ride. She has outgrown her old habit, but German tailors are so
     cheap that a new one will cost next to nothing, and any horse that
     shakes her up well will do. I shall be quite happy about her diet,
     because I know you don't have anything to eat. I was at the
     Ennistons' last night. They seemed very sorry for me being so
     nearly related to somebody cracked; but after all, as I tell
     people, I'm not responsible for my husband's relations.--Your
     affectionate, SUSIE ESTCOURT.

     "I have never seen Hilton so upset as she was after that German
     trip. She cried if anyone looked at her. Poor thing, no wonder. The
     doctor says she is all nerves."

The evening meal was in progress at Kleinwalde when this letter came.
The dining-room was finished, and it was the first meal served there
since its transformation. No one who had seen it on that dark day of
Anna's arrival would have recognised it, so cheerful did it look with
its whitewashed walls. There were no dark corners now where china
shepherds smiled in vain; the western light filled it, and to a person
lately come from Susie's Hill Street house, it was a refreshment to sit
in any place so simple and so clean. Reforms, too, had been made in the
food, and the bread was no longer disfigured by caraway seeds. A great
bowl of blue hepaticas, fresh from the forest, stood on the table; and
the hepaticas were the exact colour of Anna's eyes. When Letty saw her
mother's handwriting she turned cold. It was the warrant that was to
banish her from Eden, casting her back into the outer darkness of the
Popular Concerts and the literature lectures. She was in the act of
raising a spoonful of pudding to her already opened mouth, when she
caught sight of the well-known writing. She hesitated, her hand shook,
and finally she laid her spoon down again and pushed her plate back. At
the great crises of life who can go on eating pudding? What then was her
relief and joy to see her aunt get up, come round to where she was
sitting braced to hear the worst, put her arms round her neck, and to
feel herself being kissed. "You are going to stay with me after all!"
cried Anna delightedly. "Dear little Letty--I should have missed you
horribly. Aren't you glad? Your mother says I'm to keep you for ever so
long."

"Oh, I say--how ripping!" exclaimed Letty; and being a practical person
at once resumed and finished her pudding.

Miss Leech, too, looked exceedingly pleased. How could she be anything
but pleased at the prospect of staying with a person who was always so
kind and thoughtful as Anna? Her feelings, somehow, were never hurt by
Anna; Lady Estcourt seemed to have a special knack of jumping on them
every time she spoke to her. She knew she ought not to have such
sensitive feelings, and felt that it was more her fault than anyone
else's if they were hurt; yet there they were, and being hurt was
painful, and living with someone so even tempered as Anna was very
peaceful and pleasant. Mr. Jessup would have liked Anna. She wished he
could have known her. A higher compliment it was not in Miss Leech's
power to pay.

And when Anna saw the pleasure on Miss Leech's face, and saw that she
thought she was to stay too, she felt that for no sister-in-law in the
world would she wipe it out with that month's notice. She decided to say
nothing, but simply to keep her as well as Letty. Her two thousand a
year was in her eyes of infinite elasticity. Never having had any money,
she had no notion of how far it would go; and she did not hesitate to
come to a decision which would probably ultimately oblige her to reduce
the number of those persons Susie described as victims.

The next day the companion arrived. Anna went out into the hall to meet
her when she heard the approaching wheels of the shepherd-plaid chariot.
She felt rather nervous as she watched her emerging from beneath the
hood, for she knew how much of the comfort and peace of the twelve would
depend on this lady. She felt exceedingly nervous when the lady,
immediately upon shaking hands, asked if she could speak to her alone.

"_Natürlich,_" said Anna, a vague fear lest Fritz, the coachman,
should have insulted her on the way coming over her, though she only
knew Fritz as the mildest of men.

She led the way into the drawing-room. "Now what is she going to tell me
dreadful?" she thought, as she invited her to sit on the sofa, having
been instructed by Trudi that that was the place where strangers
expected to sit. "Suppose she isn't going to stay, and I shall have to
look for someone all over again? Perhaps the lining of the carriage has
been too much for her. _Bitte_" she said aloud, with an uneasy smile,
motioning Frau von Penheim towards the sofa.

The new companion was a big, elderly lady with a sensible face. Her
boots were thick, and she wore a mackintosh. She sat down, and looking
more attentively at Anna, smiled. Most people who saw her for the first
time did that. It was such a change and a pleasure after seeing plain
faces, and dull faces, and vain, pretty faces for an indefinite period,
to rest one's eyes on a person so charming yet manifestly preoccupied by
other matters than her charms.

"I feel it my duty," said the lady in German, "before we go any further
to tell you the truth."

This was alarming. The lady's manner was solemn. Anna inclined her head,
and felt scared. She wished that Axel Lohm were somewhere near.

"I see you are young," continued the lady, "and I presume that you are
inexperienced."

"Not so young," murmured Anna, who felt particularly young and
uncomfortable at that moment, and very unlike the mistress of a house
interviewing a companion. "Not so young--twenty-five."

"Twenty-five? You do not look it. But what is twenty-five?"

Anna did not know, so said nothing.

"My position here would be a responsible one," continued the lady,
scrutinising Anna's face, and smiling again at what she saw there.
"Taking charge of a motherless girl always is. And the circumstances in
this case are peculiar."

"Yes," said Anna, "they are even more peculiar than you imagine----" And
she was about to explain the approaching advent of the victims, when the
lady held up her hand in a masterful way, as though enjoining silence,
and said, "First hear me. Through a series of misfortunes I have been
reduced to poverty since my husband's death. But I do not choose to live
on the charity of relatives, which is the most unbearable form of
charity calling itself by that holy name, and I am determined to work
for my bread."

She paused. Anna could find nothing better to say than "Oh."

"Out of consideration for my relatives, who are enraged at my
resolution, and think I ought to starve quietly on what they choose to
give me sooner than make myself conspicuous by working, I have called
myself Frau von Penheim. I will not come here under false pretences, and
to you, privately, I will confess that my proper title is the Princess
Ludwig, of that house."

She stopped to observe the effect of this announcement. Anna was
confounded. A princess was not at all what she wanted. She felt that she
had no use whatever for princesses. How could she ever expect one to get
up early and see that the twelve received their meat in due season?
"Oh," she said again, and then was silent.

The princess watched her closely. She was very poor, and very anxious to
have the place. "'Oh' is so English," she said, smiling to hide her
anxiety. "We say '_ach_!"

Anna laughed.

"And do not think that all German princesses are like your English
ones," she went on eagerly. "My father-in-law was raised to the rank of
Fürst for services rendered to the state. He had a large family, and my
husband was a younger son."

Still Anna was silent. Then she said "I--I wish----" and then stopped.

"What do you wish, my dear child?"

"I wish--that I--that you----"

"That you had known it beforehand? Then you would never have taken me,
even on trial," was the prompt reply.

Anna's eyes said plainly, "No, I would not."

"And it is so important that I should find something to do. At first I
answered advertisements in my real name, and received my photograph back
by the next post. This, and the anger of my family, decided me to drop
the title altogether. But I had always resolved that if I did find a
place I would confess to my employer. It is a terrible thing to be very
poor," she added, staring straight before her with eyes growing dim at
her remembrances.

"Yes," said Anna, under her breath.

"To have nothing, nothing at all, and to be burdened at the same time by
one's birth."

"Oh," murmured Anna, with a little catch in her voice.

"And to be dependent on people who only wish that you were safely out of
the way--dead."

"Married," whispered Anna.

"Why, what do you know about it?" said the princess, turning quickly to
her; for she had been thinking aloud rather than addressing anyone.

"I know everything about it," said Anna; and in a rush of bad but eager
German she told her of those old days when even the sweeping of
crossings had seemed better than living on relations, and how since then
all her heart had been filled with pity for the type of poverty called
genteel, and how now that she was well off she was going to help women
who were in the same sad situation in which she had been. Her eyes were
wet when she finished. She had spoken with extraordinary enthusiasm, a
fresh wave of passionate sympathy with such lives passing over her; and
not until she had done did she remember that she had never before seen
this lady, and that she was saying things to her that she had not as yet
said to the most intimate of her friends.

She felt suddenly uncomfortable; her eyelashes quivered and drooped, and
she blushed.

The princess contemplated her curiously. "I congratulate you," she said,
laying her hand lightly for a moment on Anna's. "The idea and the good
intentions will have been yours, whatever the result may be."

This was not very encouraging as a response to an outburst. "I have told
you more than I tell most people," Anna said, looking up shamefacedly,
"because you have had much the same experiences that I have."

"Except the uncle at the end. He makes such a difference. May I ask if
many of the ladies answered _both_ advertisements?"

"No, they did not."

"Not one?"

"Not one."

The princess thought that working for one's bread was distinctly
preferable to taking Anna's charity; but then she was of an unusually
sturdy and independent nature. "I can assure you," she said after a
short silence, "that I would do my best to look after your house and
your--your friends and yourself."

"But I want someone who will do _everything_--order the meals, train the
servants--everything. And get up early besides," said Anna, her voice
full of doubt. The princess really belonged, she felt, to the category
of sad, sick, and sorry; and if she had asked for a place among the
twelve there would have been little difficulty in giving her one. But
the companion she had imagined was to be a real help, someone she could
order about as she chose, certainly not a person unused to being ordered
about. Even the parson's sister-in-law Helena would have been better
than this.

"I would do all that, naturally. Do you think if I am not too proud to
take wages that I shall be too proud to do the work for which they are
paid?"

"Would you not prefer----" began Anna, and hesitated.

"Would I not prefer what, my child?"

"Prefer to--would it not be more agreeable for you to come and live here
without working? I could find another companion, and I would be happy if
you will stay here as--as one of the others."

The princess laughed; a hearty, big laugh in keeping with her big
person.

"No," she said. "I would not like that at all. But thank you, dear
child, for making the offer. Let me stay here and do what work you want
done, and then you pay me for it, and we are quits. I assure you there
is a solid satisfaction in being quits. I shall certainly not expect any
more consideration than you would give to a Frau Schultz. And I will be
able to take care of you; and I think, if you will not be angry with me
for saying so, that you greatly need taking care of."

"Well, then," said Anna, with an effort, "let us try it for three
months."

An immense load was lifted off the princess's heart by these words. "You
will not regret it," she said emphatically.

But Anna was not so sure. Though she did her best to put a cheerful face
on her new bargain, she could not help fearing that her enterprise had
begun badly. She was unusually pensive throughout the evening.




CHAPTER XIII


What the Princess Ludwig thought of her new place it would be difficult
to say. She accepted her position as minister to the comforts of the
hitherto comfortless without remark and entirely as a matter of course.
She got up at hours exemplary in their earliness, and was about the
house rattling a bunch of keys all day long. She was wholly practical,
and as destitute of illusions as she was of education in the ordinary
sense. Her knowledge of German literature was hardly more extensive than
Letty's, and of other tongues and other literatures she knew and cared
nothing. As for illusions, she saw things as they are, and had never at
any period of her life possessed enthusiasms. Nor had she the least
taste for hidden meanings and symbols. Maeterlinck, if she had heard of
him, would have been dismissed by her with an easy smile. Anna's
whitewash to her was whitewash; a disagreeable but economical
wall-covering. She knew and approved of it as cheap; how could she dream
that it was also symbolic? She never dreamed at all, either sleeping or
waking. If by some chance she had fallen into musings, she would have
mused blood and iron, the superiority of the German nation, cookery in
its three forms _feine_, _bürgerliche_, and _Hausmannskost_, in all
which forms she was preëminent in skill--she would have mused, that is,
on facts, plain and undisputed. If she had had children she would have
made an excellent mother; as it was she made excellent cakes--also a
form of activity to be commended. She was a Dettingen before her
marriage, and the Dettingens are one of the oldest Prussian families,
and have produced more first-rate soldiers and statesmen and a larger
number of mothers of great men than any other family in that part. The
Penheims and Dettingens had intermarried continually, and it was to his
mother's Dettingen blood that the first Fürst Penheim owed the
energy that procured him his elevation. Princess Ludwig was a good
example of the best type of female Dettingen. Like many other
illiterates, she prided herself particularly on her sturdy common sense.
Regarding this quality, which she possessed, as more precious than
others which she did not possess, she was not likely to sympathise much
either with Anna's plan for making people happy, or with those who were
willing to be made happy in such a way. A sensible woman, she thought,
will always find work, and need not look far for a home. She herself had
been handicapped in the search by her unfortunate title, yet with
patience even she had found a haven. Only the lazy and lackadaisical,
the morally worthless, that is, would, she was convinced, accept such an
offer as Anna's. It was not, however, her business. Her business was to
look after Anna's house; and she did it with a zeal and thoroughness
that struck terror into the hearts of the maid-servants. Trudi's fitful
energy was nothing to it. Trudi had introduced workmen and chaos; the
princess, with a rapidity and skill little short of amazing to anyone
unacquainted with the capabilities of the well-trained German
_Hausfrau_, cleared out the workmen and reduced the chaos to order.
Within three weeks the house was ready, and Anna, palpitating, saw the
moment approaching when the first batch of unhappy ones might be
received.

Manske's time was entirely taken up writing letters of inquiry
concerning the applicants, and it was surprising in what huge batches
they had to be weeded out. Of fifty applications received in one day,
three or four, after due inquiry, would alone remain for further
consideration; and of these three or four, after yet closer inquiry,
sometimes not one would be left.

At first Anna asked the princess's advice as well as Manske's, and it
was when she was present at the consultations that the heap into which
the letters of the unworthy were gathered was biggest. All those ladies
belonging to the _bürgerliche_ or middle classes were in her eyes wholly
unworthy. If Anna had proposed to take washerwomen into her home, and
required the princess's help in brightening their lives, it would have
been given in the full measure, pressed down and running over, that
befits a Christian gentlewoman; but for the _Bürgerlichen_, those
belonging to the class more immediately below her own, the princess's
feeling was only Christian so long as they kept a great way off. There
was so much good sense in the objections she made that Anna, who did her
best to keep an open mind and listen attentively to advice, was forced
to agree with her, and added letters to the ever-increasing heap of the
rejected which she might otherwise have reserved for riper
consideration. After two or three days, however, it became clear to her
that if she continued to consult the princess, no one would be accepted
at all, for Manske's respect for that lady was so profound that he was
invariably of her opinion. She did not, therefore, invite her again to
assist at the interviews. Still, all she had said, and the knowledge
that she must know her own countrywomen fairly thoroughly, made Anna
prudent; and so it came about that the first arrivals were to be only
three in number, chosen without reference to the princess, and one of
them was _bürgerlich_.

"We can meanwhile proceed with our inquiries about the remaining nine,"
said Manske, "and the gracious Miss will be always gaining experience."

She trod on air during the days preceding the arrival of the chosen. To
say that she was blissful would be but an inadequate description of her
state of mind. The weather was beautiful, and it increased her happiness
tenfold to know that their new life was to begin in sunshine. She had
never a doubt as to their delight in the sun-chequered forest, in the
freshness of the glittering sea, in the peacefulness of the quiet
country life, so quiet that the week seemed to be all Sundays. Were not
these things sufficient for herself? Did she ever tire of those long
pine vistas, with the narrow strip of clearest blue between the gently
waving tree-tops? The dreamy murmur of the forest gave her an exquisite
pleasure. To see the bloom on the pink and grey trunks of the pines, and
the sun on the moss and lichen beneath, was so deep a satisfaction to
her soul that the thought that others who had been knocked about by life
would not feel it too, would not enter with profoundest thankfulness
into this other world of peace, never struck her at all. When these poor
tired women, freed at last from every care and every anxiety, had
refreshed themselves with the music and fragrance of the forest, there
was the garden across the road to enjoy, with the marsh already strewn
with kingcups on the other side of the hedge already turning green; and
the sea with the fishing-smacks passing up and down, and the silver
gleam of gulls' wings circling round the orange sails, and eagles
floating high up aloft, specks in the infinite blue; and then there were
drives along the coast towards the north, where the wholesome wind blew
fresher than in the woods; and quiet evenings in the roomy house, where
all that was asked of them was that they should be happy.

"It's a lovely plan, isn't it, Letty?" she said joyously, the evening
before they were to arrive, as she stood with her arm round Letty's
shoulder at the bottom of the garden, where they had both been watching
the sails of the fishing-smacks during those short sunset moments when
they looked like the bright wings of spirits moving over the face of the
placid waters.

"I should rather think it was," replied Letty, who was profoundly
interested.

They got up at sunrise the next morning, and went out into the forest in
search of hepaticas and windflowers with which to decorate the three
bedrooms. These bedrooms were the largest and pleasantest in the house.
Anna had given up her own because she thought the windows particularly
pleasing, and had gone into a little one in the fervour of her desire to
lavish all that was best on her new friends. The rooms were furnished
with special care, an immense amount of thought having been bestowed on
the colour of the curtains, the pattern of the porcelain, and the books
filling the shelves above each writing-table. The colours and patterns
were the nearest approach Berlin could produce to Anna's own favourite
colours and patterns. She wasted half her time, when the rooms were
ready, sitting in them and picturing what her own delight would have
been if she, like the poor ladies for whom they were intended, had come
straight out of a cold, unkind world into such pretty havens.

The choice of books had been a great difficulty, and there had been much
correspondence on the subject with Berlin before a selection had been
made. Books there must be, for no room, she thought, was habitable
without them; and she had tried to imagine what manner of literature
would most appeal to her unhappy ones. It was to be presumed that their
ages were such as to exclude frivolity; therefore she bought very few
novels. She thought Dickens translated into German would be a safe
choice; also Schlegel's Shakespeare for loftier moments. The German
classics were represented by Goethe in one room, Schiller in another,
and Heine in the third. In each room also there was a German-English
dictionary, for the facilitation of intercourse. Finally, she asked the
princess to recommend something they would be sure to like, and she
recommended cookery books.

"But they are not going to cook," said Anna, surprised.

"_Es ist egal_--it is always interesting to read good recipes. No other
reading affords me the same pleasure."

"But only when you want something new cooked."

"No, no, at all times," insisted the princess.

Anna could not quite believe that such a taste was general; but in case
one of the three should share it, she put a cookery book in one
bookcase. In the other two severally to balance it, she slipt at the
last moment a volume of Maeterlinck, to which at that period she was
greatly attached; and Matthew Arnold's poems, to which also at that
period she was greatly attached.

The princess went about with pursed lips while these preparations were
in progress; and when, at sunrise on the last morning, she was awakened
by stealthy footsteps and smothered laughter on the landing outside her
room, and, opening her door an inch and peering out as in duty bound in
case the sounds should be emanating from some unaccountably mirthful
maid-servant, she saw Anna and Letty creeping downstairs with their hats
on and baskets in their hands, she guessed what they were going to do,
and got back into bed with lips more pursed than ever. Did she not know
who had been chosen, and that one of the three was a _Bürgerliche_?

About eight o'clock, when the two girls were coming out of the forest
with their baskets full and their faces happy, Axel Lohm was riding
thoughtfully past, having just settled an unpleasant business at
Kleinwalde. Dellwig had sent him an urgent message in the small hours;
there had been a brawl among the labourers about a woman, and a man had
been stabbed. Axel had ordered the aggressor to be locked up in the
little room that served as a temporary prison till he could be handed
over to the Stralsund authorities. His wife, a girl of twenty, was ill,
and she and her three small children depended entirely on the man's
earnings. The victim appeared to be dying, and the man would certainly
be punished. What, then, thought Axel, was to become of the wife and the
children? Frau Dellwig had told him that she sent soup every day at
dinner-time, but soup once a day would neither comfort them nor make
them fat. Besides, he had a notion that the soup of Frau Dellwig's
charity was very thin. He was riding dejectedly enough down the road on
his way home, looking straight before him, his mouth a mere grim line,
thinking how grievous it was that the consequences of sin should fall
with their most terrific weight nearly always on the innocent, on the
helpless women-folk and the weak little children, when Anna and Letty
appeared, talking and laughing, on the edge of the forest.

Letty, we know, had not been kindly treated by nature, but even she was
a pleasing object in her harmless morning cheerfulness after the faces
he had just seen; and Anna's beauty, made radiant by happiness and
contentment, startled him. He had a momentary twinge, gone almost before
he had realised it, a sudden clear conception of his great loneliness.
The satisfaction he strove to extract from improving his estate for the
benefit of his brother Gustav appeared to him at that moment to bear a
singular resemblance, in its thinness, to Frau Dellwig's charitable
soup. He got off his horse to speak to her, and rested his eyes, tired
by looking at the hideous passions on the brawler's face, on hers.
"To-day is the important day, is it not?" he asked, glancing from her
flower-like face to the flowers.

"The first three come this afternoon."

"So Manske told me. You are very happy, I can see," he said, smiling.

"I never was so happy before."

"Your uncle was a wise man. He told me he was going to leave you
Kleinwalde because he felt sure you would be happy leading the simple
life here."

"Did he talk about me to you?"

"After his last visit to England he talked about you all the time."

"Oh?" said Anna, looking at him thoughtfully. Uncle Joachim, she
remembered perfectly, had urged two things--the leading of the better
life, and the marrying of a good German gentleman. A faint flush came
into her face and faded again. She had suddenly become aware that Axel
was the good German gentleman he had meant. Well, the wisest uncle was
subject to errors of judgment.

"I trust those women will not worry you too much," he said, thinking how
immense would be the pity if those happy eyes ever lost their
joyousness.

"Worry me? Poor things, they won't have any energy of any sort left
after all they have gone through. I never read such pitiful letters."

"Well, I don't know," said Axel doubtfully. "Manske says one of them is
a Treumann. It is a family distinguished by its size and its
disagreeableness."

"Oh, but she only married a Treumann, and isn't one herself."

"But a woman generally adopts the peculiarities of the family she
marries into, especially if they are unpleasant."

"But she has been a widow for years. And is so poor. And is so crushed."

"I never yet heard of a permanently crushed Treumann," said Axel,
shaking his head.

"You are trying to make me uneasy," said Anna, a slight touch of
impatience in her voice. She was singularly sensitive about her chosen
ones; sensitive in the way mothers are about a child that is deformed.

"No, no," he said quickly, "I only wish to warn you. You maybe
disappointed--it is just possible." He could not bear to think of her as
disappointed.

"Pray, do you know anything against the other two?" she asked with some
defiance. "One of them is a Baroness Elmreich, and the other is a
Fräulein Kuhräuber."

Axel looked amused. "I never heard of Fräulein Kuhräuber," he said.
"What does Princess Ludwig say to her coming?"

"Nothing at all. What should she say?"

It was Fräulein Kuhräuber's coming that had more particularly occasioned
the pursing of the princess's lips.

"I know some Elmreichs," said Axel. "A few of them are respectable; but
one branch at least of the family is completely demoralised. A Baron
Elmreich shot himself last year because he had been caught cheating at
cards. And one of his sisters--oh, well, some of them are harmless, I
believe."

"Thank you."

"You are angry with me?"

"Very."

"And why?"

"You want to prejudice me against these poor things. They can't help
what distant relations do. They will get away from them in my house, at
least, and have peace."

"Miss Letty, is your aunt often--what is the word--so fractious?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Letty, who found it dull waiting in silence
while other people talked. "It's breakfast time, you know, and people
can't stand much just about then."

"Oh, youthful philosopher!" exclaimed Axel. "So young, and of the female
sex, and yet to have pierced to the very root of human weakness!"

"Stuff," said Letty, offended.

"What, are you going to be angry too? Then let me get on my horse and
go."

"It's the best thing you can do," said Letty, always frank, but doubly
so when she was hungry.

"Shall you come and see us soon?" Anna asked, gathering up her skirts in
her one free hand, preparatory to crossing the muddy road.

"But you are angry with me."

She looked up and laughed. "Not now," she said; "I've finished. Do you
think I'm going to be angry long this pleasant April morning?"

"I smell the coffee," observed Letty, sniffing.

"Then I will come to-morrow if I may," said Axel, "and make the
acquaintance of Frau von Treumann and Baroness Elmreich."

"And Fräulein Kuhräuber," said Anna, with emphasis. She thought she saw
the same tendency in him that was so manifest in the princess, a
tendency to ignore the very existence of any one called Kuhräuber.

"And Fräulein Kuhräuber," repeated Axel gravely.

"They've burnt the toast again," said Letty; "I can hear them scraping
off the black."

"I wish you good luck, then," said Axel, taking off his hat; "with all
my heart I wish you good luck, and that these ladies may very soon be as
happy as you are yourself."

"That's nice," said Anna, approvingly; "so much, much nicer than the
other things you have been saying." And she nodded to him, all smiles,
as she crossed over to the house and he rode away.




CHAPTER XIV


Long before the carriage bringing the three chosen ones from the station
could possibly arrive, Anna and Letty began to wait in the hall,
standing at the windows, going out on to the steps, looking into the
different rooms every few minutes to make sure that everything was
ready. The bedrooms were full of the hepaticas of the morning; the
coffee had been set out with infinite care and an eye to effect by Anna
herself on a little table in the drawing-room by the open window,
through which the mild April air came in and gently fanned the curtains
to and fro; and the princess had baked her best cakes for the occasion,
inwardly deploring, as she did so, that such cakes should be offered to
such people. When she had seen that all was as it should be, she
withdrew into her own room, where she remained darning sheets, for she
had asked Anna to excuse her from being present at the arrival. "It is
better that you should make their acquaintance by yourself," she said.
"The presence of too many strangers at first might disconcert them under
the circumstances."

Miss Leech profited by this remark, made in her hearing, and did not
appear either; so that when the carriage drove in at the gate only Anna
and Letty were standing at the door in the sunshine.

Anna's heart bumped so as the three slowly disentangled themselves and
got out, that she could hardly speak. Her face flushed and grew pale by
turns, and her eyes were shining with something suspiciously like tears.
What she wanted to do was to put her arms right round the three poor
ladies, and kiss them, and comfort them, and make up for all their
griefs. What she did was to put out a very cold, shaking hand, and say
in a voice that trembled, "_Guten Tag_."

"_Guten Tag_," said the first lady to descend; evidently, from her
mourning, the widowed Frau von Treumann.

Anna took her extended hand in both hers, and clasping it tight looked
at its owner with all her heart in her eyes. "_Es freut mich so--es
freut mich so_," she murmured incoherently.

"_Ach_--you are Miss Estcourt?" asked the lady in German.

"Yes, yes," said Anna, still clinging to her hand, "and so happy, so
very happy to see you."

Frau von Treumann hereupon made some remarks which Anna supposed were of
a grateful nature, but she spoke so rapidly and in such subdued tones,
glancing round uneasily as she did so at the coachman and at the others,
and Anna herself was so much agitated, that what she said was quite
incomprehensible. Again Anna longed to throw her arms round the poor
woman's neck, and interrupt her with kisses, and tell her that gratitude
was not required of her, but only that she should be happy; but she felt
that if she did so she would begin to cry, and tears were surely out of
place on such a joyful occasion, especially as nobody else looked in the
least like crying.

"You are Frau von Treumann, I know," she said, holding her hand, and
turning to the next one and beaming on her, "and this is Baroness
Elmreich?"

"No, no," said the third lady quickly, "_I_ am Baroness Elmreich."

Fräulein Kuhräuber, an ample person whose body, swathed in travelling
cloaks, had blotted out the other little woman, looked frightened and
apologetic, and made deep curtseys.

Anna shook their hands one after the other with all the warmth that was
glowing in her heart. Her defective German forsook her almost
completely. She did nothing but repeat disconnected ejaculations, "_so
reizend--so glücklich--so erfreut_----" and fill in the gaps with happy,
quivering smiles at each in turn, and timid little pats on any hand
within her reach.

Letty meanwhile stood in the shadow of the doorway, wishing that she
were young enough to suck her thumb. It kept on going up to her mouth of
its own accord, and she kept on pulling it down again. This was one of
the occasions, she felt, when the sucking of thumbs is a relief and a
blessing. It gives one's superfluous hands occupation, and oneself a
countenance. She shifted from one foot to the other uneasily, and held
on tight to the rebellious thumb, for the tall lady who had got out
first was fixing her with a stare that chilled her blood. The tall lady,
who was very tall and thin, and had round unblinking dark eyes set close
together like an owl's, and strongly marked black eyebrows, said
nothing, but examined her slowly from the tip of the bow of ribbon
trembling on her head to the buckles of the shoes creaking on her feet.
Ought she to offer to shake hands with her, or ought she to wait to be
shaken hands with, Letty asked herself distractedly. Anyhow it was
rather rude to stare like that. She had always been taught that it was
rude to stare like that.

Anna had forgotten all about her, and only remembered her when they were
in the drawing-room and she had begun to pour out the coffee. "Oh,
Letty, where are you? This is my niece," she said; and Letty was at last
shaken hands with.

"Ah--she keeps you company," said the baroness. "You found it lonely
here, naturally."

"Oh no, I am never lonely," said Anna cheerfully, filling the cups and
giving them to Letty to carry round.

"How pleasant the air is to-day," observed Frau von Treumann, edging her
chair away from the window. "Damp, but pleasant. You like fresh air, I
see."

"Oh, I love it," said Anna; "and it is so beautiful here--so pure, and
full of the sea."

"You are not afraid of catching cold, sitting so near an open window?"

"Oh, is it too much for you? Letty, shut the window. It is getting
chilly. The days are so fine that one forgets it is only April."

Anna talked German and poured out the coffee with a nervous haste
unusual to her. The three women sitting round the little table staring
at her made her feel terribly nervous. She was happy beyond words to
have got them safely under her own roof at last, but she was nervous.
She was determined that there should be no barriers of conventionality
from the first between themselves and her; not a minute more of their
lives was to be wasted; this was their home, and she was all ready to
love them; she had made up her mind that however shy she felt she was
going to behave as though they were her dear friends--which indeed, she
assured herself, was exactly what they were. Therefore she struggled
bravely against her nervousness, addressing them collectively and
singly, saying whatever came first into her head in her anxiety to say
something, smiling at them, pressing the princess's cakes on them,
hardly letting them drink their coffee before she wanted to give them
more. But it was no good; she was and remained nervous, and her hand
shook so when she lifted it that she was ashamed.

Fräulein Kuhräuber was the one who stared least. If she caught Anna's
eye her own drooped, whereas the eyes of the other two never wavered.
She sat on the edge of her chair in a way made familiar to Anna by
intercourse with Frau Manske, and whatever anybody said she nodded her
head and murmured "_Ja, eben_." She was obviously ill at ease, and
dropped the sugar-tongs when she was offered sugar with a loud clatter
on to the varnished floor, nearly sweeping the cups off the table in her
effort to pick them up again.

"Oh, do not mind," said Anna, "Letty will pick them up. They are stupid
things--much too big for the sugar-basin."

"_Ja, eben_," said Fräulein Kuhräuber, sitting up and looking perturbed.
The other two removed their eyes from Anna's face for a moment to stare
at the Fräulein. The baroness, a small, fair person with hair arranged
in those little flat curls called kiss-me-quicks on each cheek, and
wide-open pale blue eyes, and a little mouth with no lips, or lips so
thin that they were hardly visible, sat very still and straight, and had
a way of moving her eyes round from one face to the other without at the
same time moving her head. She was unmarried, and was probably about
thirty-five, Anna thought, but she had always evaded questions in the
correspondence about her age. Fräulein Kuhräuber was also thirty-five,
and as large and blooming as the baroness was small and pale. Frau von
Treumann was over fifty, and had had more sorrows, judging from her
letters, than the other two. She sat nearest Anna, who every now and
then laid her hand gently on hers and let it rest there a moment, in her
determination to thaw all frost from the very beginning. "Oh, I quite
forgot," she said cheerfully--the amount of cheerfulness she put into
her voice made her laugh at herself--"I quite forgot to introduce you to
each other."

"We did it at the station," said Frau von Treumann, "when we found
ourselves all entering your carriage."

"The Elmreichs are connected with the Treumanns," observed the baroness.

"We are such a large family," said Frau von Treumann quickly, "that we
are connected with nearly everybody."

The tone was cold, and there was a silence. Neither of them, apparently,
was connected with Fräulein Kuhräuber, who buried her face in her cup,
in which the tea-spoon remained while she drank, and heartily longed for
connections.

But she had none. She was absolutely without relations except deceased
ones. She had been an orphan since she was two, cared for by her one
aunt till she was ten. The aunt died, and she found a refuge in an
orphanage till she was sixteen, when she was told that she must earn her
bread. She was a lazy girl even in those days, who liked eating her
bread better than earning it. No more, however, being forthcoming in the
orphanage, she went into a pastor's family as _Stütze der Hausfrau_.
These _Stütze_, or supports, are common in middle-class German families,
where they support the mistress of the house in all her manifold duties,
cooking, baking, mending, ironing, teaching or amusing the
children--being in short a comfort and blessing to harassed mothers. But
Fräulein Kuhräuber had no talent whatever for comforting mothers, and
she was quickly requested to leave the busy and populous parsonage;
whereupon she entered upon the series of driftings lasting twenty years,
which landed her, by a wonderful stroke of fortune, in Anna's arms.

When she saw the advertisement, her future was looking very black. She
was, as usual, under notice to quit, and had no other place in view, and
had saved nothing. It is true the advertisement only offered a home to
women of good family; but she got over that difficulty by reflecting
that her family was all in heaven, and that there could be no relations
more respectable than angels. She wrote therefore in glowing terms of
the paternal Kuhräuber, "_gegenwärtig mit Gott_," as she put it,
expatiating on his intellect and gifts (he was a man of letters, she
said), while he yet dwelt upon earth. Manske, with all his inquiries,
could find out nothing about her except that she was, as she said, an
orphan, poor, friendless, and struggling; and Anna, just then impatient
of the objections the princess made to every applicant, quickly decided
to accept this one, against whom not a word had been said. So Fräulein
Kuhräuber, who had spent her life in shirking work, who was quite
thriftless and improvident, who had never felt particularly unhappy, and
whose father had been a postman, found herself being welcomed with an
enthusiasm that astonished her to Anna's home, being smiled upon and
patted, having beautiful things said to her, things the very opposite to
those to which she had been used, things to the effect that she was now
to rest herself for ever and to be sure and not do anything except just
that which made her happiest.

It was very wonderful. It seemed much, much too good to be true. And the
delight that filled her as she sat eating excellent cakes, and the
discomfort she endured because of the stares of the other two women, and
the consciousness that she had never learned how to behave in the
society of persons with _von_ before their names, produced such mingled
feelings of ecstasy and fright in her bosom that it was quite natural
she should drop the sugar-tongs, and upset the cream-jug, and choke over
her coffee--all of which things she did, to Anna's distress, who
suffered with her in her agitation, while the eyes of the other two
watched each successive catastrophe with profoundest attention.

It was an uncomfortable half hour. "I am shy, and they are shy," Anna
said to herself, apologising as it were for the undoubted flatness that
prevailed. How could it be otherwise, she thought? Did she expect them
to gush? Heaven forbid. Yet it was an important crisis in their lives,
this passing for ever from neglect and loneliness to love, and she
wondered vaguely that the obviously paramount feeling should be interest
in the awkwardness of Fräulein Kuhräuber.

Her German faltered, and threatened to give out entirely. The inevitable
pause came, and they could hear the sparrows quarrelling in the golden
garden, and the creaking of a distant pump.

"How still it is," observed the baroness with a slight shiver.

"You have no farmyard near the house to make it more cheerful," said
Frau von Treumann. "My father's house had the garden at the back, and
the farmyard in the front, and one did not feel so cut off from
everything. There was always something going on in the yard--always life
and noises."

"Really?" said Anna; and again the pump and the sparrows became audible.

"The stillness is truly remarkable," observed the baroness again.

"_Ja, eben_," said Fräulein Kuhräuber.

"But it is beautiful, isn't it," said Anna, gazing out at the light on
the water. "It is so restful, so soothing. Look what a lovely sunset
there must be this evening. We can't see it from this side of the house,
but look at the colour of the grass and the water."

"_Ach_--you are a friend of nature," said Frau von Treumann, turning her
head for a brief moment towards the window, and then examining Anna's
face. "I am also. There is nothing I like more than nature. Do you
paint?"

"I wish I could."

"Ah, then you sing--or play?"

"I can do neither."

"_So?_ But what have you here, then, in the way of distractions, of
pastimes?"

"I don't think I have any," said Anna, smiling. "I have been very busy
till now making things ready for you, and after this I shall just enjoy
being alive."

Frau von Treumann looked puzzled for a moment. Then she said "_Ach so._"

There was another silence.

"Have some more coffee," said Anna, laying hold of the pot persuasively.
She was feeling foolish, and had blushed stupidly after that _Ach so_.

"No, no," said Frau von Treumann, putting up a protesting hand, "you are
very kind. Two cups are a limit beyond which voracity itself could not
go. What do you say? You have had three? Oh, well, you are young, and
young people can play tricks with their digestions with less danger than
old ones."

At this speech Fräulein Kuhräuber's four cups became plainly written on
her guilty face. The thought that she had been voracious at the very
first meal was appalling to her. She hastily pushed away her half-empty
cup--too hastily, for it upset, and in her effort to save it it fell on
to the floor and was broken. "_Ach, Herr Je!_" she cried in her
distress.

The other two looked at each other; the expression is an unusual one on
the lips of gentle-women.

"Oh, it does not matter--really it does not," Anna hastened to assure
her. "Don't pick it up--Letty will. The table is too small really. There
is no room on it for anything."

"_Ja, eben_," said Fräulein Kuhräuber, greatly discomfited.

"You would like to go upstairs, I am sure," said Anna hurriedly, turning
to the others. "You must be very tired," she added, looking at Frau von
Treumann.

"I am," replied that lady, closing her eyes for a moment with a little
smile expressive of patient endurance.

"Then we will go up. Come," she said, holding out her hand to Fräulein
Kuhräuber. "No, no--let Letty pick up the pieces----" for the Fräulein,
in her anxiety to repair the disaster, was about to sweep the remaining
cups off the table with the sleeve of her cloak.

Anna drew her hand through her arm, and gave it a furtive and
encouraging stroke. "I will go first and show you the way," she said
over her shoulder to the others.

And so it came about that Frau von Treumann and Baroness Elmreich
actually found themselves going through doors and up stairs behind a
person called Kuhräuber. They exchanged glances again. Whatever might be
their private objections to each other, they had one point already on
which they agreed, for with equal heartiness they both disapproved of
Fräulein Kuhräuber.




CHAPTER XV


As soon as Baroness Elmreich found herself alone in her bedroom, she
proceeded to examine its contents with minute care. Supper, she had been
told, was not till eight o'clock, and she had not much to unpack; so
laying aside her hat and cloak, and glancing at the reflection of her
little curls in the glass to see whether they were as they should be,
she began her inspection of each separate article in her room, taking
each one up and scrutinising it, holding the jars of hepaticas high
above her head in order to see whether the price was marked underneath,
untidying the bed to feel the quality of the sheets, poking the mattress
to discover the nature of the stuffing, and investigating with special
attention the embroidery on the pillow-cases. But everything was as
dainty and as perfect as enthusiasm could make it. Nowhere, with her
best endeavours, could she discover the signs she was looking for of
cheapness and shabbiness in less noticeable things that would have
helped her to understand her hostess. "This embroidery has cost at least
two marks the meter," she said to herself, fingering it. "She must roll
in money. And the wall-paper--how unpractical! It is so light that every
mark will be seen. The flies alone will ruin it in a month."

She shrugged her shoulders, and smiled; strange to say, the thought of
Anna's paper being spoiled pleased her.

Never had she been in a room the least like this one. If whitewash
prevailed downstairs, and in Anna's special haunts, it had not been
permitted to invade the bedrooms of the Chosen. Anna's reflections had
led her to the conclusion that the lives of these ladies had till then
probably been spent in bare places, and that they would accordingly feel
as much pleasure in the contemplation of carpets, papered walls, and
stuffed chairs, as she herself did in the severity of her whitewashed
rooms after the lavishly upholstered years of her youth. But the
daintiness and luxury only filled the baroness with doubts. She stood in
the middle of it looking round her when she had finished her tour of
inspection and had made guesses at the price of everything, and asked
herself who this Miss Estcourt could be. Anna would have been
considerably disappointed, and perhaps even moved to tears, if she had
known that the room she thought so pretty struck the baroness, whose
taste in furniture had not advanced beyond an appreciation for the dark
and heavy hangings and walnut-wood tables of her more prosperous years,
merely as odd. Odd, and very expensive. Where did the money come from
for this reckless furnishing with stuffs and colours that were bound to
show each stain? Her eye wandered along the shelves above the
writing-table--hers was the Heine and Maeterlinck room--and she wondered
what all the books were there for. She did not touch them as she had
touched everything else, for except an occasional novel, and, more
regularly, a journal beloved of German woman called the _Gartenlaube_,
she never read.

On the writing-table lay a blotter, a pretty, embroidered thing that
said as plainly as blotter could say that it had been chosen with
immense care; and opening it she found notepaper and envelopes stamped
with the Kleinwalde address and her own monogram. This was Anna's little
special gift, a childish addition, the making of which had given her an
absurd amount of pleasure. The happy idea, as she called it, had come to
her one night when she lay awake thinking about her new friends and
going through the familiar process of discovering their tastes by
imagining herself in their place. "_Sonderbar_," was the baroness's
comment; and she decided that the best thing she could do would be to
ring the bell and endeavour to obtain private information about Miss
Estcourt by means of a prolonged cross-examination of the housemaid.

She rang it, and then sat very straight and still on the sofa with her
hands folded in her lap, and waited. Her soul was full of doubts. Who
was this Miss, and where were the proofs that she was, as she had
pretended, of good birth? That she was not so very pious was evident;
for if she had been, some remark of a religious nature would inevitably
have been forthcoming when she first welcomed them to her house. No such
word, not the least approach to any such word, had been audible. There
had not even been an allusion, a sigh, or an upward glance. Yet the
pastor who had opened the correspondence had filled many pages with
expatiations on her zeal after righteousness. And then she was so young.
The baroness had expected to see an elderly person, or at least a person
of the age of everybody else, which was her own age; but this was a mere
girl, and a girl, too, who from the way she dressed, clearly thought
herself pretty. Surely it was strange that so young a woman should be
living here quite unattached, quite independent apparently of all
control, with a great deal of money at her disposal, and only one little
girl to give her a countenance? Suppose she were not a proper person at
all, suppose she were an outcast from society, a being on whom her own
countrypeople turned their backs? This desire to share her fortune with
respectable ladies could only be explained in two ways: either she had
been moved thereto by an enthusiastic piety of which not a trace had as
yet appeared, or she was an improper person anxious to rebuild her
reputation with the aid and countenance of the ladies of good family she
had entrapped into her house.

The baroness stiffened as she sat. It was her brother who had cheated at
cards and shot himself, and it was her sister of whom Axel Lohm had
heard strange tales; and few people are more savagely proper than the
still respectable relations of the demoralised. "The service in this
house is very bad," she said aloud and irascibly, getting up to ring
again. "No doubt she has trouble with her servants."

But there was a knock at the door while her hand was on the bell, and on
her calling "Come in," instead of the servant her hostess appeared,
dressed to the baroness's eye in a truly amazing and reprehensible
fashion, and looking as cheerful as an innocent infant for whom no such
thing as evil-doing exists. Also she seemed quite unconscious of her
clothes and bare neck, nor did she offer to explain why she was arrayed
as though she were going to a ball; and she stood a moment in the
doorway trying to say something in German and pretending to laugh at her
own ineffectual efforts, but really laughing, the baroness felt sure, in
order to show that she had dimples; which were not, after all, very
wonderful things to have--before she had grown so thin she almost had
one herself.

"May I come in?" said Anna at last, giving up the other and more
complicated speech.

"_Bitte_," said the baroness, with the smile the French call _pincé_.

"Has no one been to unpack your things?"

"I rang."

"And no one came? Oh, I shall scold Marie. It is the only thing I can do
well in German. Can you speak English?"

"No."

"Nor understand it?"

"No."

"French?"

"No."

"Oh, well, you must be patient then with my bad German. When I am alone
with anyone it goes better, but if there are many people listening I am
nervous and can hardly speak at all. How glad I am that you are here!"

Anna's shyness, now that she was by herself with one of her forlorn
ones, had vanished, and she prattled happily for some time, putting as
many mistakes into her sentences as they would hold, before she became
aware that the baroness's replies were monosyllabic, and that she was
examining her from head to foot with so much attention that there was
obviously none left over for the appreciation of her remarks.

This made her feel shy again. Clothes to her were such secondary
considerations, things of so little importance. Susie had provided them,
and she had put them on, and there it had ended; and when she found that
it was her dress and not herself that was interesting the baroness, she
longed to have the courage to say, "Don't waste time over it now--I'll
send it to your room to-night, if you like, and you can look at it
comfortably--only don't waste time now. I want to talk to you, to _you_
who have suffered so much; I want to make friends with you quickly, to
make you begin to be happy quickly; so don't let us waste the precious
time thinking of clothes." But she had neither sufficient courage nor
sufficient German.

She put out her hand rather timidly, and making an effort to bring her
companion's thoughts back to the things that mattered, said, "I hope you
will like living with me. I hope we shall be very happy together. I
can't tell you how happy it makes me to think that you are safely here,
and that you are going to stay with me always."

The baroness's hands were clasped in front of her, and they did not
unclasp to meet Anna's; but at this speech she left off eyeing the
dress, and began to ask questions. "You are very lonely, I can see," she
said with another of the pinched smiles. "Have you then no relations? No
one of your own family who will live with you? Will not your _Frau Mama_
come to Germany?"

"My mother is dead."

"_Ach_--mine also. And the _Herr Papa_?"

"He is dead."

"_Ach_--mine also."

"I know, I know," said Anna, stroking the unresponsive hands--a trick of
hers when she wanted to comfort that had often irritated Susie. "You
told me how lonely you were in your letters. I lived with my brother and
his wife till I came here. You have no brothers or sisters, I think you
wrote."

"None," said the baroness with a rigid look.

"Well, I am going to be your sister, if you will let me."

"You are very good."

"Oh, I am not good, only so happy--I have everything in the world that I
have ever wished to have, and now that you have come to share it all
there is nothing more I can think of that I want."

"_Ach_," said the baroness. Then she added, "Have you no aunts, or
cousins, who would come and stay with you?"

"Oh, heaps. But they are all well off and quite pleased, and they
wouldn't like staying here with me at all."

"They would not like staying with you? How strange."

"Very strange," laughed Anna. "You see they don't know how pleasant I
can be in my own house."

"And your friends--they too will not come?"

"I don't know if they would or not. I didn't ask them."

"You have no one, no one at all who would come and live with you so that
you should not be so lonely?"

"But I am not lonely," said Anna, looking down at the little woman with
a slightly amused expression, "and I don't in the least want to be lived
with."

"Then why do you wish to fill your house with strangers?"

"Why?" repeated Anna, a puzzled look coming into her eyes. Had not the
correspondence with the ultimately chosen been long? And were not all
her reasons duly set forth therein? "Why, because I want you to have
some of my nice things too."

"But not your own friends and relations?"

"They have everything they want."

There was a silence. Anna left off stroking the baroness's hands. She
was thinking that this was a queer little person--outside, that is.
Inside, of course, she was very different, poor little lonely thing; but
her outer crust seemed thick; and she wondered how long it would take
her to get through it to the soul that she was sure was sweet and
lovable. She was also unable to repress a conviction that most people
would call these questions rude.

But this train of thought was not one to be encouraged. "I am keeping
you here talking," she said, resuming her first cheerfulness, "and your
things are not unpacked yet. I shall go and scold Marie for not coming
when you rang, and I'll send her to you." And she went out quickly,
vexed with herself for feeling chilled, and left the baroness more full
of doubts than ever.

When she had rebuked Marie, who looked gloomy, she tapped at Frau von
Treumann's door. No one answered. She knocked again. No one answered.
Then she opened the door softly and looked in.

These were precious moments, she felt, these first moments of being
alone with each of her new friends, precious opportunities for breaking
ice. It is true she had not been able to break much of the ice encasing
the baroness, but she was determined not to be cast down by any of the
little difficulties she was sure to encounter at first, and she looked
into Frau von Treumann's room with fresh hope in her heart.

What, then, was her dismay to find that lady walking up and down with
the long strides of extreme excitement, her face bathed in tears.

"Oh--what's the matter?" gasped Anna, shutting the door quickly and
hurrying in.

Frau von Treumann had not heard the gentle taps, and when she saw her,
started, and tried to hide her face in her handkerchief.

"Tell me what is the matter," begged Anna, her voice full of tenderness.

"_Nichts, nichts_," was the hasty reply. "I did not hear you knock----"

"Tell me what is the matter," begged Anna again, fairly putting her arms
round the poor lady. "Our letters have said so much already--surely
there is nothing you cannot tell me now? And if I can help you----"

Frau von Treumann freed herself by a hasty movement, and began to walk
up and down again. "No, no, you can do nothing--you can do nothing," she
said, and wept as she walked.

Anna watched her in consternation.

"See to what I have come--see to what I have come!" said the agitated
lady under her breath but with passionate intensity, as she passed and
repassed her dismayed hostess; "oh, to have fallen so low! oh, to have
fallen so low!"

"So low?" echoed Anna, greatly concerned.

"At my age--I, a Treumann--I, a _geborene_ Gräfin Ilmas-Kadenstein--to
live on charity--to be a member of a charitable institution!"

"Institution? Charity? Oh no, no!" cried Anna. "It is a home here, and
there is no charity in it from the attic to the cellar." And she went
towards her with outstretched hands.

"A home! Yes, that is it," cried Frau von Treumann, waving her back, "it
is a home, a charitable home!"

"No, not a home like that--a real home, my home, your home--_ein Heim_,"
Anna protested; but vainly, because the German word _Heim_ and the
English word "home" have little meaning in common.

"_Ein Heim, ein Heim_," repeated Frau von Treumann with extraordinary
bitterness, "_ein Frauenheim_--yes, that is what it is, and everybody
knows it."

"Everybody knows it?"

"How could I think," she said, wringing her hands, "how could I think
when I decided to come here that the whole world was to be made
acquainted with your plans? I thought they were to be kept private, that
the world was to think we were your friends----"

"And so you are."

"--your guests----"

"Oh, more than guests--this is home."

"Home! Home! Always that word----" And she burst into a fresh torrent of
tears.

Anna stood helpless. What she said appeared only to aggravate Frau von
Treumann's sorrow and rage--for surely there was anger as well as
sorrow? She was at a complete loss for the reason of this outburst. Had
not every detail been discussed in the correspondence? Had not that
correspondence been exhaustive even to boredom?

"You have told your servants----"

"My servants?"

"You have told them that we are objects of charity----"

"I----" began Anna, and then was silent.

"It is not true--I have come here from very different motives--but they
think me an object of charity. I rang the bell--I cannot unstrap my
trunks--I never have been expected to unstrap trunks." The sobs here
interfered for a moment with further speech. "After a long while--your
servant came--she was insolent--the trunks are there still
unstrapped--you see them--she knows--everything."

"She shall go to-morrow."

"The others think the same thing."

"They shall go to-morrow--that is, have they been rude to you?"

"Not yet, but they will be."

"When they are, they shall go."

"I went into the corridor to seek other assistance, and I met--I
met----"

"Who?"

"Oh, to have fallen so low!" cried Frau von Treumann, clasping her
hands, and raising her streaming eyes to the ceiling.

"But who did you meet?"

"I met--I met the Penheim."

"The Penheim? Do you mean Princess Ludwig?"

"You never said she was here----"

"I did not know that it would interest you."

"--living on charity--she was always shameless--I was at school with
her. Oh, I would not have come for any inducement if I had known she was
here! She holds nothing sacred, she will boast of her own degradation,
she will write to all her friends that I am here too--I told them I was
coming only on a visit to you--they knew I knew your uncle--but the
Penheim--the Penheim----" and Frau von Treumann threw herself into a
chair and covered her face with her hands to shut out the horrid vision.

The corners of Anna's mouth began to take the upward direction that
would end in a smile; and feeling how ill-placed such a contortion would
be in the presence of this tumultuous grief, she brought them carefully
back to a position of proper solemnity. Besides, why should she smile?
The poor lady was clearly desperately unhappy about something, though
what it was Anna did not quite know. She had looked forward to this
first evening with her new friends as to a thing apart, a thing beyond
the ordinary experience of life, profound in its peace, perfect in its
harmony, the first taste of rest after war, of port after stormy seas;
and here was Frau von Treumann plunged in a very audible grief, and in
the next room was the baroness, a disconcerting combination of
inquisitiveness and ice, and farther down the passage was Fräulein
Kuhräuber--in what state, Anna wondered, would she find Fräulein
Kuhräuber? Anyhow she had little reason to smile. But the horror with
which Princess Ludwig had been mentioned seemed droll beside her own
knowledge of the sterling qualities of that excellent woman. She went
over to the chair in which Frau von Treumann lay prostrate, and sat down
beside her. She was glad that they had reached the stage of sitting
down, for talking is difficult to a person who will not keep still.

"How sorry I am," she said, in her pretty, hesitating German, "that you
should have been made unhappy the very first evening. Marie is a little
wretch. Don't let her stupidity make you miserable. You shall not see
her again, I promise you." And she patted Frau von Treumann's arm. "But
about Princess Ludwig, now," she went on cheerfully, "she has been here
some weeks and you soon learn to know a person you are with every day,
and really I have found her nothing but good and kind."

"_Ach_, she is shameless--she recoils before no degradation!" burst out
Frau von Treumann, suddenly removing her hands from her face. "The
trouble she has given her relations! She delights in dragging her name
in the dirt. She has tried to get places in the most impossible
families, and made no attempt to hide what she was doing. She has broken
the old Fürst's heart. And she talks about it all, and has no shame, no
decency----"

"But is it not admirable----" began Anna.

"She will gloat over me, and tell everyone that I am here in the same
way as she is. If she is not ashamed for herself, do you think she will
spare me?"

"But why should you think there is anything to be ashamed of in coming
to live with me and be my dear friend?"

"No, there is nothing, so long as my motives in coming are known. But
people talk so cruelly, and will distort the facts so gladly, and we
have always held our heads so high. And now the Penheim!" She sobbed
afresh.

"I shall ask the princess not to write to anyone about your being here."

"_Ach_, I know her--she will do it all the same."

"No, I don't think so. She does everything I ask. You see, she takes
care of my house for me. She is not here in the same way that--that you
and Baroness Elmreich are, and her interest is to stay here."

Frau von Treumann's bowed head went up with a jerk. "_Ach?_ She has
found a place at last? She is your paid companion? Your housekeeper?"

"Yes, and she is goodness itself, and I don't believe she would be
unkind and make mischief for worlds."

"_Ach so!_" said Frau von Treumann, "_ach so-o-o-o!_"--a long drawn out
_so_ of complete comprehension. Her tears ceased as if by magic. She
dried her eyes. Yes, of course the Penheim would hold her tongue if Miss
Estcourt ordered her to do so. She had heard all about her efforts to
find places, and she would probably be very careful not to lose this
one. The poor Penheim. So she was actually working for wages. What a
come-down for a Dettingen! And the Dettingens had always treated the
Treumanns as though they belonged merely to the _kleine Adel_. Well,
well, each one in turn. She was the dear friend, and the Penheim was the
housekeeper. Well, well.

She sat up straight, smoothed her hair, and resumed her first manner of
quiet dignity. "I am sorry that you should have witnessed my agitation,"
she said, with a faint smile. "I am not easily betrayed into exhibitions
of feeling, but there are limits to one's endurance, there are certain
things the bravest cannot bear."

"Yes," said Anna.

"And for a Treumann, social disgrace, any action that in the least soils
our honour and makes us unable to hold up our heads, is worse than
death."

"But I don't see any disgrace."

"No, no, there is none so long as facts are not distorted. It is quite
simple--you need friends and I am willing to be your friend. That was
how my son looked at it. He said '_Liebe Mama_, she evidently needs
friends and sympathy--why should you hesitate to make yourself of use?
You must regard it as a good work.' You would like my son; his brother
officers adore him."

"Really?" said Anna.

"He is so sensible, so reasonable; he is beloved and respected by the
whole regiment. I will show you his photograph--_ach_, the trunks are
still unstrapped."

"I'll go and send someone--but not Marie," said Anna, getting up
quickly. She had no desire to see the photograph, and the son's way of
looking at things had considerably astonished her. "It must be nearly
supper time. Would you not rather lie down and let me send you something
here? Your head must ache after crying so much. You have baptised our
new life with tears. I hope it is a good omen."

"Oh, I will come down. You will do as you promised, will you not, and
forbid the Penheim to gossip?"

"I shall tell the princess your wishes."

"Or, if she must gossip, let her tell the truth at least. If my son had
not pressed me to come here I really do not think----"

Anna went slowly and meditatively down the passage to Fräulein
Kuhräuber's room. For a moment she thought of omitting this last visit
altogether; she was afraid lest the Fräulein should be in some
unlooked-for and perplexing condition of mind. Discouraged? Oh no; she
was surely not discouraged already. How had the word come into her head?
She quickened her steps. When she reached the door she remembered the
cup and the sugar-tongs. Perhaps something in the bedroom was already
broken, and the Fräulein would be disclosed sitting in the ruins in
tears, for she was unexpectedly large, and the contents of her room were
frail. But then woe of that sort was as easily assuaged as broken
furniture was mended. It was the more complicated grief of Frau von
Treumann that she felt unable to soothe. As to that, she preferred not
to think about it at present, and barricaded her thoughts against its
image with that consoling sentence, _Tout comprendre c'est tout
pardonner._ It was a sentence she was fond of; but she had not expected
that she would need its reassurance so soon.

She opened the door, and the puckers smoothed themselves out of her
forehead at once, for here, at last, was peace. There had been no
difficulties here with bells, and straps, and Marie. The trunks had been
opened and unpacked without assistance; and when Anna came in the
contents were all put away and Fräulein Kuhräuber, washed and combed and
in her Sunday blouse, was sitting in an easy chair by the window
absorbed in a book. Satisfaction was written broadly on her face;
content was expressed by every lazy line of her attitude. When she saw
Anna, she got up and made a curtsey and beamed. The beams were instantly
reflected in Anna's face, and they beamed at each other.

"Well," said Anna, who felt perfectly at her ease with this member of
her trio, "are you happy?"

Fräulein Kuhräuber blushed, and beamed more than ever. She was far less
shy of Anna than she was of those two terrible _adelige Damen_, her
travelling companions; but at no time had she had much conversation.
Hers had been a ruminative existence, for its uncertainty but rarely
disturbed her. Had she not an excellent digestion, and a fixed belief
that the righteous, of whom she was one, would never be forsaken? And
are not these the primary conditions of happiness? Indeed, if everything
else is wanting, these two ingredients by themselves are sufficient for
the concoction of a very palatable life.

"You have found an interesting book already?" Anna asked, pleased that
the literature chosen with such care should have met with instant
appreciation. She took it up to see what it was, but put it down again
hastily, for it was the cookery book.

"I read much," observed Fräulein Kuhräuber.

"Yes?" said Anna, a flicker of hope reviving in her heart. Perhaps the
cookery book was an accident.

"I know by heart more than a hundred recipes for sweet dishes alone."

"Really?" said Anna, the flicker expiring.

"So you can have an idea of the number of books I have read."

"Here are a great many more for you to read."

"_Ach ja, ach ja_," said Fräulein Kuhräuber, glancing doubtfully at the
shelves; "but one must not waste too much time over it--there are other
things in life. I read only useful books."

"Well, that is very praiseworthy," said Anna, smiling. "If you like
cookery books, I must get you some more."

"How good you are--how very, very good!" said the Fräulein, gazing at
the charming figure before her with heartfelt admiration and gratitude.
"This beautiful room--I cannot look at it enough. I cannot believe it is
really for me--for me to sleep in and be in whenever I choose. What have
I done to deserve all this?"

What had she done, indeed? She had not even been unhappy, although of
course she had had every opportunity of being so, sent from place to
place, from one indignant _Hausfrau_ to another, ever since she left
school. But Anna, persuaded that she had rescued her from depths of
unspeakable despair, was overjoyed by this speech. "Don't talk about
deserving," she said tenderly. "You have had such a life that if you
were to be happy now without stopping once for the next fifty years it
would only be just and right."

Fräulein Kuhräuber's approval of this sentiment was so entire that she
seized Anna's hand and kissed it fervently. Anna laughed while this was
going on, and her eyes grew brighter. She had not wanted gratitude, but
now that it had come it was very encouraging after all, and very
warming. She put one arm impulsively round the Fräulein's neck and
kissed her, and this was practically the first kiss that lady had ever
received, for the perfunctory embraces of reluctantly dutiful aunts can
hardly be called by that pretty name.

"Now," said Anna, with a happy laugh, "we are going to be friends for
ever. Come, let us go down. That was the supper bell."

And they went downstairs together, appearing in the doorway of the
drawing-room arm in arm, as though they had loved each other for years.

"As though they were twins," muttered the baroness to Frau von Treumann,
who shrugged one shoulder slightly by way of reply.




CHAPTER XVI


But in spite of this little outburst of gratitude and appreciation from
Fräulein Kuhräuber, the first evening of the new life was a
disappointment. The Fräulein, who entered the room so happily under the
impression of that recent kiss, became awkward and uncomfortable the
moment she caught sight of the others; lapsing, indeed, into a quite
pitiful state of nervous flutter on being brought for the first time
within the range of the princess's critical and unsympathetic eye. Her
experience had not included princesses, and, as she made a series of
agitated curtseys, deeming one altogether insufficient for so great a
lady, she felt as though that cold eye were piercing her through easily,
and had already discovered the inmost recess of her soul, where lay, so
carefully hidden, the memory of the postman. Every time the princess
looked at her, a sudden vivid consciousness of the postman flamed up
within her, utterly refusing to be extinguished by the soothing
recollection that he had been angelic for thirty years. That obviously
experienced eye and those pursed lips upset her so completely that she
made no remark whatever during the meal that followed, but sat next to
Anna and ate _Leberwurst_ in a kind of uneasy dream; and she ate it with
a degree of emphasis so unusual among the polite and so disastrous to
the peace of the ultra-fastidious that Anna felt there really was some
slight excuse for the frequent and lengthy stares that came from the
other end of the table. "Yet she is an immortal soul--what does it
matter how she eats _Leberwurst_?" said Anna to herself. "What do such
trifles, such little mannerisms, really matter? I should indeed be a
miserable creature if I let them annoy me." But she turned her head
away, nevertheless, and talked assiduously to Letty.

There was no one else for her to talk to. Frau von Treumann and the
baroness had seated themselves at once one on either side of the
princess, and devoted their conversation entirely to her. In the
drawing-room later on, the same thing happened,--the three German ladies
clustering together near the sofa, and the three English being left
somehow to themselves, except for Fräulein Kuhräuber, who clung to them.
To avoid this division into what looked like hostile camps Anna pushed
her chair to a place midway between the groups, and tried to join,
though not very successfully, in the talk of each in turn. Outward calm
prevailed in the room, subdued voices, the tranquillity of fancy-work,
and the peace of albums; yet Anna could not avoid a chilled impression,
a feeling as though each person present were distrustful of the others,
and more or less on the defensive. Frau von Treumann, it is true, was
graciousness itself to the princess, conversing with her constantly and
amiably, and showing herself kind; but, on the other hand, the princess
was hardly gracious to Frau von Treumann. An unbiassed observer would
have said that she disapproved of Frau von Treumann, but was
endeavouring to conceal her disapproval. She busied herself with her
embroidery and talked as little as she could, receiving both the
advances of Frau von Treumann and the attentions of the baroness with
equal coldness.

As for the baroness, her doubts as to Anna's respectability were blown
away completely and forever when, on opening the drawing-room door
before supper, she had beheld no less a person than the _geborene_
Dettingen seated on the sofa. The baroness had spent her life in a
remote and tiny provincial town, but she knew the great Dettingen and
Penheim families well by name, and a princess in her opinion was a
princess, an altogether precious and admirable creature, whatever she
might choose to do. Her scruples, then, were set at rest, but her ice as
far as Anna was concerned showed no signs of thawing. All her amiability
and her efforts to produce a good impression were lavished on the
princess, who besides being by birth and marriage the grandest person
the baroness had yet met, spoke her own tongue properly, had no dimples,
and did not try to stroke her hand. She looked on with mingled awe and
irritation at the easy manner in which Frau von Treumann treated this
great lady. It almost seemed as though she were patronising her. Really
these Treumanns were a brazen-faced race; audacious East Prussian
Junkers, who thought themselves as good as or better than the best. And
this one was not even a true Treumann, but an Ilmas, and of the inferior
Kadenstein branch; and the baroness's brother--that brother whose end
was so abrupt--had been quartered once during the man[oe]uvres at
Kadenstein, and had told her that it was a wretched place, with a
fowl-run that wanted mending within a few yards of the front door, and
that, the door standing open all day long, he had frequently met fowls
walking about in the hall and passages. Yet remembering the brother's
story, and how there was no shadow of the sort resting at present on
Frau von Treumann, though as she had a son there was no telling how long
her shadowless state would last, she tried to ingratiate herself with
that lady, who met her advances coolly, only warming into something like
responsiveness when Fräulein Kuhräuber was in question.

Fräulein Kuhräuber sat behind Letty and Miss Leech, as far away from the
others as she could. She had a stocking in her hand, but she did not
knit. She never knitted if she could avoid it, and was conscious that
from want of practice her needles moved more slowly than is usual--so
slowly, indeed, as to be conspicuous. Letty showed her photographs and
was very kind to her, instinctively perceiving that here was someone who
was as uneasy under the tall lady's stares as she was herself. She
privately thought her by far the best of the new arrivals, and wished
she knew enough German to inquire into her views respecting Schiller;
there was something in the Fräulein's looks and manner that made her
think they would agree about Schiller.

Anna, too, ended by talking exclusively to this group. Her attempts to
join in what the others were saying had been unsuccessful; and with a
little twinge of disappointment, and a feeling of being for some
unexplained reason curiously out of it, she turned to Fräulein
Kuhräuber, and devoted herself more and more to her.

"They are inseparables already," remarked the baroness in a low voice to
Frau von Treumann. "The Miss finds her congenial, it seems." She could
not forgive those doors she had gone through last.

The princess looked up for a moment over the spectacles she wore when
she worked, at Anna.

"Fräulein Kuhräuber makes an excellent foil," said Frau von Treumann.
"Miss Estcourt looks quite ethereal next to her."

"Do you think her pretty?" asked the baroness.

"She is very distinguished-looking."

A servant came in at that moment and announced Dellwig's usual evening
visit, and Anna got up and went out. They watched her as she walked down
the long room, and when she had disappeared began to discuss her more at
their ease, their rapid German being quite incomprehensible to Letty and
Miss Leech.

"Where has she gone?" asked the baroness.

"She has gone to talk to her inspector," said the princess.

"_Ach so_," said the baroness.

"_Ach so_," said Frau von Treumann.

"Is the inspector young?" asked the baroness.

"Oh no, quite old," said the princess.

"These English are a strange race," said Frau von Treumann. "What German
girl of that age would you find with so much energy and enterprise?"

"Is she so very young?" inquired the baroness, with a look of mild
surprise.

"Why, she is plainly little more than a child," said Frau von Treumann.

"She is twenty-five," said the princess.

"Rather an old child," observed the baroness.

"She looks much younger. But twenty-five is surely young enough for this
life, away from her own people," said Frau von Treumann.

"Yes--why does she lead it?" asked the baroness eagerly. "Can you tell
us, Frau Prinzessin? Has she then quarrelled with all her friends?"

"Miss Estcourt has not told me so."

"But she must have quarrelled. Eccentric as the English are, there are
limits to their eccentricity, and no one leaves home and friends and
country without some good reason." And Frau von Treumann shook her head.

"She has quarrelled, I am sure," said the baroness.

"I think so too," said Frau von Treumann; "I thought so from the first.
My son also thought so. You remember Karlchen, princess?"

"Perfectly."

"I discussed the question thoroughly with him, of course, as to whether
I should come here or not. I confess I did not want to come. It was a
great wrench, giving up everything, and going so far from my son. But
after all one must not be selfish." And Frau von Treumann sighed and
paused.

No one said anything, so she continued: "One feels, as one grows older,
how great are the claims of others. And a widow with only one son can do
so much, can make herself of so much use. That is what Karlchen said.
When I hesitated--for I fear one does hesitate before inconvenience--he
said, '_Liebste Mama_, it would be a charity to go to the poor young
lady. You who have always been the first to extend a sympathetic hand to
the friendless, how is it that you hesitate now? Depend upon it, she has
had differences at home and needs countenance and help. You have no
encumbrances. You can go more easily than others. You must regard it as
a good work.' And that decided me."

The princess let her work drop for a moment into her lap, and gazed over
her spectacles at Frau von Treumann. "_Wirklich?_" she said in a voice
of deep interest. "Those were your reasons? _Aber herrlich._"

"Yes, those were my reasons," replied Frau von Treumann, returning her
gaze with pensive but steady eyes. "Those were my chief reasons. I
regard it as a work of charity."

"But this is noble," murmured the princess, resuming her work.

"That is how _I_ have regarded it," put in the baroness. "I agree with
you entirely, dear Frau von Treumann."

"I do not pretend to disguise," went on Frau von Treumann, "that it is
an economy for me to live here, but poor as I have been since my dear
husband's death--you remember Karl, princess?"

"Perfectly."

"Poor as I have been, I always had sufficient for my simple wants, and
should not have dreamed of altering my life if Miss Estcourt's letters
had not been so appealing."

"_Ach_--they were appealing?"

"Oh, a heart of stone would have been melted by them. And a widow's
heart is not of stone, as you must know yourself. The orphan appealing
to the widow--it was irresistible."

"Well, you see she is not by any means alone," said the princess
cheerfully. "Here we are, five of us counting the little Letty,
surrounding her. So you must not sacrifice yourself unnecessarily."

"Oh, I am not one of those who having put their hand to the plough----"

"But where is the plough, dear Frau von Treumann? You see there is,
after all, no plough."

"Dear princess, you always were so literal."

"Ah, you used to reproach me with that in the old days, when you wrote
poetry and read it to me and I was rude enough to ask if it meant
anything. We did not think then that we should meet here, did we?"

"No, indeed. And I cannot tell you how much I admire your courage."

"My courage? What fine qualities you invest me with!"

"Miss Estcourt has told me how admirably you discharge your duties here.
It is wonderful to me. You are an example to us all, and you make me
feel ashamed of my own uselessness."

"Oh, you underrate yourself. People who leave everything to go and help
others cannot talk of being useless. Yes, I look after her house for
her, and I hope to look after her as well."

"After her? Is that one of your duties? Did she stipulate for personal
supervision when she engaged you? How times are changed! When my Karl
was alive, and we lived at Sommershof, I certainly would not have
tolerated that my housekeeper should keep me in order as well as my
house."

"The case was surely different, dear Frau von Treumann. Here is an
unusually pretty young thing, with money. She will need all the
protection I can give her, and it is a satisfaction to me to feel that I
am here and able to give it."

"But she may any day turn round and request you to go."

"That of course may happen, but I hope it will not until she is safe."

"But do you think her so pretty?" put in the baroness wonderingly.

"Safe? What special dangers do you then apprehend for her?" asked Frau
von Treumann with a look of amusement. "Dear princess, you always did
take your duties so seriously. What a treasure you would have been to me
in many ways. It is admirable. But do your duties really include
watching over Miss Estcourt's heart? For I suppose you are thinking of
her heart?"

"I am thinking of adventurers," said the princess. "Any young man with
no money would naturally be delighted to secure this young lady and
Kleinwalde. And those who instead of money have debts, would naturally
be still more delighted." And the princess in her turn gazed pensively
but steadily at Frau von Treumann. "No," she said, taking up her work
again, "I was not thinking of her heart, but of the annoyance she might
be put to. I do not fancy that her heart would easily be touched."

Anna came in at that moment for a paper she wanted, and heard the last
words. "What," she said, smiling, as she unlocked the drawer of her
writing-table and rummaged among the contents, "you are talking about
hearts? You see it is true that women can't be together half an hour
without getting on to subjects like that. If you were three men, now,
you would talk of pigs." Then, a sudden recollection of Uncle Joachim
coming into her mind, she added with conviction, "And pigs are better."

Nor was it till she had closed the door behind her that it struck her
that when she came into the room both the princess and Frau von Treumann
were looking preternaturally bland.




CHAPTER XVII


Axel Lohm was in the hall, having his coat taken from him by a servant.

"You here?" exclaimed Anna, holding out both hands. She was more than
usually pleased to see him.

"Manske had a pile of letters for you, and could not get them to you
because he has a pastors' conference at his house. I was there and saw
the letters, and thought you might want them."

"Oh, I don't want them--at least, there is no hurry. But the letters are
only an excuse. Now isn't it so?"

"An excuse?" he repeated, flushing.

"You want to see the new arrivals."

"Not in the very least."

"Oh, oh! But as you have come one minute too soon, and happened to meet
me outside the door, your plan is spoilt. Are those the letters? What a
pile!" Her face fell.

"But you are looking for nine more ladies. You want a wide choice. You
have still the greater part of your work before you."

"I know. Why do you tell me that?"

"Because you do not seem pleased to get them."

"Oh yes, I am; but I am tired to-night, and the idea of nine more ladies
makes me feel--feel sleepy."

She stood under the lamp, holding the packet loosely by its string and
smiling up to him. There were shadows in her eyes, he thought, where he
was used to seeing two cheerful little lights shining, and a faint
ruefulness in the smile.

"Well, if you are tired you must go to bed," he said, in such a matter
of fact tone that they both laughed.

"No, I mustn't," said Anna; "I am on my way to Herr Dellwig at this very
moment. He's in there," she said, with a motion of her head towards the
dining-room door. "Tell me," she added, lowering her voice, "have you
got a brick-kiln at Lohm?"

"A brick-kiln? No. Why do you want to know?"

"But why haven't you got a brick-kiln?"

"Because there is nothing to make bricks with. Lohm is almost entirely
sand."

"He says there is splendid clay here in one part, and wants to build
one."

"Who? Dellwig?"

"Sh--sh."

"Your uncle would have built one long ago if there really had been clay.
I must look at the place he means. I cannot remember any such place. And
it is unlikely that it should be as he says. Pray do not agree to any
propositions of the kind hastily."

"It would cost heaps to set it going, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, and probably bring in nothing at all."

"But he tries to make out that it would be quite cheap. He says the
timber could all be got out of the forest. I can't bear the thought of
cutting down a lot of trees."

"If you can't bear the thought of anything he proposes, then simply
refuse to consider it."

"But he talks and talks till it really seems that he is right. He told
me just now that it would double the value of the estate."

"I don't believe it."

"If I made bricks, according to him I could take in twice as many poor
ladies."

"I believe you will be happier with fewer ladies and no bricks," said
Axel with great positiveness.

Anna stood thinking. Her eyes were fixed on the tip of the finger she
had passed through the loop of string that tied the letters together,
and she watched it as the packet twisted round and round and pinched it
redder and redder. "I suppose you never wanted to be a woman," she said,
considering this phenomenon with apparent interest.

Axel laughed.

"The mere question makes you laugh," she said, looking up quickly. "I
never heard of a man who did want to. But lots of women would give
anything to be men."

"And you are one of them?"

"Yes."

He laughed again.

"You think I would make a queer little man?" she said, laughing too; but
her face became sober immediately, and with a glance at the shut
dining-room door she continued: "It is so horrid to feel weak. My sister
Susie says I am very obstinate. Perhaps I was with her, but different
people have different effects on one." She sank her voice to a whisper,
and looked at him anxiously. "You can't think what an _effort_ it is to
me to say No to that man."

"What, to Dellwig?"

"Sh--sh."

"But if that is how you feel, my dear Miss Estcourt, it is very evident
that the man must go."

"How easy it is to say that! Pray, who is to tell him to go?"

"I will, if you wish."

"If you were a woman, do you suppose you would be able to turn out an
old servant who has worked here so many years?"

"Yes, I am sure I would, if I felt that he was getting beyond my
control."

"No, you wouldn't. All sorts of things would stop you. You would
remember that your uncle specially told you to keep him on, that he has
been here ages, that he was faithful and devoted----"

"I do not believe there was much devotion."

"Oh yes, there was. The first evening he cried about dear Uncle
Joachim."

"He cried?" repeated Axel incredulously.

"He did indeed."

"It was about something else, then."

"No, he really cried about Uncle Joachim. He really loved him."

Axel looked profoundly unconvinced.

"But after all those are not the real reasons," said Anna; "they ought
to be, but they're not. The simple truth is that I am a coward, and I am
frightened--dreadfully frightened--of possible scenes." And she looked
at him and laughed ruefully. "There--you see what it is to be a woman.
If I were a man, how easy things would be. Please consider the
mortification of knowing that if he persuades long enough I shall give
in, against my better judgment. He has the strongest will I think I ever
came across."

"But you have not yet given in, I hope, on any point of importance?"

"Up to now I have managed to say No to everything I don't want to do.
But you would laugh if you knew what those Nos cost me. Why cannot the
place go on as it was? I am perfectly satisfied. But hardly a day passes
without some wonderful new plan being laid before me, and he talks--oh,
how he talks! I believe he would convince even you."

"The man is quite beyond your control," said Axel in a voice of anger;
and voices of anger commonly being loud voices, this one produced the
effect of three doors being simultaneously opened: the door leading to
the servants' quarters, through which Marie looked and vanished again,
retreating to the kitchen to talk prophetically of weddings; the
dining-room door, behind which Dellwig had grown more and more impatient
at being kept waiting so long; and the drawing-room door, on the other
side of which the baroness had been lingering for some moments, desiring
to go upstairs for her scissors, but hesitating to interrupt Anna's
business with the inspector, whose voice she thought it was that she
heard.

The baroness shut her door again immediately. "_Aha_--the admirer!" she
said to herself; and went back quickly to her seat. "The Miss is talking
to a _jünge Herr_," she announced, her eyes wider open than ever.

"A _jünge Herr_?" echoed Frau von Treumann. "I thought the inspector was
old?"

"It must be Axel Lohm," said the princess, not raising her eyes from her
work. "He often comes in."

"He comes courting, evidently," said the baroness with a sub-acid smile.

"It has not been evident to me," said the princess coldly.

"I thought it looked like it," said the baroness, with more meekness.

"Is that the Lohm who was engaged to one of the Kiederfels girls some
years ago?" asked Frau von Treumann.

"Yes, and she died."

"But did he not marry soon afterwards? I heard he married."

"That was the second brother. This one is the eldest, and lives next to
us, and is single."

Frau von Treumann was silent for a moment. Then she said blandly, "Now
confess, princess, that _he_ is the perilous person from whom you think
it necessary to defend Miss Estcourt."

"Oh no," said the princess with equal blandness; "I have no fears about
him."

"What, is he too possessed of an invulnerable heart?"

"I know nothing of his heart. I said, I believe, adventurers. And no one
could call Axel Lohm an adventurer. I was thinking of men who have run
through all their own and all their relations' money in betting and
gambling, and who want a wife who will pay their debts."

"_Ach so_," said Frau von Treumann with perfect urbanity. And if this
talk about protecting Miss Estcourt from adventurers in a place where
there were apparently no human beings of any kind, but only trees and
marshes, might seem to a bystander to be foolishness, to the speakers it
was luminousness itself, and in no way increased their love for each
other.

Meanwhile Dellwig, looking through the door and seeing Lohm, brought his
heels together and bowed with his customary exaggeration. "I beg a
thousand times pardon," he said; "I thought the gracious Miss was
engaged and would not return, and I was about to go home."

"I have found the paper, and am coming," said Anna coldly. "Well,
good-night," she added in English, holding out her hand to Axel.

"If you will allow me, I should like to pay my respects to Princess
Ludwig before I go," he said, thinking thus to see her later.

"Ah! wasn't I right?" she said, smiling. "You are determined to look at
the new arrivals. How can a man be so inquisitive? But I will say
good-night all the same. I shall be ages with Herr Dellwig, and shall
not see you again." She shook hands with him, and went into the
dining-room, Dellwig standing aside with deep respect to let her pass.
But she turned to say something to him as he shut the door, and Axel
caught the expression of her face, the intense boredom on it, the
profound distrust of self; and he went in to the princess with an
unusually severe and determined look on his own.

Dellwig went home that night in a savage mood. "That young man," he said
to his wife, flinging his hat and coat on to a chair and himself on to a
sofa, "is thrusting himself more and more into our affairs."

"That Lohm?" she asked, rolling up her work preparatory to fetching his
evening drink.

"I had almost got the Miss to consent to the brick-kiln. She was quite
reasonable, and went out to get the plan I had made. Then she met
him--he is always hanging about."

"And then?" inquired Frau Dell wig eagerly.

"Pah--this petticoat government--having to beg and pray for the smallest
concession--it makes an honest man sick."

"She will not consent?"

"She came back as obstinate as a mule. It all had to be gone into again
from the beginning."

"She will not consent?"

"She said Lohm would look at the place and advise her."

"_Aber so was!_" cried Frau Dellwig, crimson with wrath. "Advise her?
Did you not tell her that you were her adviser?"

"You may be sure I did. I told her plainly enough, I fancy, that Lohm
had nothing to say here, and that her uncle had always listened to me.
She sat without speaking, as she generally does, not even looking at
me--I never can be sure that she is even listening."

"And then?"

"I asked her at last if she had lost confidence in me."

"And then?"

"She said _oh nein_, in her affected foreign way--in the sort of voice
that might just as well mean _oh ja_." And he imitated, with great
bitterness, Anna's way of speaking German. "Mark my words, Frau, she is
as weak as water for all her obstinacy, and the last person who talks to
her can always bring her round."

"Then you must be the last person."

"If it were not for that prig Lohm, that interfering ass, that
incomparable rhinoceros----"

"He wants to marry her, of course."

"If he marries her----" Dellwig stopped short, and stared gloomily at
his muddy boots.

"If he marries her----" repeated his wife; but she too stopped short.
They both knew well enough what would happen to them if he married her.

The building of the brick-kiln had come to be a point of honour with the
Dellwigs. Ever since Anna's arrival, their friends the neighbouring
farmers and inspectors had been congratulating them on their complete
emancipation from all manner of control; for of course a young ignorant
lady would leave the administration of her estate entirely in her
inspector's hands, confining her activities, as became a lady of birth,
to paying the bills. Dellwig had not doubted that this would be so, and
had boasted loudly and continually of the different plans he had made
and was going to carry out. The estate of which he was now practically
master was to become renowned in the province for its enterprise and the
extent, in every direction, of its operations. The brick-kiln was a
long-cherished scheme. His oldest friend and rival, the head inspector
of a place on the other side of Stralsund, had one, and had constantly
urged him to have one too; but old Joachim, without illusions as to the
quality of the clay, and by no manner of means to be talked into
disbelieving the evidence of his own eyes, would not hear of it, and
Dellwig felt there was nothing to be done in the face of that curt
refusal. The friend, triumphing in his own brick-kiln and his own more
pliable master, jeered, dug him in the ribs at the Sunday gatherings,
and talked of dependence, obedience, and restricted powers. Such friends
are difficult to endure with composure; and Dellwig, and still less his
wife, for many months past had hardly been able to bear the word "brick"
mentioned in their presence. When Anna appeared on the scene, so young,
so foreign, and so obviously foolish, Dellwig, certain now of success,
told his friend on the very first Sunday night that the brick-kiln was
now a mere matter of weeks. Always a boaster, he could not resist
boasting a little too soon. Besides, he felt very sure; and the friend,
too, had taken it for granted, when he heard of the impending young
mistress, that the thing was as good as built.

That was in March. It was now the end of April, and every Sunday the
friend inquired when the building was to be begun, and every Sunday
Dellwig said it would begin when the days grew longer. The days had
grown longer, would have grown in a few weeks to their longest, as the
friend repeatedly pointed out, and still nothing had been done. To the
many people who do not care what their neighbours think of them, the
torments of the two Dellwigs because of the unbuilt brick-kiln will be
incomprehensible. Yet these torments were so acute that in the weaker
moments immediately preceding meals they both felt that it would almost
be better to leave Kleinwalde than to stay and endure them; indeed,
before dinner, or during wakeful nights, Frau Dellwig was convinced that
it would be better to die outright. The good opinion of their
neighbours--more exactly, the envy of their neighbours--was to them the
very breath of their nostrils. In their set they must be the first, the
undisputedly luckiest, cleverest, and best off. Any position less mighty
would be unbearable. And since Anna came there had been nothing but
humiliations. First the dinner to the Manskes, from which they had been
excluded--Frau Dellwig grew hot all over at the recollection of the
Sunday gathering succeeding it; then the renovation of the _Schloss_
without the least reference to them, without the smallest asking for
advice or help; then the frequent communications with the pastor,
putting him quite out of his proper position, the confidence placed in
him, the ridiculous respect shown him, his connection with the mad
charitable scheme; and now, most dreadful of all, this obstinacy in
regard to the brick-kiln. It was becoming clear that they were fairly on
the way to being pitied by the neighbours. Pitied! Horrid thought. The
great thing in life was to be so situated that you can pity others. But
to be pitied yourself? Oh, thrice-accursed folly of old Joachim, to
leave Kleinwalde to a woman! Frau Dellwig could not sleep that night for
hating Anna. She lay awake staring into the darkness with hot eyes, and
hating her with a heartiness that would have petrified that unconscious
young woman as she sat about a stone's throw off in her bedroom,
motionless in the chair into which she had dropped on first coming
upstairs, too tired even to undress, after her long struggle with Frau
Dellwig's husband. "The _Engländerin_ will ruin us!" cried Frau Dellwig
suddenly, unable to hate in silence any longer.

"_Wie? Was?_" exclaimed Dellwig, who had dozed off, and was startled.

"She will--she will!" cried his wife.

"Will what? Ruin us? The _Engländerin_? _Ach was--Unsinn._ _She_ can be
managed. It is Lohm who is the danger. It is Lohm who will ruin us. If
we could get rid of him----"

"_Ach Gott_, if he would die!" exclaimed Frau Dellwig, with fervent
hands raised heavenwards. "_Ach Gott_, if he would only die!"

"_Ach Gott, ach Gott!_" mimicked her husband irritably, for he disliked
being suddenly awakened. "People never die when anything depends on it,"
he grumbled, turning over on his side. And he cursed Axel several times,
and went to sleep.




CHAPTER XVIII


The philosopher tells us that, after the healing interval of sleep, we
are prepared to meet each other every morning as gods and goddesses; so
fresh, so strong, so lusty, so serene, did he consider the newly-risen
and the some-time separated must of necessity be. It is a pleasing
belief; and Experience, that hopelessly prosaic governess who never
gives us any holidays, very quickly disposes of it. For what is to
become of the god-like mood if only one in a company possess it? The
middle-aged and old, who abound in all companies, are seldom god-like,
and are never so at breakfast.

The morning after the arrival of the Chosen, Anna woke up in the true
Olympian temper. She had been brought back to the happy world of
realities from the happy world of dreams by the sun of an unusually
lovely April shining on her face. She had only to open her window to be
convinced that all which she beheld was full of blessings. Just beneath
her window on the grass was a double cherry tree in flower, an exquisite
thing to look down on with the sunshine and the bees busy among its
blossoms. The unreasoning joyfulness that invariably took possession of
her heart whenever the weather was fine, filled it now with a rapture of
hope and confidence. This world, this wonderful morning world that she
saw and smelt from her window, was manifestly a place in which to be
happy. Everything she saw was very good. Even the remembrance of Dellwig
was transfigured in that clear light. And while she dressed she took
herself seriously to task for the depression of the night before.
Depressed she had certainly been; and why? Simply because she was
over-excited and over-tired, and her spirit was still so mortifyingly
unable to rise superior to the weakness of her tiresome flesh. And to
let herself be made wretched by Dellwig, merely because he talked loud
and had convictions which she did not share! The god-like morning mood
was strong upon her, and she contemplated her listless self of the
previous evening, the self that had sat so long despondently thinking
instead of going to bed, with contempt. These evening interviews with
Dellwig, she reflected, were a mistake. He came at hours when she was
least able to bear his wordiness and shouting, and it was the knowledge
of his impending visit that made her irritable beforehand and ruffled
the absolute serenity that she felt was alone appropriate in a house
dedicated to love. But it was not only Dellwig and the brick-kiln that
had depressed her; she had actually had doubts about her three new
friends, doubts as to the receptivity of their souls, as to the capacity
of their souls for returning love. At one awful moment she had even
doubted whether they had souls at all, but had hastily blown out the
candle at this point, extinguishing the doubt at the same time,
smothering it beneath the bedclothes, and falling asleep at once, after
the fashion of healthy young people.

Now, at the beginning of the new day, with all her misgivings healed by
sleep, she thought calmly over the interview she had had with Frau von
Treumann before supper; for it was that interview that had been the
chief cause of her dejection. Frau von Treumann had told her an untruth,
a quite obvious and absurd untruth in the face of the correspondence, as
to the reason of her coming to Kleinwalde. She had said she had only
come at the instigation of her son, who looked upon Anna as a deserving
object of help. And Anna had been hurt, had been made miserable, by the
paltriness of this fib. Her great desire was to reach her friends' souls
quickly, to attain the beautiful intimacy in which the smallest fiction
is unnecessary; and so little did Frau von Treumann understand her, that
she had begun a friendship that was to be for life with an untruth that
would not have misled a child. But see the effect of sleep and a
gracious April morning. The very shabbiness and paltriness of the fib
made Anna's heart yearn over the poor lady. Surely the pride that tried
to hide its wounds with rags of such pitiful flimsiness was profoundly
pathetic? With such pride, all false from Anna's point of view, but real
and painful enough to its possessor, the necessity that drove her to
accept Anna's offer must have been more cruel than necessity, always
cruel, generally is. Her heart yearned over her friend as she dressed,
and she felt that the weakness that must lie was a weakness greatly
requiring love. For nobody, she argued, would ever lie unless driven to
it by fear of some suffering. If, then, it made her happy, and made her
life easier, let her think that Anna believed she had come for her sake.
What did it matter? No one was perfect, and many people were
surprisingly pathetic.

Meanwhile the day was glorious, and she went downstairs with the springy
step of hope. She was thinking exhilarating thoughts, thinking that
there were to be no ripples of misgivings and misunderstandings on the
clear surface of this first morning. They would all look into each
others' candid eyes at breakfast, and read a mutual consciousness of
interests henceforward to be shared, of happiness to be shared, of life
to be shared,--the life of devoted and tender sisters.

The hall door stood open, and the house was full of the smell of April;
the smell of new leaves budding, of old leaves rotting, of damp earth,
pine needles, wet moss, and marshes. "Oh, the lovely, lovely morning!"
whispered Anna, running out on to the steps with outstretched arms and
upturned face, as though she would have clasped all the beauty round and
held it close. She drew in a long breath, and turned back into the house
singing in an impassioned but half-suppressed voice the first verse of
the Magnificat. The door leading to the kitchen opened, and to her
surprise Baroness Elmreich emerged from those dark regions. The
Magnificat broke off abruptly. Anna was surprised. Why the kitchen? The
baroness saw her hostess's figure motionless against the light of the
open door; but the light behind was strong and the hall was dark, and
she thought it was Anna's back. Hoping that she had not been noticed she
softly closed the door again and waited behind it till she could come
out unseen.

Anna supposed that the princess must be showing her the servants'
quarters, and went into the breakfast room; but in it sat the princess,
making coffee.

"There you are," said the princess heartily. "That is nice. Now we can
drink our coffee comfortably together before the others come down. Have
you been out? You smell of fresh air."

"Only a moment on the doorstep."

"Come, sit next to me. You have slept well, I can see. Notice the
advantage of coming straight in to breakfast, and not running about the
forest--you get here first, and so get the best cup of coffee."

"But it isn't proper for me to have the best," said Anna, smiling as she
took the cup, "when I have guests here."

"Yes, it is--very proper indeed. Besides, you told me they were
sisters."

"So they are. Has the baroness not been here?"

"No, she is still in bed."

"No, I saw her a moment ago. I thought you were with her."

"Oh, my dear--so early in the morning!" protested the princess. "When
did I see her last? Less than nine hours ago. She followed me into my
bedroom and talked much. I could not begin again with her the first
thing in the morning, even to please you." And she looked at Anna very
affectionately. "You were tired last night, were you not?" she
continued. "Axel Lohm stayed so late, I think he wanted to speak to you.
But you went straight up to bed."

"I had seen him before he went in to you. He didn't want to speak to me.
He was consumed by curiosity about our new friends."

"Was he? He did not show much interest in them. He talked to me nearly
all the time. He thought for a moment that he knew the baroness--at
least, he stared at her at first and seemed surprised. But it turned out
that she was only like someone he knew. She had evidently never seen him
before. It is a great pleasure to me to talk to that young man," the
princess went on, while Anna ate her toast.

"So it is to me," said Anna.

"I have met many people in my life, and have often wondered at the
dearth of nice ones--how few there are that one likes to be with and
wishes to see again and again. Axel is one of the few, decidedly."

"So he is," agreed Anna.

"There is goodness written on every line of his face."

"Oh, he has the kindest face. And so strong. I feel that if anything
happened here, anything dreadful, that he would make it right again at
once. He would mend us if we got smashed, and build us up again if we
got burned, and protect us, this houseful of lone women, if ever anybody
tried to run away with us." And Anna nodded reassuringly at the
princess, and took another piece of toast "That is how I feel about
him," she said. "So agreeably certain, not only of his willingness to
help, but of his power to do it." Talking about Axel she quite forgot
the apparition of the baroness that she had just seen. He was so kind,
so good, so strong. How much she admired strength of purpose,
independence, the character that was determined to find its happiness in
doing its best.

"If I had a daughter," said the princess, filling Anna's cup, "she
should marry Axel Lohm."

"If _I_ had a daughter," said Anna, "she should marry him, so yours
couldn't. I wouldn't even ask her if she liked it. I'd be so sure that
it was a good thing for her that I'd just say: 'My dear, I have chosen
my son-in-law. Get your hat, and come to church and marry him.' And
there'd be an end of _that_."

The princess felt that it was an unprofitable employment, trying to help
on Axel's cause. She could not but see what he thought of Anna; and
after the touching manner of widows, was convinced of the superiority of
marriage, as a means of real happiness for a woman, over any and every
other form of occupation. Yet whenever she talked of him she was met by
the same hearty agreement and frank enthusiasm, the very words being
taken out of her mouth and her own praises of him doubled and trebled.
It was a promising friendship, but it was a singularly unpromising
prelude to love.

"Please make some fresh coffee," begged Anna; "the others will be coming
down soon, and must not have cold stuff." Her voice grew tender at the
mere mention of "the others." For the princess and Axel, both of whom
she liked so much, it never took on those tender tones, as the princess
had already noted. There was nothing in either of them to appeal to that
side of her nature, the tender, mother side, which is in all good women
and most bad ones. They were her friends, staunch friends, she felt, and
of course she liked and respected them; but they were sturdy, capable
people, firmly planted on their own feet, able to battle successfully
with life--as different as possible from these helpless ones who needed
her, whom she had saved, to whom she was everything, between whom and
want and sorrow she was fixed as a shield.

Two of the helpless ones came in at that moment, with frosty,
early-morning faces. Anna put the vision she had seen at the kitchen
door from her mind, and went to meet them with happy smiles and
greetings. Frau von Treumann did her best to respond warmly, but it was
very early to be enthusiastic, and at that hour of the day she was
accustomed to being a little cross. Besides, she had had no coffee yet,
and her hostess evidently had, and that made a great difference to one's
sentiments. The baroness looked pinched and bloodless; she was as frigid
as ever to Anna, said nothing about having seen her before, and seemed
to want to be left alone. So that the mutual gazing into each other's
eyes did not, after all, take place.

The princess waited to see that they had all they wanted, and then went
out rattling her keys; and after an interval, during which Anna
chattered cheerful and ungrammatical German, and the window was shut,
and warming food eaten, Frau von Treumann became amiable and began to
talk.

She drew from her pocket a letter and a photograph. "This is my son,"
she said. "I brought it down to show you. And I have had a long letter
from him already. He never neglects his mother. Truly a good son is a
source of joy."

"I suppose so," said Anna.

The baroness turned her eyes slowly round and fixed them on the
photograph. "Aha," she thought, "the son again. Last night the son, this
morning the son--always the son. The excellent Treumann loses no time."

"He is good-looking, my Karlchen, is he not?"

"Yes," said Anna. "It is a becoming uniform."

"Oh--becoming! He looks adorable in it. Especially on his horse. I would
not let him be anything but a hussar because of the charming uniform.
And he suits it exactly--such a lightly built, graceful figure. _He_
never stumbles over people's feet. Herr von Lohm nearly crushed my poor
foot last night. It was difficult not to scream. I never did admire
those long men made by the meter, who seem as though they would go on
for ever if there were no ceilings."

"He _is_ rather long," agreed Anna, smiling.

"Heartwhole," thought Frau von Treumann. "Tell me, dear Miss
Estcourt----" she said, laying her hand on Anna's.

"Oh, don't call me Miss Estcourt."

"But what, then?"

"Oh, you must call me Anna. We are to be like sisters here--and you,
too, please, call me Anna," she said, turning to the baroness.

"You are very good," said the baroness.

"Well, my little sister," said Frau von Treumann, smiling, "my baby
sister----"

"Baby sister!" thought the baroness. "Excellent Treumann."

"--you know an old woman of my age could not really have a sister of
yours."

"Yes, she could--not a whole sister, perhaps, but a half one."

"Well, as you please. The idea is sweet to me. I was going to ask
you--but Karlchen's letter is too touching, really--such thoughts in
it--such high ideals----" And she turned over the sheets, of which there
were three, and began to blow her nose.

"He has written you a very long letter," said Anna pleasantly; the
extent to which the nose blowing was being carried made her uneasy. Was
there to be crying?

"You have a cold, dear Frau von Treumann?" inquired the baroness with
solicitude.

"_Ach nein--doch nein_," murmured Frau von Treumann, turning the sheets
over, and blowing her nose harder than ever.

"It will come off," thought Letty, who had slipped in unnoticed, and was
eating bread and butter alone at the further end of the table.

"Poor thing," thought Anna, "she adores that Karlchen."

There was a pause, during which the nose continued to be blown.

"His letter is beautiful, but sad--very sad," said Frau von Treumann,
shaking her head despondingly. "Poor boy--poor dear boy--he misses his
mother, of course. I knew he would, but I did not dream it would be as
bad as this. Oh, my dear Miss Estcourt--well, Anna then"--smiling
faintly--"I could never describe to you the wrench it was, the terrible,
terrible wrench, leaving him who for five years--I am a widow five
years--has been my all."

"It must have been dreadful," murmured Anna sympathetically.

The baroness sat straight and motionless, staring fixedly at Frau von
Treumann.

"'When shall I see you again, my dearest mamma?' were his last words.
And I could give him no hope--no answer." The handkerchief went up to
her eyes.

"What _is_ she gassing about?" wondered Letty.

"I can see him now, fading away on the platform as my train bore me off
to an unknown life. An only son--the only son of a widow--is everything,
everything to his mother."

"He must be," said Anna.

There was another silence. Then Frau von Treumann wiped her eyes and
took up the letter again. "Now he writes that though I have only been
away two days from Rislar, the town he is stationed at, it seems already
like years. Poor boy! He is quite desperate--listen to this--poor
boy----" And she smiled a little, and read aloud, "'I must see you,
_liebste, beste Mama_, from time to time. I had no idea the separation
would be like this, or I could never have let you go. Pray beg Miss
Estcourt----'"

"Aha," thought the baroness.

"'--to allow me to visit my mother occasionally. There must be an inn in
the village. If not, I could stay at Stralsund, and would in no way
intrude on her. But I must see my dearest mother, the being I have
watched over and cared for ever since my father's death.' Poor, dear,
foolish boy--he is desperate----" And she folded up the letter, shook
her head, smiled, and suddenly buried her face in her handkerchief.

"Excellent Treumann," thought the unblinking baroness.

Anna sat in some perplexity. Sons had not entered into her calculations.
In the correspondence, she remembered, the son had been lightly passed
over as an officer living on his pay and without a superfluous penny for
the support of his parent. Not a word had been said of any unusual
affection existing between them. Now it appeared that the mother and son
were all in all to each other. If so, of course the separation was
dreadful. A mother's love was a sentiment that inspired Anna with
profound respect. Before its unknown depths and heights she stood in awe
and silence. How could she, a spinster, even faintly comprehend that
sacred feeling? It was a mysterious and beautiful emotion that she could
only reverence from afar. Clearly she must not come between parent and
child; but yet--yet she wished she had had more time to think it over.

She looked rather helplessly at Frau von Treumann, and gave her hand a
little squeeze. The hand did not return the squeeze, and the face
remained buried in the handkerchief. Well, it would be absurd to want to
cut off the son entirely from his mother. If he came occasionally to see
her it could not matter much. She gave the hand a firmer squeeze, and
said with an effort that she did her best to conceal, "But he must come
then, when he can. It is rather a long way--didn't you say you had to
stay a night in Berlin?"

"Oh, my dear Miss Estcourt--my dear Anna!" cried Frau von Treumann,
snatching the handkerchief from her face and seizing Anna's hand in both
hers, "what a weight from my heart--what a heavy, heavy weight! All
night I was thinking how shall I bear this? I may write to him, then,
and tell him what you say? A long journey? You are afraid it will tire
him? Oh, it will be nothing, nothing at all to Karlchen if only he can
see his mother. How can I thank you! You will say my gratitude is
excessive for such a little thing, and truly only a mother could
understand it----"

In short, Karlchen's appearance at Kleinwalde was now only a matter of
days.

"_Unverschämt_," was the baroness's mental comment.




CHAPTER XIX


Anna put on her hat and went out to think it over. Fräulein Kuhräuber
was apparently still asleep. Letty, accompanied by Miss Leech, had to go
to Lohm parsonage for her first lesson with Herr Klutz, who had
undertaken to teach her German. Frau von Treumann said she must write at
once to Karlchen, and shut herself up to do it. The baroness was vague
as to her intentions, and disappeared. So Anna started off by herself,
crossed the road, and walked quickly away into the forest. "If it makes
her so happy, then I am glad," she said to herself. "She is here to be
happy; and if she wants Karlchen so badly, why then she must have him
from time to time. I wonder why I don't like Karlchen."

She walked quickly, with her eyes on the ground. The mood in which she
sang magnificats had left her, nor did she look to see what the April
morning was doing. Frau von Treumann had not been under her roof
twenty-four hours, and already her son had been added--if only
occasionally, still undoubtedly added--to the party. Suppose the
baroness and Fräulein Kuhräuber should severally disclose an inability
to live without being visited by some cherished relative? Suppose the
other nine, the still Unchosen, should each turn out to have a relative
waiting tragically in the background for permission to make repeated
calls? And suppose these relatives should all be male?

These were grave questions; so grave that she was quite at a loss how to
answer them. And then she felt that somebody was looking at her; and
raising her eyes, she saw Axel on the mossy path quite close to her.

"So deep in thought?" he asked, smiling at her start.

Anna wondered how it was that he so often went through the forest. Was
it a short cut from Lohm to anywhere? She had met him three or four
times lately, in quite out of the way parts. He seemed to ride through
it and walk through it at all hours of the day.

"How is your potato-planting getting on?" she asked involuntarily. She
knew what a rush there was just then putting the potatoes in, for she
did not drive every day about her fields in a cart without springs with
Dellwig for nothing. Axel must have potatoes to plant too; why didn't he
stay at home, then, and do it?

"What a truly proper question for a country lady to ask," he said,
looking amused. "You waste no time in conventional good mornings or
asking how I do, but begin at once with potatoes. Well, I do not believe
that you are really interested in mine, so I shall tell you nothing
about them. You only want to remind me that I ought to be seeing them
planted instead of walking about your woods."

Anna smiled. "I believe I did mean something like that," she said.

"Well, I am not so aimless as you suppose," he returned, walking by her
side. "I have been looking at that place."

"What place?"

"Where Dellwig wants to build the brick-kiln."

"Oh! What do you think of it?"

"What I knew I would think of it. It is a fool's plan. The clay is the
most wretched stuff. It has puzzled me, seeing how very poor it is, that
he should be so eager to have the thing. I should have credited him with
more sense."

"He is quite absurdly keen on it. Last night I thought he would never
stop persuading."

"But you did not give in?"

"Not an inch. I said I would ask you to look at it, and then he was
simply rude. I do believe he will have to go. I don't really think we
shall ever get on together. Certainly, as you say the clay is bad, I
shall refuse to build a brick-kiln."

Axel smiled at her energy. In the morning she was always determined
about Dellwig. "You are very brave to-day," he said. "Last night you
seemed afraid of him."

"He comes when I am tired. I am not going to see him in the evening any
more. It is too dreadful as a finish to a happy day."

"It was a happy day, then, yesterday?" he asked quickly.

"Yes--that is, it ought to have been, and probably would have been
if--if I hadn't been tired."

"But the others--the new arrivals--they must have been happy?"

"Yes--oh yes--" said Anna, hesitating, "I think so. Fräulein Kuhräuber
was, I am sure, at intervals. I think the other two would have been if
they hadn't had a journey."

"By the way, do you remember what I said yesterday about the Elmreichs?"

"Yes, I do. You said horrid things." Her voice changed.

"About a Baron Elmreich. But he had a sister who made a hash of her
life. I saw her once or twice in Berlin. She was dancing at the
Wintergarten, and under her own name."

"Poor thing. But it doesn't interest me."

"Don't get angry yet."

"But it doesn't interest me. And why shouldn't she dance? I knew several
people who ended by dancing at London Wintergartens."

"You admit, then, that it is an end?"

"It is hardly a beginning," conceded Anna.

"She was so amazingly like your baroness would be if she painted and
wore a wig----"

"That you are convinced they must be sisters. Thank you. Now what do you
suppose is the good of telling me that?" And she stood still and faced
him, her eyes flashing.

Do what he would, Axel could not help smiling at her wrath. It was the
wrath of a mother whose child has been hurt by someone on purpose, "I
wish," he said, "that you would not be so angry when I tell you things
that might be important for you to know. If your baroness is really the
sister of the dancing baroness----"

"But she is not. She told me last night that she has no brothers and
sisters. And she wrote it in the letters before she came. Do you think
it is a praiseworthy occupation for a man, doing his best to find out
disgraceful things about a very poor and very helpless woman?"

"No, I do not," said Axel decidedly. "Under any other circumstances I
would leave the poor lady to take her chance. But do consider," he said,
following her, for she had begun to walk on quickly again, "do consider
your unusual position. You are so young to be living away from your
friends, and so young and inexperienced to be at the head of a home for
homeless women--you ought to be quite extraordinarily particular about
the antecedents of the people you take in. It would be most unpleasant
if it got about that they were not respectable."

"But they are respectable," said Anna, looking straight before her.

"A sister who dances at the Wintergarten----"

"Did I not tell you that she has no sister?"

Axel shrugged his shoulders. "The resemblance is so striking that they
might be twins," he said.

"Then you think she says what is not true?"

"How can I tell?"

Anna stopped again and faced him. "Well, suppose it were true--suppose
it is her sister, and she has tried to hide it--do you know how I should
feel about it?"

"Properly scandalised, I hope."

"I should love her all the more. Oh, I should love her twice as much!
Why, think of the misery and the shame--poor, poor little woman--trying
to hide it all, bearing it all by herself--she must have loved her
sister, she must have loved her brother. It isn't true, of course, but
supposing it were, could you tell me _any_ reason why I should turn my
back on her?"

She stood looking at him, her eyes full of angry tears.

He did not answer. If that was the way she felt, what could he do?

"I never understood," she went on passionately, "why the innocent should
be punished. Do you suppose a woman would _like_ her brother to cheat
and then shoot himself? Or _like_ her sister to go and dance? But if
they do do these things, besides her own grief and horror, she is to be
shunned by everybody as though she were infectious. Is that fair? Is
that right? Is it in the least Christian?"

"No, of course it is not. It is very hard and very ugly, but it is quite
natural. An old woman in a strong position might take such a person up,
perhaps, and comfort her and love her as you propose to do, but a young
girl ought not to do anything of the sort."

Anna turned away with a quick movement of impatience and walked on. "If
you argue on the young girl basis," she said, "we shall never be able to
talk about a single thing. When will you leave off about my young
girlishness? In five years I shall be thirty--will you go on till I have
reached that blessed age?"

"I have no right to go on to you about anything," said Axel.

"Precisely," said Anna.

"But please remember that I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to your
uncle, and make allowances for me if I am over-zealous in my anxiety to
shield his niece from possible unpleasantness."

"Then don't keep telling me I am too young to do good. It is ludicrous,
considering my age, besides being dreadful. You will say that, I
believe, till I am thirty or forty, and then when you can't decently say
it any more, and I still want to do things, you'll say I'm old enough to
know better."

Axel laughed. Anna's dimples appeared for an instant, but vanished
again.

"Now," she said, "I am not going to talk about poor little Else any
more. Let her distant relations dance till they are tired--it concerns
nobody here at all."

"Little Else?"

"The baroness. Of course we shall call each other by our Christian
names. We are sisters."

"I see."

"You don't see at all," she said, with a swift sideward glance at him.

"My dear Miss Estcourt----"

"If my plan succeeds it will certainly not be because I have been
encouraged."

"I think," he said with sudden warmth, "that the plan is beautiful, and
could only have been made by a beautiful nature."

"Oh?" ejaculated Anna, surprised. A flush of gratification came into her
face. The heartiness of the tone surprised her even more than the words.
She stood still to look at him. "It is a pity," she said softly, "that
nearly always when we are together we get angry, for you can be so kind
when you choose. Say nice things to me. Let us be happy. I love being
happy."

She held out her hand, smiling. He took it and gave it a hearty, matter
of fact shake, and dropped it. It was very awkward, but he was
struggling with an overpowering desire to take her in his arms and kiss
her, and not let her go again till she had said she would marry him. It
was exceedingly awkward, for he knew quite well that if he did so it
would be the end of all things.

He turned rather white, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets.
"Yes, the plan is beautiful," he said cheerfully, "but very unpractical.
And the nature that made it is, I am sure, beautiful, but of course
quite as unpractical as the plan." And he smiled down at her, a broad,
genial smile.

"I know I don't set about things the right way," she said. "If only you
wouldn't worry about the pasts of my poor friends and what their
relations may have done in pre-historic times, you could help me so
much."

To his relief she began to walk on again. "Princess Ludwig is a sensible
and experienced woman," he said, "and can help you in many ways that I
cannot."

"But she only looks at the _praktische_ side of a question, and that is
really only one side. I am too unpractical, I know, but she isn't
unpractical enough. But I don't want to talk about her. What I wanted to
say was, that once these poor ladies have been chosen and are here, the
time for making inquiries is over, isn't it? As far as I am concerned,
anyhow, it is. I shall never forsake them, never, _never_. So please
don't try to tell me things about them--it doesn't change my feelings
towards them, and only makes me angry with you. Which is a pity. I want
to live at peace with my neighbour."

"Well?" he said, as she paused. "That, I take it, is a prelude to
something else."

"Yes, it is. It's a prelude to Karlchen."

"To Karlchen?"

She looked at him, and laughed rather nervously. "I am afraid," she
said, "that Karlchen is coming to stay with me."

"And who, pray, is Karlchen?"

"The only son of his mother, and she is a widow."

He came to a standstill again. "What," he said, "Frau von Treumann has
asked you to invite her son to Kleinwalde?"

"She didn't actually ask, but she got a sad letter from him, and seemed
to feel the separation so much, and cried about it, and so--and so I
did."

Axel was silent.

"I don't yearn to see Karlchen," said Anna in rather a small voice. She
could not help feeling that the invitation had been wrung from her.

Axel bored a hole in the moss with his stick, and did not answer.

"But naturally his poor mother clings to him, and he to her."

Axel was intent on his hole and did not answer.

"They are all the world to each other."

Axel filled up his hole again, and pressed the moss carefully over it
with his foot. Then he said, "I never yet heard of two Treumanns being
all the world to each other."

"You appear to have a down on the Treumanns."

"Not in the least. I do not think they interest me enough. It is an East
Prussian Junker family that has spread beyond its natural limits, and
one meets them everywhere, and knows their characteristics. What is this
young man? I do not remember having heard of him."

"He is an officer at Rislar."

"At Rislar? Those are the red hussars. Do you wish me to make inquiries
about him?"

"Oh, no. It's no use. His mother can't be happy without him, so he must
come."

"Then may I ask why, if I am not to help you in the matter, we are
talking about him at all?"

"I wanted to ask you whether--whether you think he will come often."

"I should think," said Axel positively, "that he will come very often
indeed."

"Oh!" said Anna.

They walked on in silence.

"Have you considered," he said presently, "what you would do if your
other--sisters want their relations asked down to stay with them?
Christmas, for instance, is a time of general rejoicing, when the
coldest hearts grow warm. Relations who have quarrelled all the year,
seek each other out at Christmas and talk tearfully of ties of blood.
And birthdays--will your twelve sisters be content to spend their twelve
birthdays remote from all members of their family? Birthdays here are
important days. There will be one a month now for you to celebrate at
Kleinwalde."

"I have not got farther than considering Karlchen," said Anna with some
impatience.

"A male Kuhräuber," said Axel musingly, swinging his stick and gazing up
at the fleecy clouds floating over the pine tops, "a male Kuhräuber
would be quite unlike anything you have yet seen."

"There are no male Kuhräubers," said Anna. "At least," she added,
correcting herself, "Fräulein Kuhräuber said so. She said she had no
relations at all, but perhaps--perhaps she has forgotten some, and will
remember them by and by. Oh, I wish they would tell me exactly how they
stand, and not try to hide anything! I thought we had left nothing
unexplained in the letters, but now Karlchen--it seems----" She stopped
and bit her lip. She was actually on the verge of criticising, to Axel,
the behaviour of her sisters. "Look," she said, catching sight of red
roofs through the thinning trees, "isn't that Lohm? I have seen you home
without knowing it."

She held out her hand. "It isn't much good talking, is it?" she said,
moved by a sudden impulse, and looking up at him with a slightly wistful
smile. "How we talk and talk and never get any nearer anything or each
other. Such an amount of explaining oneself, and all no use. I don't
mean you and me especially--it is always so, with everyone and
everywhere. It is very weird. Good-bye."

But he held her hand and would not let her go. "No," he said, in a voice
she did not know, "wait one moment. Why will you not let me really help
you? Do you think you will ever achieve anything by shutting your eyes
to what is true? Is it not better to face it, and then to do one's
best--after that, knowing the truth? Why are you angry whenever I try to
tell you the truth, or what I believe to be the truth about these
ladies? You are certain to find it out for yourself one day. You force
me to look on and see you being disappointed, and grieved, and perhaps
cheated--anyhow your confidence abused--and you reduce our talks
together to a sort of sparring match unworthy, quite unworthy of either
of us----" He broke off abruptly and released her hand. The passion in
his voice was unmistakable, and she was listening with astonished eyes.
"I am lecturing you," he said in his usual even tones, "Forgive me for
thinking that you are setting about your plan in a way that can never be
successful. As you say, we talk and talk, and the more we talk the less
do we understand each other. It is a foolish world, and a pre-eminently
lonely one."

He lifted his hat and turned away. Anna opened her lips to say
something, but he was gone.

She went home and meditated on volcanoes.




CHAPTER XX


The May that year in Northern Germany was the May of a poet's dream. The
days were like a chain of pearls, increasing in beauty and preciousness
as the chain lengthened. The lilacs flowered a fortnight earlier than in
other years. The winds, so restless usually on those flat shores, seemed
all asleep, and hardly stirred. About the middle of the month the moon
was at the full, and the forest became enchanted ground. It was a time
for love and lovers, for vows and kisses, for all pretty, happy, hopeful
things. Only those farmers who were too old to love and vow, looked at
their rye fields and grumbled because there was no rain.

Karlchen, arriving on the first Saturday of that blessed month, felt all
disposed to love, if the _Engländerin_ should turn out to be in the
least degree lovable. He did not ask much of a young woman with a
fortune, but he inwardly prayed that she might not be quite so ugly as
wives with money sometimes are. He was a man used to having what he
wanted, and had spent his own and his mother's money in getting it.
There was a little bald patch on the top of his head, and there were
many debts on his mind, and he was nearing the critical point in an
officer's career, the turning of which is reserved exclusively for the
efficient; and so he had three excellent reasons for desiring to marry.
He had desired it, indeed, for some time, had attempted it often, and
had not achieved it. The fathers of wealthy German girls knew the state
of his finances with an exactitude that was unworthy; and they knew,
besides, every one of his little weaknesses. As a result, they gave
their daughters to other suitors. But here was a girl without a father,
who knew nothing about him at all. There was, of course, some story in
the background to account for her living in this way; but that was
precisely what would make her glad of a husband who would relieve her of
the necessity of building up the weaker parts of her reputation on a
foundation of what Karlchen, when he saw the inmates of the house,
rudely stigmatised as _alte Schachteln_. Reputations, he reflected,
staring at Fräulein Kuhräuber, may be too dearly bought. Naturally she
would prefer an easy-going husband, who would let her see life with all
its fun, to this dreary and aimless existence.

The Treumanns, he thought, were in luck. What a burden his mother had
been on him for the last five years! Miss Estcourt had relieved him of
it. Now there were his debts, and she would relieve him of those; and
the little entanglement she must have had at home would not matter in
Germany, where no one knew anything about her, except that she was the
highly respectable Joachim's niece. Anyway, he was perfectly willing to
let bygones be bygones. He left his bag at the inn at Kleinwalde, an
impossible place as he noted with pleasure, sent away his _Droschke_,
and walked round to the house; but he did not see Anna. She kept out of
the way till the evening, and he had ample time to be happy with his
mother. When he did see her, he fell in love with her at once. He had
quite a simple nature, composed wholly of instincts, and fell in love
with an ease acquired by long practice. Anna's face and figure were far
prettier than he had dared to hope. She was a beauty, he told himself
with much satisfaction. Truly the Treumanns were in luck. He entirely
forgot the _rôle_ he was to play of loving son, and devoted himself,
with his habitual artlessness, to her. Indeed, if he had not forgotten
it, he and his mother were so little accustomed to displays of affection
that they would have been but clumsy actors. There is a great difference
between affectionate letters written quietly in one's room, and
affectionate conversation that has to sound as though it welled up from
one's heart. Nothing of the kind ever welled up from Karlchen's heart;
and Anna noticed at once that there were no signs of unusual attachment
between mother and son. Karlchen was not even commonly polite to his
mother, nor did she seem to expect him to be. When she dropped her
scissors, she had to pick them up for herself. When she lost her
thimble, she hunted for it alone. When she wanted a footstool, she got
up and fetched one from under his very nose. When she came into the room
and looked about for a chair, it was Letty who offered her hers.
Karlchen sat comfortably with his legs crossed, playing with the
paper-knife he had taken out of the book Anna had been reading, and
making himself pleasant. He had his mother's large black eyes, and very
long thick black eyelashes of which he was proud, conscious that they
rested becomingly on his cheeks when he looked down at the paper-knife.
Letty was greatly struck by them, and inquired of Miss Leech in a
whisper whether she had ever seen their like.

"Mr. Jessup had silken eyelashes too," replied Miss Leech dreamily.

"These aren't silk--they're cotton eyelashes," said Letty scornfully.

"My dear Letty," murmured Miss Leech.

Anna was at a disadvantage because of her imperfect German. She could
not repress Karlchen when he was unduly kind as she would have done in
English, and with his mother presiding, as it were, at their opening
friendship, she did not like to begin by looking lofty. Luckily the
princess was unusually chatty that evening. She sat next to Karlchen,
and continually joined in the talk. She was cheerful amiability itself,
and insisted upon being told all about those sons of her acquaintances
who were in his regiment. When he half turned his back on her and
dropped his voice to a rapid undertone, thereby making himself
completely incomprehensible to Anna, the princess pleasantly advised him
to speak very slowly and distinctly, for unless he did Miss Estcourt
would certainly not understand. In a word, she took him under her wing
whether he would or no, and persisted in her friendliness in spite of
his mother's increasingly desperate efforts to draw her into
conversation.

"Why do we not go out, dear Anna?" cried Frau von Treumann at last,
unable to endure Princess Ludwig's behaviour any longer. "Look what a
fine evening it is--and quite warm." And she who till then had gone
about shutting windows, and had been unable to bear the least breath of
air, herself opened the glass doors leading into the garden and went
out.

But although they all followed her, nothing was gained by it. She
could have stamped her foot with rage at the princess's conduct.
Here was everything needful for the beginning of a successful
courtship--starlight, a murmuring sea, warm air, fragrant bushes, a girl
who looked like Love itself in the dusk in her pale beauty, a young man
desiring nothing better than to be allowed to love her, and a mother
only waiting to bless. But here too, unfortunately, was the princess.

She was quite appallingly sociable--"The spite of the woman!" thought
Frau von Treumann, for what could it matter to her?--and remained fixed
at Anna's side as they paced slowly up and down the grass, monopolising
Karlchen's attention with her absurd questions about his brother
officers. Anna walked between them, thinking of other things, holding up
her trailing white dress with one hand, and with the other the edges of
her blue cloak together at her neck. She was half a head taller than
Karlchen, and so was his mother, who walked on his other side. Karlchen,
becoming more and more enamoured the longer he walked, looked up at her
through his eyelashes and told himself that the Treumanns were certainly
in luck, for he had stumbled on a goddess.

"The grass is damp," cried Frau von Treumann, interrupting the endless
questions. "My dear princess--your rheumatism--and I who so easily get
colds. Come, we will go off the grass--we are not young enough to risk
wet feet."

"I do not feel it," said the princess, "I have thick shoes. But you,
dear Frau von Treumann, do not stay if you have fears."

"It _is_ damp," said Anna, turning up the sole of her shoe. "Shall we go
on to the path?"

On the path it was obvious that they must walk in couples. Arrived at
its edge, the princess stopped and looked round with an urbane smile.
"My dear child," she said to Anna, taking her arm, "we have been keeping
Herr von Treumann from his mother regardless of his feelings. I beg you
to pardon my thoughtlessness," she added, turning to him, "but my
interest in hearing of my old friends' sons has made me quite forget
that you took this long journey to be with your dear mother. We will not
interrupt you further. Come, my dear, I wanted to ask you----" And she
led Anna away, dropping her voice to a confidential questioning
concerning the engaging of a new cook.

There was nothing to be done. The only crumb of comfort Karlchen
obtained--but it was a big one--was a reluctantly given invitation, on
his mother's vividly describing at the hour of parting the place where
he was to spend the night, to remove his luggage from the inn to Anna's
house, and to sleep there.

"You are too good, _meine Gnädigste_," he said, consoled by this for the
_tête-à-tête_ he had just had with his mother; "but if it in any way
inconveniences you--we soldiers are used to roughing it----"

"But not like that, not like that, _lieber Junge_," interrupted his
mother anxiously. "It is not fit for a dog, that inn, and I heard this
very evening from the housemaid that one of the children there has the
measles."

That quite settled it. Anna could not expose Karlchen to measles. Why
did he not stay, as he had written he would, at Stralsund? As he was
here, however, she could not let him fall a prey to measles, and she
asked the princess to order a room to be got ready.

It is a proof of her solemnity on that first evening with Karlchen that
when his mother, praising her beauty, mentioned her dimples as specially
bewitching, he should have said, surprised, "What dimples?"

It is a proof, too, of the duplicity of mothers, that the very next day
in church the princess, sitting opposite the innkeeper's rosy family,
and counting its members between the verses of the hymn, should have
found that not one was missing.

Karlchen left on Sunday evening after a not very successful visit. He
had been to church, believing that it was expected of him, and had found
to his disgust that Anna had gone for a walk. So there he sat, between
his mother and Princess Ludwig, and extracted what consolation he could
from a studied neglect of the outer forms of worship and an elaborate
slumber during the sermon.

The morning, then, was wasted. At luncheon Anna was unapproachable.
Karlchen was invited to sit next to his mother, and Anna was protected
by Letty on the one hand and Fräulein Kuhräuber on the other, and she
talked the whole time to Fräulein Kuhräuber.

"Who _is_ Fräulein Kuhräuber?" he inquired irritably of his mother, when
they found themselves alone together again in the afternoon.

"Well, you can see who she is, I should think," replied his mother
equally irritably. "She is just Fräulein Kuhräuber, and nothing more."

"Anna talks to her more than to anyone," he said; she was already "Anna"
to him, _tout court_.

"Yes. It is disgusting."

"It is very disgusting. It is not right that Treumanns should be forced
to associate on equal terms with such a person."

"It is scandalous. But you will change all that."

Karlchen twisted up the ends of his moustache and looked down his nose.
He often looked down his nose because of his eyelashes. He began to hum
a tune, and felt happy again. Axel Lohm was right when he doubted
whether there had ever been a permanently crushed Treumann.

"She has a strange assortment of _alte Schachteln_ here," he said, after
a pause during which his thoughts were rosy. "That Elmreich, now. What
relation does she say she is to Arthur Elmreich?"

"The man who shot himself? Oh, she is no relation at all. At most a
distant cousin."

"_Na, na_," was Karlchen's reply; a reply whose English equivalent would
be a profoundly sceptical wink.

His mother looked at him, waiting for more.

"What do you really think----?" she began, and then stopped.

He stood before the glass readjusting his moustache into the regulation
truculent upward twist. "Think?" he said. "You know Arthur's sister
Lolli was engaged at the Wintergarten this winter. She was not much of a
success. Too old. But she was down on the bills as Baroness Elmreich,
and people went to see her because of that, and because of her brother."

"Oh--terrible," murmured Frau von Treumann.

"Well, I know her; and I shall ask her next time I see her if she has a
sister."

"But this one has no relations living at all," said his mother,
horrified at the bare suggestion that Lolli was the sister of a person
with whom she ate her dinner every day.

"_Na, na_," said Karlchen.

"But my dear Karlchen, it is so unlikely--the baroness is the veriest
pattern of primness. She has such very strict views about all such
things--quite absurdly strict. She even had doubts, she told me, when
first she came here, as to whether Anna were a fit companion for her."

Karlchen stopped twisting his moustache, and stared at his mother. Then
he threw back his head and shrieked with laughter. He laughed so much
that for some moments he could not speak. His mother's face, as she
watched him without a smile, made him laugh still more. "_Liebste
Mama_," he said at last, wiping his eyes, "it may of course not be true.
It is just possible that it is not. But I feel sure it _is_ true, for
this Elmreich and the little Lolli are as alike as two peas. Anna not a
fit companion for Lolli's sister! _Ach Gott, ach Gott!_" And he shrieked
again.

"If it is true," said Frau von Treumann, drawing herself up to her full
height, "it is my duty to tell Anna. I cannot stay under the same roof
with such a woman. She must go."

"Take care," said her son, illumined by an unaccustomed ray of sapience,
"take care, _Mutti_. It is not certain that Anna would send her away."

"What! if she knew about this--this Lolli, as you call her?"

Karlchen shook his head. "It is better not to begin with ultimatums," he
said sagely. "If you say you cannot stay under the same roof with the
Elmreich, and she does not after that go, why then you must. And that,"
he added, looking alarmed, "would be disastrous. No, no, leave it alone.
In any case leave it alone till I have seen Lolli. I shall come down
soon again, you may be sure. I wish we could get rid of the Penheim. Now
that really would be a good thing. Think it over."

But Frau von Treumann felt that by no amount of thinking it over would
they ever get rid of the Penheim.

"You do not like my Karlchen?" she said plaintively to Anna that
evening, coming out into the dusky garden where she stood looking at the
stars. Karlchen was well on his way to Berlin by that time.

"I am sure I should like him very much if I knew him," replied Anna,
putting all the heartiness she could muster into her voice.

Frau von Treumann shook her head sadly. "But now? I see you do not like
him now. You hardly spoke to him. He was hurt. A mother"--"Oh," thought
Anna, "I am tired of mothers,"--"a mother always knows."

Her handkerchief came out. She had put one hand through Anna's arm, and
with the other began to wipe her eyes. Anna watched her in silence.

"What? What? Tears? Do I see tears? Are we then missing our son so
much?" exclaimed a cheery voice behind them. And there was the princess
again.

"Serpent," thought Frau von Treumann; but what is the use of thinking
serpent? She had to submit to being consoled all the same, while Anna
walked away.




CHAPTER XXI


Anna seemed always to be walking away during the days that separated
Karlchen's first visit from his second. Frau von Treumann noticed it
with some uneasiness, and hoped that it was only her fancy. The girl had
shown herself possessed of such an abnormally large and warm heart at
first, had been so eager in her offers of affection, so enthusiastic, so
sympathetic, so--well, absurd; was it possible that there was no warmth
and no affection left over from those vast stores for such a
good-looking, agreeable man as Karlchen? But she set such thoughts aside
as ridiculous. Her son's simple doctrine from his fourteenth year on had
been that all girls like all men. It had often been laid down by him in
their talks together, and her own experience of girls had sufficiently
proved its soundness. "The Penheim must have poisoned her mind against
him," she decided at last, unable otherwise to explain the apathy with
which Anna received any news of Karlchen. Was there ever such sheer
spite? For what could it matter to a woman with no son of her own, who
married Anna? Somebody would marry her, for certain, and the Penheim
would lose her place; then why should it not be Karlchen?

The princess, however, most innocent of excellent women, had never
spoken privately to Anna of Karlchen except once, when she inquired
whether he were to have the best sheets on his bed, or the second best
sheets; and Anna had replied, "The worst."

But if Frau von Treumann was uneasy about Anna, Anna was still more
uneasy about Frau von Treumann. Whenever she could, she went away into
the forest and tried to think things out. She objected very much to the
feeling that life seemed somehow to be thickening round her--yet, after
Karlchen's visit there it was. Each day there were fewer and fewer quiet
pauses in the trivial bustle of existence; clear moments, like windows
through which she caught glimpses of the serene tranquillity with which
the real day, nature's day, the day she ought to have had, was passing.
Frau von Treumann followed her about and talked to her of Karlchen.
Fräulein Kuhräuber followed her about, with a humble, dog-like
affection, and seemed to want to tell her something, and never got
further than dark utterances that perplexed her. Baroness Elmreich
repulsed all her advances, carefully called her Miss Estcourt, and made
acid comments on everything that was said and done. "I believe she
dislikes me," thought Anna, puzzled. "I wonder why?" The baroness did;
and the reason was simplicity itself. She disliked her because she was
younger, prettier, richer, healthier than herself. For this she disliked
her heartily; but with far greater heartiness did she dislike her
because she knew she ought to be grateful to her. The baroness detested
having to feel grateful--it is a detestation not confined to
baronesses--and in this case the burden of the obligations she was under
was so great that it was almost past endurance. And there was no escape.
She had been starving when Anna took her in, and she would starve again
if Anna turned her out. She owed her everything; and what more natural,
then, than to dislike her? The rarest of loves is the love of a debtor
for his creditor.

At night, alone in her room, Anna would wonder at the day lived through,
at the unsatisfactoriness of it, and the emptiness. When were they going
to begin the better life, the soul to soul life she was waiting for? How
busy they had all been, and what had they done? Why, nothing. A little
aimless talking, a little aimless sewing, a little aimless walking
about, a few letters to write that need not have been written, a
newspaper to glance into that did not really interest anybody, meals in
rapid succession, night, and oblivion. That was what was on the surface.
What was beneath the surface she could only guess at; for after a whole
fortnight with the Chosen she was still confronted solely by surfaces.
In the hot forest, drowsy and aromatic, where the white butterflies,
like points of light among the shadows of the pine-trunks, fluttered up
and down the unending avenues all day long, she wandered, during the
afternoon hour when the Chosen napped, to the most out-of-the-way nooks
she could find; and sitting on the moss where she could see some special
bit of loveliness, some distant radiant meadow in the sunlight beyond
the trees, some bush with its delicate green shower of budding leaves at
the foot of a giant pine, some exquisite effect of blue and white
between the branches so far above her head, she would ponder and ponder
till she was weary.

There was no mistaking Karlchen's looks; she had not been a pretty girl
for several seasons at home in vain. Karlchen meant to marry her. She,
of course, did not mean to marry Karlchen, but that did not smooth any
of the ruggedness out of the path she saw opening before her. She would
have to endure the preliminary blandishments of the wooing, and when the
wooing itself had reached the state of ripeness which would enable her
to let him know plainly her own intentions, there would be a grievous
number of scenes to be gone through with his mother. And then his mother
would shake the Kleinwalde dust from her offended feet and go, and
failure number one would be upon her. In the innermost recesses of her
heart, offensive as Karlchen's wooing would certainly be, she thought
that once it was over it would not have been a bad thing; for, since his
visit, it was clear that Frau von Treumann was not the sort of inmate
she had dreamed of for her home for the unhappy. Unhappy she had
undoubtedly been, poor thing, but happy with Anna she would never be.
She had forgiven the first fibs the poor lady had told her, but she
could not go on forgiving fibs for ever. All those elaborate untruths,
written and spoken, about Karlchen's visit, how dreadful they were.
Surely, thought Anna, truthfulness was not only a lovely and a pleasant
thing but it was absolutely indispensable as the basis to a real
friendship. How could any soul approach another soul through a network
of lies? And then more painful still--she confessed with shame that it
was more painful to her even than the lies--Frau von Treumann evidently
took her for a fool. Not merely for a person wanting in intelligence, or
slow-witted, but for a downright fool. She must think so, or she would
have taken more pains, at least some pains, to make her schemes a little
less transparent. Anna hated herself for feeling mortified by this; but
mortified she certainly was. Even a philosopher does not like to be
honestly mistaken during an entire fortnight for a fool. Though he may
smile, he will almost surely wince. Not being a philosopher, Anna winced
and did not smile.

"I think," she said to Manske, when he came in one morning with a list
of selected applications, "I think we will wait a little before choosing
the other nine."

"The gracious one is not weary of well-doing?" he asked quickly.

"Oh no, not at all; I like well-doing," Anna said rather lamely, "but it
is not quite--not quite as simple as it looks."

"I have found nine most deserving cases," he urged, "and later there may
not be----"

"No, no," interrupted Anna, "we will wait. In the autumn, perhaps--not
now. First I must make the ones who are here happy. You know," she said,
smiling, "they came here to be made happy."

"Yes, truly I know it. And happy indeed must they be in this home,
surrounded by all that makes life fair and desirable."

"One would think so," said Anna, musing. "It is pretty here, isn't
it--it should be easy to be happy here,--yet I am not sure that they
are."

"Not sure----?" Manske looked at her, startled.

"What do people--most people, ordinary people, need, to make them
happy?" she asked wistfully. She was speaking to herself more than to
him, and did not expect any very illuminating answer.

"The fear of the Lord," he replied promptly; which put an end to the
conversation.

But besides her perplexities about the Chosen, Anna had other worries.
Dellwig had received the refusal to let him build the brick-kiln with
such insolence, and had, in his anger, said such extraordinary things
about Axel Lohm, that Anna had blazed out too, and had told him he must
go. It had been an unpleasant scene, and she had come out from it white
and trembling. She had intended to ask Axel to do the dismissing for her
if she should ever definitely decide to send him away; but she had been
overwhelmed by a sudden passion of wrath at the man's intolerable
insinuations--only half understood, but sounding for that reason worse
than they were--and had done it herself. Since then she had not seen
him. By the agreement her uncle had made with him, he was entitled to
six months' notice, and would not leave until the winter, and she knew
she could not continue to refuse to see him; but how she dreaded the
next interview! And how uneasy she felt at the thought that the
management of her estate was entirely in the hands of a man who must now
be her enemy. Axel was equally anxious, when he heard what she had done.
It had to be done, of course; but he did not like Dellwig's looks when
he met him. He asked Anna to allow him to ride round her place as often
as he could, and she was grateful to him, for she knew that not only her
own existence, but the existence of her poor friends, depended on the
right cultivation of Kleinwalde. And she was so helpless. What creature
on earth could be more helpless than an English girl in her position?
She left off reading Maeterlinck, borrowed books on farming from Axel,
and eagerly studied them, learning by heart before breakfast long pages
concerning the peculiarities of her two chief products, potatoes and
pigs.

"He cannot do much harm," Axel assured her; "the potatoes, I see, are
all in, and what can he do to the pigs? His own vanity would prevent his
leaving the place in a bad state. I have heard of a good man--shall I
have him down and interview him for you?"

"How kind you are," said Anna gratefully; indeed, he seemed to her to be
a tower of strength.

"Anyone would do what they could to help a forlorn young lady in the
straits you are in," he said, smiling at her.

"I don't feel like a forlorn young lady with you next door to help me
out of the difficulties."

"People in these lonely country places learn to be neighbourly," he
replied in his most measured tones.

He had not again spoken of the Chosen since his walk with her through
the forest; and though he knew that Karlchen had been and gone he did
not mention his name. Nor did Anna. The longer she lived with her
sisters the less did she care to talk about them, especially to Axel. As
for Frau von Treumann's plans, how could she ever tell him of those?

And just then Letty, the only being who was really satisfactory, became
a cause to her of fresh perplexity. Letty had been strangely content
with her German lessons from Herr Klutz. Every day she and Miss Leech
set out without a murmur, and came back looking placid. They brought
back little offerings from the parsonage, a bunch of narcissus, the
first lilac, cakes baked by Frau Manske, always something. Anna took the
flowers, and ate the cakes, and sent pleased messages in return. If she
had been less preoccupied by Dellwig and the eccentricities of her three
new friends, she would certainly have been struck by Letty's silence
about her lessons, and would have questioned her. There was no grumbling
after the first day, and no abuse of Schiller and the muses. Once Anna
met Klutz walking through Kleinwalde, and asked him how the studies were
progressing. "Colossal," was the reply, "the progress made is colossal."
And he crushed her rings into her fingers when she gave him her hand to
shake, and blushed, and looked at her with eyes that he felt must burn
into her soul. But Anna noticed neither his eyes nor his blush; for his
eyes, whatever he might feel them to be doing, were not the kind that
burn into souls, and he was a pale young man who, when he blushed, did
it only in his ears. They certainly turned crimson as he crushed Anna's
fingers, but she was not thinking of his ears.

"Frau Manske is too kind," she said, as the nosegays, at first
intermittent, became things of daily occurrence. They grew bigger, too,
every day, attaining such a girth at last that Letty could hardly carry
them. "She must not plunder her garden like this."

"It is very full of flowers," said Miss Leech. "Really a wonderful
display. The bunch is always ready, tied together and lying on the table
when we arrive. I tried to tell her yesterday that you were afraid she
was spoiling her garden, sending so much, but she did not seem to
understand. She is showing me how to make those cakes you said you
liked."

"I wish I had some of these in my garden," said Anna, laying her cheek
against the posy of wallflowers Letty had just given her. There was
nothing in her garden except grass and trees; Uncle Joachim had not been
a man of flowers.

She took them up to her room, kissing them on the way, and put them in a
jar on the window-sill; and it was not until two or three days later,
when they began to fade, that she saw the corner of an envelope peeping
out from among them. She pulled it out and opened it. It was addressed
to _Ihr Hochwohlgeboren Fräulein Anna Estcourt_; and inside was a sheet
of notepaper with a large red heart painted on it, mangled, and pierced
by an arrow; and below it the following poem in a cramped, hardly
readable writing:--

    The earth am I, and thou the heaven,
      The mass am I, and thou the leaven,
    No other heaven do I want but thee,
      Oh Anna, Anna, Anna, pity me!

                      AUGUST KLUTZ, Kandidat.

In an instant Letty's unnatural cheerfulness about her lessons flashed
across her. _What_ had they been doing, and where was Miss Leech, that
such things could happen?

It was a very terrible, stern-browed aunt who met Letty that day on the
stairs when she came home.

"Hullo, Aunt Anna, seen a ghost?" Letty inquired pleasantly; but her
heart sank into her boots all the same as she followed her into her
room.

"Look," said Anna, showing her the paper, "how could you do it? For of
course you did it. Herr Klutz doesn't speak English."

"Doesn't he though--he gets on like anything. He sits up all night----"

"How is it that _this_ was possible?" interrupted Anna, striking the
paper with her hand.

"It's pretty, isn't it," said Letty, faintly grinning. "The last line
had to be changed a little. It isn't original, you know, except the
Annas. I put in those. That footman mother got cheap because he had one
finger too few sent it to Hilton on her birthday last year--she liked it
awfully. The last line was 'Oh Hilton, Hilton, Hilton----'"

"_How_ came you to talk such hideous nonsense with Herr Klutz, and about
me?"

"I didn't. He began. He talked about you the whole time, and started
doing it the very first day Leechy cooked."

"Cooked?"

"She is always in the kitchen with Frau Manske. We brought you some of
the cakes one day, and you seemed as pleased as anything."

"And instead of learning German you and he have been making up this sort
of thing?"

Anna's voice and eyes frightened Letty. She shifted from one foot to the
other and looked down sullenly. "What's the good of being angry?" she
said, addressing the carpet; "it's only Mr. Jessup over again. Leechy
wasn't angry with Mr. Jessup. She was frightfully pleased. She says it's
the greatest compliment a person can pay anybody, going on about them
like Herr Klutz does, and talking rot."

Anna stared at her, bewildered. "Mr. Jessup?" she repeated. "And do you
mean to tell me that Miss Leech knows of this--this disgusting
nonsense?" She held the mangled heart at arm's length, crushing it in
her hand.

"I say, you'll spoil it. He worked at it for days. There weren't any
paints red enough for the wound, and he had to go to Stralsund on
purpose. He thought no end of it." And Letty, scared though she was,
could not resist giggling a little.

"Do you mean to tell me that Miss Leech knows about this?" insisted
Anna.

"Rather not. It's a secret. He made me promise faithfully never to tell
a soul. Of course it doesn't matter talking to you, because you're one
of the persons concerned. You can't be married, you know, without
knowing about it, so I'm not breaking my promise talking to you----"

"Married? What unutterable rubbish have you got into your head?"

"That's what I said--or something like it. I said it was jolly rot. He
said, 'What's rot?' I said 'That.'"

"But what?" asked Anna angrily. She longed to shake her.

"Why, that about marrying you. I told him it was rot, and I was sure you
wouldn't, but as he didn't know what rot was, it wasn't much good. He
hunted it out in the dictionary, and still he didn't know."

Anna stood looking at her with indignant eyes. "You don't know what you
have done," she said, "evidently you don't. It is a dreadful thing that
the moment Miss Leech leaves you you should begin to talk of such
things--such horrid things--with a stranger. A little girl of your
age----"

"I didn't begin," whimpered Letty, overcome by the wrath in Anna's
voice.

"But all this time you have been going on with it, instead of at once
telling Miss Leech or me."

"I never met a--a lover before--I thought it--great fun."

"Then all those flowers were from him?"

"Ye--es." Letty was in tears.

"He thought I knew they were from him?"

No answer.

"Did he?" insisted Anna.

"Ye--es."

"You are a very wicked little girl," said Anna, with awful sternness.
"You have been acting untruths every day for ages, which is just as bad
as telling them. I don't believe you have an idea of the horridness of
what you have done--I hope you have not. Of course your lessons at Lohm
have come to an end. You will not go there again. Probably I shall send
you home to your mother. I am nearly sure that I shall. Go away." And
she pointed to the door.

That night neither Letty nor Miss Leech appeared at supper; both were
shut up in their rooms in tears. Miss Leech was quite unable to forgive
herself. It was all her fault, she felt. She had been appalled when Anna
showed her the heart and told her what had been going on while she was
learning to cook in Frau Manske's kitchen. "Such a quiet,
respectable-looking young man!" she exclaimed, horror-stricken. "And
about to take holy orders!"

"Well, you see he isn't quiet and respectable at all," said Anna. "He is
unusually enterprising, and quite without morals. Only a demoralised
person would take advantage of a poor little pupil in that way."

She lit a candle, and burnt the heart. "There," she said, when it was in
ashes, "that's the end of that. Heaven knows what Letty has been led
into saying, or what ideas he has put into her head. I can't bear to
think of it. I hadn't the courage to cross-question her much--I was
afraid I should hear something that would make me too angry, and I'd
have to tell the parson. Anyhow, dear Miss Leech, we will not leave her
alone again, ever, will we? I don't suppose a thing like this will
happen twice, but we won't let it have a chance, will we? Now don't be
too unhappy. Tell me about Mr. Jessup."

It was Miss Leech's fault, Anna knew; but she so evidently knew it
herself, and was so deeply distressed, that rebukes were out of the
question. She spent the evening and most of the night in useless
laments, while, in the room adjoining, Letty lay face downwards on her
bed, bathed in tears. For Letty's conscience was in a grievous state of
tumult. She had meant well, and she had done badly. She had not thought
her aunt would be angry--was she not in full possession of the facts
concerning Mr. Jessup's courtship? And had not Miss Leech said that no
higher honour could be paid to a woman than to fall in love with her and
make her an offer of marriage? Herr Klutz, it is true, was not the sort
of person her aunt could marry, for her aunt was stricken in years, and
he looked about the same age as her brother Peter; besides, he was
clearly, thought Letty, of the guttersnipe class, a class that bit its
nails and never married people's aunts. But, after all, her aunt could
always say No when the supreme moment arrived, and nobody ought to be
offended because they had been fallen in love with, and he was
frightfully in love, and talked the most awful rot. Nor had she
encouraged him. On the contrary, she had discouraged him; but it was
precisely this discouragement, so virtuously administered, that lay so
heavily on her conscience as she lay so heavily on her bed. She had been
proud of it till this interview with her aunt; since then it had taken
on a different complexion, and she was sure, dreadfully sure, that if
her aunt knew of it she would be very angry indeed--much, much angrier
than she was before. Letty rolled on her bed in torments; for the
discouragement administered to Klutz had been in the form of poetry, and
poetry written on her aunt's notepaper, and purporting to come from her.
She had meant so well, and what had she done? When no answer came by
return to his poem hidden in the wallflowers, he had refused to believe
that the bouquet had reached its destination. "There has been
treachery," he cried; "you have played me false." And he seemed to fold
up with affliction.

"I gave it to her all right. She hasn't found the letter yet," said
Letty, trying to comfort, and astonished by the loudness of his grief.
"It's all right--you wait a bit. She liked the flowers awfully, and
kissed them."

"Poor young lover," she thought romantically, "his heart must not bleed
too much. Aunt Anna, if she ever does find the letter, will only send
him a rude answer. I will answer it for her, and gently discourage him."
For if the words that proceeded from Letty's mouth were inelegant, her
thoughts, whenever they dwelt on either Mr. Jessup or Herr Klutz, were
invariably clothed in the tender language of sentiment.

And she had sat up till very late, composing a poem whose mission was
both to discourage and console. It cost her infinite pains, but when it
was finished she felt that it had been worth them all. She copied it out
in capital letters on Anna's notepaper, folded it up carefully, and tied
it with one of her own hair-ribbons to a little bunch of
lilies-of-the-valley she had gathered for the purpose in the forest.

This was the poem:--

    It is a matter of regret
      That circumstances won't
    Allow me to call thee my pet,
      But as it is they don't.

    For why? My many years forbid,
      And likewise thy position.
    So take advice, and strive amid
      Thy tears for meek submission.

                              ANNA.

And this poem was, at that very moment, as she well knew, in Herr
Klutz's waistcoat pocket.




CHAPTER XXII


The ordinary young man, German or otherwise, hungrily emerging from
boyhood into a toothsome world made to be eaten, cures himself of his
appetite by indulging it till he is ill, and then on a firm foundation
of his own foolish corpse, or, as the poet puts it, of his dead self,
begins to build up the better things of his later years.

Klutz was an ordinary young man, and arrived at early manhood as hungry
as his fellows; but his father was a parson, his grandfather had been a
parson, his uncles were all parsons, and Fate, coming cruelly to him in
the gloomy robes of the Lutheran Church, his natural follies had had no
opportunity of getting out, developing, and dissolving, but remained
shut up in his heart, where they amused themselves by seething
uninterruptedly, to his great discomfort, while the good parson, in
whose care he was, talked to him of the world to come.

"The world to come," thought Klutz, hungering and thirsting for a taste
of the world in which he was, "may or may not be very well in its way;
but its way is not my way." And he listened in a silence that might be
taken either for awed or bored to Manske's expatiations. Manske, of
course, interpreted it as awed. "Our young vicar," he said to his wife,
"thinks much. He is serious and contemplative beyond his years. He is
not a man of many and vain words." To which his wife replied only by a
sniff of scepticism.

She had no direct proofs that Klutz was not serious and contemplative,
but during his first winter in their house he had fallen into her bad
graces because of a certain indelicately appreciative attitude he
displayed towards her apple jelly. Not that she grudged him apple jelly
in just quantities; both she and her husband were fond of it, and the
eating of it was luckily one of those pleasures whose indulgence is
innocent. But there are limits beyond which even jelly becomes vicious,
and these limits Herr Klutz continually overstepped. Every autumn she
made a sufficient number of pots of it to last discreet appetites a
whole year. There had always been vicars in their house, and there had
never been a dearth of jelly. But this year, so early as Easter, there
were only two pots left. She could not conveniently lock it up and
refuse to produce any, for then she and her husband would not have it
themselves; so all through the winter she had watched the pots being
emptied one after the other, and the thinner the rows in her storeroom
grew, the more pronounced became her conviction that Klutz's piety was
but skin deep. A young man who could behave in so unbridled a fashion
could not be really serious; there was something, she thought, that
smacked suspiciously of the flesh and the devil about such conduct.
Great, then, was her astonishment when, the penultimate pot being placed
at Easter on the table, Klutz turned from it with loathing. Nor did he
ever look at apple jelly again; nor did he, of other viands, eat enough
to keep him in health. He who had been so voracious forgot his meals,
and had to be coaxed before he would eat at all. He spent his spare time
writing, sitting up sometimes all night, and consuming candles at the
same head-long rate with which he had previously consumed the jelly; and
when towards May her husband once more commented on his seriousness,
Frau Manske's conscience no longer permitted her to sniff.

"You must be ill," she said to him at last, on a day when he had sat
through the meals in silence and had refused to eat at all.

"Ill!" burst out Klutz, whose body and soul seemed both to be in one
fierce blaze of fever, "I am sick--sick even unto death."

And he did feel sick. Only two days had elapsed since he had received
Anna's poem and had been thrown by it into a tumult of delight and
triumph; for the discouragement it contained had but encouraged him the
more, appearing to be merely the becoming self-depreciation of a woman
before him who has been by nature appointed lord. He was perfectly ready
to overlook the obstacles to their union to which she alluded. She could
not help her years; there were, truly, more of them than he would have
wished, but luckily they were not visible on that still lovely face. As
to position, he supposed she meant that he was not _adelig_; but a man,
he reflected, compared to a woman, is always _adelig_, whatever his name
may be, by virtue of his higher and nobler nature. He had been for
rushing at once to Kleinwalde; but his pupil and confidant had said
"Don't," and had said it with such energy that for that day at least he
had resisted. And now, the very morning of the day on which the Frau
Pastor was asking him whether he were ill, he had received a curt note
from Miss Leech, informing him that Miss Letty Estcourt would for the
present discontinue her German studies. What had happened? Even the
poem, lying warm on his heart, was not able to dispel his fears. He had
flown at once to Kleinwalde, feeling that it was absurd not to follow
the dictates of his heart and cast himself in person at Anna's no doubt
expectant feet, and the door had been shut in his face--rudely shut, by
a coarse servant, whose manner had so much enraged him that he had
almost shown her the precious verses then and there, to convince her of
his importance in that house; indeed, the only consideration that
restrained him was a conviction of her ignorance of the English tongue.

"Would you like to see the doctor?" inquired Frau Manske, startled by
his looks and words; perhaps he had caught something infectious; an
infectious vicar in the house would be horrible.

"The doctor!" cried Klutz; and forthwith quoted the German rendering of
the six lines beginning, Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased.

Frau Manske was seriously alarmed. Not aware that he was quoting, she
was horrified to hear him calling her _Du_, a privilege confined to
lovers, husbands, and near relations, and asking her questions that she
was sure no decent vicar would ever ask the respectable mother of a
family. "I am sure you ought to see the doctor," she said nervously,
getting up hastily and going to the door.

"No, no," said Klutz; "the doctor does not exist who can help me."

His hand went to the breast-pocket containing the poem, and he fingered
it feverishly. He longed to show it to Frau Manske, to translate it for
her, to let her see what the young Kleinwalde lady, joint patron with
Herr von Lohm of her husband's living, thought of him.

"I will ask my husband about the doctor," persisted Frau Manske,
disappearing with unusual haste. If she had stayed one minute longer he
would have shown her the poem.

Klutz did not wait to hear what the pastor said, but crushed his felt
hat on to his head and started for a violent walk. He would go through
Kleinwalde, past the house; he would haunt the woods; he would wait
about. It was a hot, gusty May afternoon, and the wind that had been
quiet so long was blowing up the dust in clouds; but he hurried along
regardless of heat and wind and dust, with an energy surprising in one
who had eaten nothing all day. Love had come to him very turbulently. He
had been looking for it ever since he left school; but his watchful
parents had kept him in solitary places, empty, uninhabited places like
Lohm, places where the parson's daughters were either married or were
still tied on the cushions of infancy. Sometimes he had been invited, as
a great condescension, to the Dellwigs' Sunday parties; and there too he
had looked around for Love. But the company consisted solely of stout
farmers' wives, ladies of thirty, forty, fifty--of a dizzy antiquity,
that is, and their talk was of butter-making and sausages, and they
cared not at all for Love. "Oh, Love, Love, Love, where shall I find
thee?" he would cry to the stars on his way home through the forest
after these evenings; but the stars twinkled coldly on, obviously
profoundly indifferent as to whether he found it or not. His chest of
drawers was full of the poems into which he had poured the emotions of
twenty, the emotions and longings that well-fed, unoccupied twenty
mistakes for soul. And then the English Miss had burst upon his gaze,
sitting in her carriage on that stormy March day, smiling at him from
the very first, piercing his heart through and through with eyes that
many persons besides Klutz saw were lovely, and so had he found Love,
and for ever lost his interest in apple jelly.

It was a confident, bold Love, with more hopes than fears, more
assurance than misgivings. The poem seemed to burn his pocket, so
violently did he long to show it round, to tell everyone of his good
fortune. The lilies-of-the-valley to which it had been tied and that he
wore since all day long in his coat, were hardly brown, and yet he was
tired already of having such a secret to himself. What advantage was
there in being told by the lady of Kleinwalde that she regretted not
being able to call him _Lämmchen_ or _Schätzchen_ (the alternative
renderings his dictionary gave of "pet") if no one knew it?

When he reached the house he walked past it at a snail's pace, staring
up at the blank, repellent windows. Not a soul was to be seen. He went
on discontentedly. What should he do? The door had been shut in his face
once already that day, why he could not imagine. He hesitated, and
turned back. He would try again. Why not? The Miss would have scolded
the servant roundly when she heard that the person who dwelt in her
thoughts as a _Lämmchen_ had been turned away. He went boldly round the
grass plot in front of the house and knocked.

The same servant appeared. Instantly on seeing him she slammed the door,
and called out "_Nicht zu Haus!_"

"_Ekelhaftes Benehmen!_" cried Klutz aloud, flaming into sudden passion.
His mind, never very strong, had grown weaker along with his body during
these exciting days of love and fasting. A wave of fury swept over him
as he stood before the shut door and heard the servant going away; and
hardly knowing what he did, he seized the knocker, and knocked and
knocked till the woods rang.

There was a sound of hurried footsteps on the path behind him, and
turning his head, his hand still knocking, he saw Dellwig running
towards him.

"_Nanu!_" cried Dellwig breathlessly, staring in blankest astonishment.
"What in the devil's name are you making this noise for? Is the parson
on fire?"

Klutz stared back in a dazed sort of way, his fury dying out at once in
the presence of the stronger nature; then, because he was twenty, and
because he was half-starved, and because he felt he was being cruelly
used, there on Anna's doorstep, in the full light of the evening sun,
with Dellwig's eyes upon him, he burst into a torrent of tears.

"Well of all--what's wrong at Lohm, you great sheep?" asked Dellwig,
seizing his arm and giving him a shake.

Klutz signified by a movement of his head that nothing was wrong at
Lohm. He was crying like a baby, into a red pocket-handkerchief, and
could not speak.

Dellwig, still gripping his arm, stared at him a moment in silence; then
he turned him round, pushed him down the steps, and walked him off.
"Come along, young man," he said, "I want some explanation of this. If
you are mad you'll be locked up. We don't fancy madmen about our place.
And if you're not mad you'll be fined by the Amtsvorsteher for
disorderly conduct. Knocking like that at a lady's door! I wonder you
didn't kick it in, while you were about it. It's a good thing the
_Herrschaften_ are out."

Klutz really felt ill. He leaned on Dellwig's arm and let himself be
helped along, the energy gone out of him with the fury. "You have never
loved," was all he said, wiping his eyes.

"Oh that's it, is it? It is love that made you want to break the
knocker? Why didn't you go round to the back? Which of them is it? The
cook, of course. You look hungry. A Kandidat crying after a cook!" And
Dellwig laughed loud and long.

"The cook!" cried Klutz, galvanised by the word into life. "The cook!"
He thrust a shaking hand into his breast-pocket and dragged it out, the
precious paper, unfolding it with trembling fingers, and holding it
before Dellwig's eyes. "So much for your cooks," he said, tremulously
triumphant. They were in the road, out of sight of the house. Dellwig
took the paper and held it close to his eyes. "What's this?" he asked,
scrutinising it. "It is not German."

"It is English," said Klutz.

"What, the governess----?"

Klutz merely pointed to the name at the end. Oh, the sweetness of that
moment!

"Anna?" read out Dellwig, "Anna? That is Miss Estcourt's name."

"It is," said Klutz, his tears all dried up.

"It seems to be poetry," said Dellwig slowly.

"It is," said Klutz.

"Why have you got it?"

"Why indeed! It's mine. She sent it to me. She wrote it for me. These
flowers----"

"Miss Estcourt? Sent it to you? Poetry? To _you_?" Dellwig looked up
from the paper at Klutz, and examined him slowly from head to foot as if
he had never seen him before. His expression while he did it was not
flattering, but Klutz rarely noticed expressions. "What's it all about?"
he asked, when he had reached Klutz's boots, by which he seemed struck,
for he looked at them twice.

"Love," said Klutz proudly.

"Love?"

"Let me come home with you," said Klutz eagerly, "I'll translate it
there. I can't here where we might be disturbed."

"Come on, then," said Dellwig, walking off at a great pace with the
paper in his hand.

Just as they were turning into the farmyard the rattle of a carriage was
heard coming down the road. "Stop," said Dellwig, laying his hand on
Klutz's arm, "the _Herrschaften_ have been drinking coffee in the
woods--here they are, coming home. You can get a greeting if you wait."

They both stood on the edge of the road, and the carriage with Anna and
a selection from her house-party drove by. Dellwig and Klutz swept off
their hats. When Anna saw Klutz she turned scarlet--undeniably,
unmistakably scarlet--and looked away quickly. Dellwig's lips shaped
themselves into a whistle. "Come in, then," he said, glancing at Klutz,
"come in and translate your poem."

Seldom had Klutz passed more delicious moments than those in which he
rendered Letty's verses into German, with both the Dellwigs drinking in
his words. The proud and exclusive Dellwigs! A month ago such a thing
would have been too wild a flight of fancy for the most ambitious dream.
In the very room in which he had been thrust aside at parties, forgotten
in corners, left behind when the others went in to supper, he was now
sitting the centre of interest, with his former supercilious hosts
hanging on his words. When he had done, had all too soon come to the end
of his delightful task, he looked round at them triumphantly; and his
triumph was immediately dashed out of him by Dellwig, who said with his
harshest laugh, "Put aside all your hopes, young man--Miss Estcourt is
engaged to Herr von Lohm."

"Engaged? To Herr von Lohm?" Klutz echoed stupidly, his mouth open and
the hand holding the verses dropping limply to his side.

"Engaged, engaged, engaged," Dellwig repeated in a loud sing-song, "not
openly, but all the same engaged."

"It is truly scandalous!" cried his wife, greatly excited, and firmly
believing that the verses were indeed Anna's. Was she not herself of the
race of _Weiber_, and did she not therefore well know what they were
capable of?

"Silence, Frau!" commanded Dellwig.

"And she takes my flowers--my daily offerings, floral and poetical, and
she sends me these verses--and all the time she is betrothed to someone
else?"

"She is," said Dellwig with another burst of laughter, for Klutz's face
amused him intensely. He got up and slapped him on the shoulder. "This
is your first experience of _Weiber_, eh? Don't waste your heartaches
over her. She is a young lady who likes to have her little joke and
means no harm----"

"She is a person without shame!" cried his wife.

"Silence, Frau!" snapped Dellwig. "Look here, young man--why, what does
he look like, sitting there with all the wind knocked out of him? Get
him a glass of brandy, Frau, or we shall have him crying again. Sit up,
and be a man. Miss Estcourt is not for you, and never will be. Only a
vicar could ever have dreamed she was, and have been imposed upon by
this poetry stuff. But though you're a vicar you're a man, eh? Here,
drink this, and tell us if you are not a man."

Klutz feebly tried to push the glass away, but Dellwig insisted. Klutz
was pale to ghastliness, and his eyes were brimming again with tears.

"Oh, this person! Oh, this Englishwoman! Oh, the shameful treatment of
an estimable young man!" cried Frau Dellwig, staring at the havoc Anna
had wrought.

"Silence, Frau!" shouted Dellwig, stamping his foot. "You can't be
treated like this," he went on to Klutz, who, used to drinking much milk
at the abstemious parsonage, already felt the brandy running along his
veins like liquid fire, "you can't be made ridiculous and do nothing. A
vicar can't fight, but you must have some revenge."

Klutz started. "Revenge! Yes, but what revenge?" he asked.

"Nothing to do with Miss Estcourt, of course. Leave her alone----"

"Leave her alone?" cried his wife, "what, when she it is----"

"Silence, Frau!" roared Dellwig. "Leave her alone, I say. You won't gain
anything there, young man. But go to her _Bräutigam_ Lohm and tell him
about it, and show him the stuff. He'll be interested."

Dellwig laughed boisterously, and took two or three rapid turns up and
down the room. He had not lived with old Joachim and seen much of old
Lohm and the surrounding landowners without having learned something of
their views on questions of honour. Axel Lohm he knew to be specially
strict and strait-laced, to possess in quite an unusual degree the
ideals that Dellwig thought so absurd and so unpractical, the ideals,
that is, of a Christian gentleman. Had he not known him since he was a
child? And he had always been a prig. How would he like Miss Estcourt to
be talked about, as of course she would be talked about? Klutz's mouth
could not be stopped, and the whole district would know what had been
going on. Axel Lohm could not and would not marry a young lady who wrote
verses to vicars; and if all relations between Lohm and Kleinwalde
ceased, why then life would resume its former pleasant course, he,
Dellwig, staying on at his post, becoming, as was natural, his
mistress's sole adviser, and certainly after due persuasion achieving
all he wanted, including the brick-kiln. The plainness and clearness of
the future was beautiful. He walked up and down the room making odd
sounds of satisfaction, and silencing his wife with vigour every time
she opened her lips. Even his wife, so quick as a rule of comprehension,
had not grasped how this poem had changed their situation, and how it
behoved them now not to abuse their mistress before a mischief-making
young man. She was blinded, he knew, by her hatred of Miss Estcourt.
Women were always the slaves, in defiance of their own interests, to
some emotion or other; if it was not love, then it was hatred. Never
could they wait for anything whatever. The passing passion must out and
be indulged, however fatal the consequences might be. What a set they
were! And the best of them, what fools. He glanced angrily at his wife
as he passed her, but his glance, travelling from her to Klutz, who sat
quite still with head sunk on his chest, legs straight out before him,
the hand with the paper loosely held in it hanging down out of the
cuffless sleeve nearly to the floor, and vacant eyes staring into space,
his good humour returned, and he gave another harsh laugh. "Well?" he
said, standing in front of this dejected figure. "How long will you sit
there? If I were you I'd lose no time. You don't want those two to be
making love and enjoying themselves an hour longer than is necessary, do
you? With you out in the cold? With you so cruelly deceived? And made to
look so ridiculous? I'd spoil that if I were you, at once."

"Yes, you are right. I'll go to Herr von Lohm and see if I can have an
interview."

Klutz got up with a great show of determination, put the paper in his
pocket, and buttoned his coat over it for greater security. Then he
hesitated.

"It _is_ a shameful thing, isn't it?" he said, his eyes on Dellwig's
face.

"Shameful? It's downright cruel."

"Shameful?" began his wife.

"Silence, I tell thee! Young ladies' jokes are sometimes cruel, you see.
I believe it was a joke, but a very heartless one, and one that has made
you look more foolish even than half-fledged pastors of your age
generally do look. It is only fair in return to spoil her game for her.
Take another glass of brandy, and go and do it."

Klutz stared hard for a moment at Dellwig. Then he seized the brandy,
gulped it down, snatched up his hat, and taking no farewell notice of
either husband or wife, hurried out of the room. They saw him pass
beneath the window, his hat over his eyes, his face white, his ears
aflame.

"There goes a fool," said Dellwig, rubbing his hands, "and as useful a
one as ever I saw. But here's another fool," he added, turning sharply
to his wife, "and I don't want them in my own house."

And he proceeded to tell her, in the vigorous and convincing language of
a justly irritated husband, what he thought of her.




CHAPTER XXIII


Klutz sped, as fast as his shaking limbs allowed, to Lohm. When he
passed Anna's house he flung it a look of burning contempt, which he
hoped she saw and felt from behind some curtain; and then, trying to put
her from his mind, he made desperate efforts to arrange his thoughts a
little for the coming interview. He supposed that it must be the brandy
that made it so difficult for him to discern exactly why he was to go to
Herr von Lohm instead of to the person principally concerned, the person
who had treated him so scandalously; but Herr Dellwig knew best, of
course, and judged the matter quite dispassionately. Certainly Herr von
Lohm, as an insolently happy rival, ought in mere justice to be annoyed
a little; and if the annoyance reached such a pitch of effectiveness as
to make him break off the engagement, why then--there was no
knowing--perhaps after all----? The ordinary Christian was bound to
forgive his erring brother; how much more, then, was it incumbent on a
pastor to forgive his erring sister? But Klutz did wish that someone
else could have done the annoying for him, leaving him to deal solely
with Anna, a woman, a member of the sex in whose presence he was always
at his ease. The brandy prevented him from feeling it as acutely as he
would otherwise have done, but the plain truth, the truth undisguised by
brandy, was that he looked up to Axel Lohm with a respect bordering on
fear, had never in his life been alone with him, or so much as spoken to
him beyond ordinary civilities when they met, and he was frightened.

By the time he reached Axel's stables, which stood by the roadside about
five minutes' walk from Axel's gate, he found himself obliged to go over
his sufferings once again one by one, to count the dinners he had
missed, to remember the feverish nights and the restless days, to
rehearse what Dellwig had just told him of his present ridiculousness,
or he would have turned back and gone home. But these thoughts gave him
the courage necessary to get him through the gate; and by the time he
had rounded the bend in the avenue escape had become impossible, for
Axel was standing on the steps of the house. Axel had a cigar in his
mouth; his hands were in his pockets, and he was watching the paces of a
young mare which was being led up and down. Two pointers were sitting at
his feet, and when Klutz appeared they rushed down at him barking. Klutz
did not as a rule object to being barked at by dogs, but he was in a
highly nervous state, and shrank aside involuntarily. The groom leading
the mare grinned; Axel whistled the dogs off; and Klutz, with hot ears,
walked up and took off his hat.

"What can I do for you, Herr Klutz?" asked Axel, his hands still in his
pockets and his eyes on the mare's legs.

"I wish to speak with you privately," said Klutz.

"_Gut._ Just wait a moment." And Klutz waited, while Axel, with great
deliberation, continued his scrutiny of the mare, and followed it up by
a lengthy technical discussion of her faults and her merits with the
groom.

This was intolerable. Klutz had come on business of vital importance,
and he was left standing there for what seemed to him at least half an
hour, as though he were rather less than a dog or a beggar. As time
passed, and he still was kept waiting, the fury that had possessed him
as he stood helpless before Anna's shut door in the afternoon, returned.
All his doubts and fears and respect melted away. What a day he had had
of suffering, of every kind of agitation! The ground alone that he had
covered, going backwards and forwards between Lohm and Kleinwalde, was
enough to tire out a man in health; and he was not in health, he was
ill, fasting, shaking in every limb. While he had been suffering
(_leidend und schwitzend_, he said to himself, grinding his teeth), this
comfortable man in the gaiters and the aggressively clean cuffs had no
doubt passed very pleasant and easy hours, had had three meals at least
where he had had none, had smoked cigars and examined horses' legs, had
ridden a little, driven a little, and would presently go round, now that
the cool of the evening had come, to Kleinwalde, and sit in the twilight
while Miss Estcourt called him _Schatz_. Oh, it was not to be borne!
Dellwig was right--he must be annoyed, punished, at all costs shaken out
of his lofty indifference. "Let me remind you," Klutz burst out in a
voice that trembled with passion, "that I am still here, and still
waiting, and that I have only two legs. Your horse, I see, has four, and
is better able to stand and wait than I am."

Axel turned and stared at him. "Why, what is the matter?" he asked,
astonished. "You _are_ Manske's vicar? Yes, of course you are. I did not
know you had anything very pressing to tell me. I am sorry I have kept
you--come in."

He sent the mare to the stables, and led the way into his study. "Sit
down," he said, pushing a chair forward, and sitting down himself by his
writing-table. "Have a cigar?"

"No."

"No?" Axel stared again. "'No thank you' is the form prejudice prefers,"
he said.

"I care nothing for that."

"What is the matter, my dear Herr Klutz? You are very angry about
something."

"I have been shamefully treated by a woman."

"It is what sometimes happens to young men," said Axel, smiling.

"I do not want cheap wisdom like that," cried Klutz, his eyes ablaze.

Axel's brows went up. "You are rude, my good Herr Klutz," he said. "Try
to be polite if you wish me to help you. If you cannot, I shall ask you
to go."

"I will not go."

"My dear Herr Klutz."

"I say I will not go till I have told you what I came to tell you. The
woman is Miss Estcourt."

"Miss Estcourt?" repeated Axel, amazed. Then he added, "Call her a
lady."

"She is a woman to all intents and purposes----"

"Call her a lady. It sounds better from a young man of your station."

"Of my station! What, a man with the brains of a man, the mind of a man,
the sinews of a man, is not equal, is not superior, whatever his station
may be, to a mere woman?"

"I will not discuss your internal arrangements. Has there, then, been
some mistake about the salary you are to receive?"

"What salary?"

"For teaching Miss Letty Estcourt?"

"Pah--the salary. Love does not look at salaries."

"That sounds magnificent. Did you say love?"

"For weeks past, all the time that I have taught the niece, she has
taken my flowers, my messages, at first verbal and at last written----"

"One moment. Of whom are we talking? I have met you with Miss Leech----"

"The governess? _Ich danke._ It is Miss Estcourt who has encouraged me
and led me on, and now, after calling me her _Lämmchen_, takes away her
niece and shuts her door in my face----"

"You have been drinking?"

"Certainly not," cried Klutz, the more indignantly because of his
consciousness of the brandy.

"Then you have no excuse at all for talking in this manner of my
neighbour?"

"Excuse! To hear you, one would think she must be a queen," said Klutz,
laughing derisively. "If she were, I should still talk as I pleased. A
cat may look at a king, I suppose?" And he laughed again, very bitterly,
disliking even for one moment to imagine himself in the rôle of the cat.

"A cat may look as long and as often as it likes," said Axel, "but it
must not get in the king's way. I am sure you can guess why."

"I have not come here to guess why about anything."

"Oh, it is not very abstruse--the cat would be kicked by somebody, of
course."

"Oh, ho! Not if it could bite, and had what I have in its pocket."

"Cats do not have pockets, my dear Herr Klutz. You must have noticed
that yourself. Pray, what is it that you have in yours?"

"A little poem she sent me in answer to one of mine. A little, sweet
poem. I thought you might like to see how your future wife writes to
another man."

"Ah--that is why you have called so kindly on me? Out of pure
thoughtfulness. My future wife, then, is Miss Estcourt?"

"It is an open secret."

"It is, most unfortunately, not true."

"_Ach_--I knew you would deny it," cried Klutz, slapping his leg and
grinning horribly. "I knew you would deny it when you heard she had been
behaving badly. But denials do not alter anything--no one will believe
them----"

Axel shrugged his shoulders. "Am I to see the poem?" he asked.

Klutz took it out and handed it to him. The twilight had come into the
room, and Axel put the paper down a moment while he lit the candles on
his table. Then he smoothed out its creases, and holding it close to the
light read it attentively. Klutz leaned forward and watched his face.
Not a muscle moved. It had been calm before, and it remained calm. Klutz
could hardly keep himself from leaping up and striking that impassive
face, striking some sort of feeling into it. He had played his big card,
and Axel was quite unmoved. What could he do, what could he say, to hurt
him?

"Shall we burn it?" inquired Axel, looking up from the paper.

"Burn it? Burn my poem?"

"It is such very great nonsense. It is written by a child. We know what
child. Only one in this part can write English."

"Miss Estcourt wrote it, I tell you!" cried Klutz, jumping to his feet
and snatching the paper away.

"Your telling me so does not in the very least convince me. Miss
Estcourt knows nothing about it."

"She does--she did----" screamed Klutz, beside himself. "Your Miss
Estcourt--your _Braut_--you try to brazen it out because you are ashamed
of such a _Braut_. It is no use--everyone shall see this, and be told
about it--the whole province shall ring with it--_I_ will not be the
laughing-stock, but _you_ will be. Not a labourer, not a peasant, but
shall hear of it----"

"It strikes me," said Axel, rising, "that you badly want kicking. I do
not like to do it in my house--it hardly seems hospitable. If you will
suggest a convenient place, neutral ground, I shall be pleased to come
and do it."

He looked at Klutz with an encouraging smile. Then something in the
young man's twitching face arrested his attention. "Do you know what I
think?" he said quickly, in a different voice. "It is less a kicking
that you want than a good meal. You really look as though you had had
nothing to eat for a week. The difference a beefsteak would make to your
views would surprise you. Come, come," he said, patting him on the
shoulder, "I have been taking you too seriously. You are evidently not
in your usual state. When did you have food last? What has Frau Pastor
been about? And your eyelids are so red that I do believe----" Axel
looked closer--"I do believe you have been crying."

"Sir," began Klutz, struggling hard with a dreadful inclination to cry
again, for self-pity is a very tender and tearful sentiment, "Sir----"

"Let me order that beefsteak," said Axel kindly. "My cook will have it
ready in ten minutes."

"Sir," said Klutz, with the tremendous dignity that immediately precedes
tears, "Sir, I am not to be bribed."

"Well, take a cigar at least," said Axel, opening his case. "That will
not corrupt you as much as the beefsteak, and will soothe you a little
on your way home. For you must go home and get to bed. You are as near
an illness as any man I ever saw."

The tears were so near, so terribly near, that, hardly knowing what he
did, and sooner than trust himself to speak, Klutz took a cigar and lit
it at the match Axel held for him. His hand shook pitifully.

"Now go home, my dear Klutz," said Axel very kindly. "Tell Frau Pastor
to give you some food, and then get to bed. I wish you would have taken
the beefsteak--here is your hat. If you like, we will talk about this
nonsense later on. Believe me, it is nonsense. You will be the first to
say so next week."

And he ushered him out to the steps, and watched him go down them,
uneasy lest he should stumble and fall, so weak did he seem to be. "What
a hot wind!" he exclaimed. "You will have a dusty walk home. Go slowly.
Good-night."

"Poor devil," he thought, as Klutz without speaking went down the avenue
into the darkness with unsteady steps, "poor young devil--the highest
possible opinion of himself, and the smallest possible quantity of
brains; a weak will and strong instincts; much unwholesome study of the
Old Testament in Hebrew with Manske; a body twenty years old, and the
finest spring I can remember filling it with all sorts of anti-parsonic
longings. I believe I ought to have taken him home. He looked as though
he would faint."

This last thought disturbed Axel. The image of Klutz fainting into a
ditch and remaining in it prostrate all night, refused to be set aside;
and at last he got his hat and went down the avenue after him.

But Klutz, who had shuffled along quickly, was nowhere to be seen. Axel
opened the avenue gate and looked down the road that led past the
stables to the village and parsonage, and then across the fields to
Kleinwalde; he even went a little way along it, with an uneasy eye on
the ditches, but he did not see Klutz, either upright or prostrate.
Well, if he were in a ditch, he said to himself, he would not drown; the
ditches were all as empty, dry, and burnt-up as four weeks' incessant
drought and heat could make them. He turned back repeating that
eminently consolatory proverb, _Unkraut vergeht nicht_, and walked
quickly to his own gate; for it was late, and he had work to do, and he
had wasted more time than he could afford with Klutz. A man on a horse
coming from the opposite direction passed him. It was Dellwig, and each
recognised the other; but in these days of mutual and profound distrust
both were glad of the excuse the darkness gave for omitting the usual
greetings. Dellwig rode on towards Kleinwalde in silence, and Axel
turned in at his gate.

But the poor young devil, as Axel called him, had not fainted. Hurrying
down the dark avenue, beyond Axel's influence, far from fainting, it was
all Klutz could do not to shout with passion at his own insufferable
weakness, his miserable want of self-control in the presence of the man
he now regarded as his enemy. The tears in his eyes had given Lohm an
opportunity for pretending he was sorry for him, and for making
insulting and derisive offers of food. What could equal in humiliation
the treatment to which he had been subjected? First he had been treated
as a dog, and then, far worse, far, far worse and more difficult to bear
with dignity, as a child. A beefsteak? Oh, the shame that seared his
soul as he thought of it! This revolting specimen of the upper class had
declared, with a hateful smile of indulgent superiority, that all his
love, all his sufferings, all his just indignation, depended solely for
their existence on whether he did or did not eat a beefsteak. Could
coarse-mindedness and gross insensibility go further? "Thrice miserable
nation!" he cried aloud, shaking his fist at the unconcerned stars,
"thrice miserable nation, whose ruling class is composed of men so
vile!" And, having removed his cigar in order to make this utterance, he
remembered, with a great start, that it was Axel's.

He was in the road, just passing Axel's stables. The gate to the
stableyard stood open, and inside it, heaped against one of the
buildings, was a waggon-load of straw. Instantly Klutz became aware of
what he was going to do. A lightning flash of clear purpose illumined
the disorder of his brain. It was supper time, and no one was about. He
ran inside the gate and threw the lighted cigar on to the straw; and
because there was not an instantaneous blaze fumbled for his matchbox,
and lit one match after the other, pushing them in a kind of frenzy
under the loose ends of straw.

There was a puff of smoke, and then a bright tongue of flame; and
immediately he had achieved his purpose he was terrified, and fled away
from the dreadful light, and hid himself, shuddering, in the darkness of
the country road.




CHAPTER XXIV


"It's in Stralsund," cried the princess, hurrying out into the
Kleinwalde garden when first the alarm was given.

"It's in Lohm," cried someone else.

Anna watched the light in silence, her face paler than ordinary, her
hair blown about by the hot wind. The trees in the dark garden swayed
and creaked, the air was parching and full of dust, the light glared
brighter each moment. Surely it was very near? Surely it was nearer than
Stralsund? "It's in Lohm," cried someone with conviction; and Anna
turned and began to run.

"Where are you running to, Aunt Anna?" asked Letty, breathlessly
following her; for since the affair with Klutz she followed her aunt
about like a conscience-stricken dog.

"The fire-engine--there is one at the farm--it must go----"

They took each other's hands and ran in silence. Between the gusts of
wind they could hear the Lohm church-bells ringing; and almost
immediately the single Kleinwalde bell began to toll, to toll with a
forlorn, blood-curdling sound altogether different from its unmeaning
Sunday tinkle.

In front of her house Frau Dellwig stood, watching the sky. "It is
Lohm," she said to Anna as she came up panting.

"Yes--the fire-engine--is it ordered? Has it gone? No? Then at once--at
once----"

"_Jawohl, jawohl_," said Frau Dellwig with great calm, the philosophic
calm of him who contemplates calamities other than his own. She said
something to one of the maids, who were standing about in pleased and
excited groups laughing and whispering, and the girl shuffled off in her
clattering wooden shoes. "My husband is not here," she explained, "and
the men are at supper."

"Then they must leave their supper," cried Anna. "Go, go, you girls, and
tell them so--look how terrible it is getting----"

"Yes, it is a big fire. The girl I sent will tell them. They say it is
the _Schloss_."

"Oh, go yourself and tell the men--see, there is no sign of them--every
minute is priceless----"

"It is always a business with the engine. It has not been required,
thank God, for years. Mietze, go and hurry them."

The girl called Mietze went off at a trot. The others put their heads
together, looked at their young mistress, and whispered. A stable-boy
came to the pump and filled his pail. Everyone seemed composed, and yet
there was that bloody sky, and there was that insistent cry for help
from the anxious bell.

Anna could hardly bear it. What was happening down there to her kind
friend?

"It is the _Schloss_," said the stable-boy in answer to a question from
Frau Dellwig as he passed with his full pail, spilling the water at
every step.

"_Ach_, I thought so," she said, glancing at Anna.

Anna made a passionate movement, and ran down the steps after the girl
Mietze. Frau Dellwig could not but follow, which she did slowly, at a
disapproving distance.

But Dellwig galloped into the yard at that moment, his horse covered
with sweat, and his loud and peremptory orders extracted the ancient
engine from its shed, got the horses harnessed to it, and after what
Anna thought an eternity it rattled away. When it started, the whole sky
to the south was like one dreadful sheet of blood.

"It is the stables," he said to Anna.

"Herr von Lohm's?"

"Yes. They cannot be saved."

"And the house?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "It's a windy night," he said, "and the wind
is blowing that way. There are pine-trees between. Everything is as dry
as cinders."

"The stables--are they insured?"

But Dellwig was off again, after the engine.

"What can we do, Letty? What can we _do_?" cried Anna, turning to Letty
when the sound of the wheels had died away and only the hurried bell was
heard above the whistling and banging of the wind. "It's horrible here,
listening to that bell tolling, and looking at the sky. If I could throw
one single bucketful of water on the fire I should not feel so useless,
so utterly, utterly of no use or good for anything."

Neither of them had ever seen a fire, and horror had seized them both.
The night seemed so dark, the world all round so black, except in that
one dreadful spot. Anna knew Axel could not afford to lose money. From
things Trudi had said, from things the princess had said, she knew it.
There was at Lohm, she felt rather than knew, an abundance of everything
necessary to ordinary comfortable living, as there generally is in the
country on farms; but money was scarce, and a series of bad seasons,
perhaps even one bad season, or anything out of the way happening, might
make it very scarce, might make the further proper farming of the place
impossible. Suppose the stables were not insured, where would the money
come from to rebuild them? And the horses--she had heard that horses
went mad with fright in a fire, and refused to leave their stables. And
the house--suppose this cruel wind made the checking of the fire
impossible, and it licked its way across the trees to Axel's house? "Oh,
what can we _do_?" she cried to the frightened Letty.

"Let's go there," said Letty.

"Yes!" cried Anna, striking her hands together. "Yes! The carriage--Frau
Dellwig, order the carriage--order Fritz to bring the carriage out at
once. Tell him to be quick--quick!"

"The gracious Miss will go to Lohm?"

"Yes--call him, send for him--Fritz! Fritz!" She herself began to call.

"But----"

"Fritz! Fritz! Run, Letty, and see if you can find him."

"If I may be permitted to advise----"

"Fritz! Fritz! Fritz!"

"Call the _herrschaftliche Kutscher_ Fritz," Frau Dellwig then commanded
a passing boy in a loud and stern voice. "Not only mad, but improper,"
was her private comment. "She goes by night to her _Bräutigam_--to her
unacknowledged _Bräutigam_." Even a possible burning _Bräutigam_ did
not, in her opinion, excuse such a step.

The darkness concealed the anger on her face, and Anna neither noticed
nor cared for the anger in her voice, but began herself to run in the
direction of the stables, leaving Frau Dellwig to her reflections.

"Princess Ludwig is looking for you everywhere, Aunt Anna," said Letty,
coming towards her, having found Fritz and succeeded in making him
understand what she wanted.

"Where is she? Is the carriage coming?"

"He said five minutes. She was at the house, asking the servants if they
had seen you."

"Come along then, we'll go to her."

"I was afraid I should not find you here," said the princess as Anna
came up the steps of the house into the light of the entry, "and that
you had run off to Lohm to put the fire out. My dear child, what do you
look like? Come and look at yourself in the glass."

She led her to the glass that hung above the Dellwig hat-stand.

"I am just going there," said Anna, looking at her reflection without
seeing it. "The carriage is being got ready now."

"Then I am coming too. What has the wind been doing to your hair? See, I
knew you were running about bare-headed, and have brought you a scarf.
Come, let me tie it over all these excited little curls, and turn you
into a sober and circumspect young woman."

Anna bent her head and let the princess do as she pleased. "Herr Dellwig
is afraid the fire will spread to the house," she said breathlessly.
"Our engine has only just gone----"

"I heard it."

"It is such a lumbering thing, it will be hours getting there----"

"Oh, not hours. Half a one, perhaps."

"Are they insured?"

"The buildings? They are sure to be. But there is always a loss that
cannot be covered--_ach_, Frau Dellwig, good-evening--you see we have
taken possession of your house. To have no stables and probably no
horses just when the busy time is beginning is terrible. Poor Axel.
There--now you are tidy. Wait, let me fasten your cloak and cover up
your pretty dress. Is Letty to come too?"

"Oh--if she likes. Why doesn't the carriage come?"

"It will be much better if Letty goes to bed," said the princess.

"Oh!" said Letty.

"It is long past her bedtime, and she has no hat, and nothing round her.
Shall we not ask Frau Dellwig to send a servant with her home?"

"_Aber gewiss_----" began Frau Dellwig.

But Anna was out again on the steps, was shutting out the flaming sky
with one hand while she strained her eyes into the darkness of the
corner where the coach-house was. She could hear Fritz's voice, and the
horses' hoofs on the cobbles, and she could see the light of a lantern
jogging up and down as the stable-boy who held it hurried to and fro.
"Quick, quick, Fritz," she cried.

"_Jawohl, gnädiges Fräulein_," came back the answer in the old man's
cheery, reassuring tones. But it was like a nightmare, standing there
waiting, waiting, the precious minutes slipping by, terrible things
happening to Axel, and she herself unable to stir a step towards him.

"Take me with you--let me come too," pleaded Letty from behind her,
slipping her hand into Anna's.

"Then tie a handkerchief or something round your head," said Anna, her
eyes on the lantern moving about before the coach-house. Then the
carriage lamps flashed out, and in another moment the carriage rattled
up.

It was a ghostly drive. As the tops of the pine-trees swayed aside they
caught glimpses of the red horror of the sky; and when they got out into
the open Anna cried out involuntarily, for it seemed as if the whole
world were on fire. The spire of Lohm church and the roofs of the
cottages stood out clear and sharp in the fierce light. The horses, more
and more frightened the nearer they drew, plunged and reared, and old
Fritz could hardly hold them in. On turning the corner by the parsonage
they were not to be induced to advance another yard, but swerved aside,
kicking and terrified, and threatening every moment to upset the
carriage into the ditch.

Anna jumped out and ran on. The princess, slower and more bulky, was
helped out by Letty and followed after as quickly as she could. In the
road and in the field opposite the stables the whole population was
gathered, illuminated figures in eager, chattering groups. From the pump
on the green in front of the schoolhouse, a chain of helpers had been
formed, and buckets of water were being passed along from hand to hand
to the engines; and there was no other water. The engines were working
farther down the road, keeping the hose turned on to the trees between
the stables and the house. There were clumps of pine-trees among them,
and these were the trees that would carry the fire across to Axel's
house. Men in the garden were hacking at them, the blows of their axes
indistinguishable in the uproar, but every now and then one of the
victims fell with a crash among its fellows still standing behind it.

"Oh, poor Axel, poor Axel!" murmured Anna, drawing her scarf across her
face as she passed along to protect it from the intolerable heat. But
she was an unmistakable figure in her blue cloak and white dress,
stumbling on to where the engines were; and the groups of onlookers
nudged each other and turned to stare after her as she passed.

"How did it happen?" she asked, suddenly stopping before a knot of
women. They were in the act of discussing her, and started and looked
foolish.

"No one knows," said the eldest, when Anna repeated her question. "They
say it was done on purpose."

"Done on purpose!" echoed Anna, staring at the speaker. "Why, who would
set fire to a place on purpose?"

But to this question no reply at all was forthcoming. They fidgeted and
looked at each other, and one of the younger ones tittered and then put
her hand before her mouth.

In the potato field across the road, two storks, whose nest for many
springs had been on one of the roofs now burning, had placed their young
ones in safety and were watching over them. The young storks were only a
few days old, and had been thrown out of the nest by the parents, and
then dragged away out of danger into the field, the parents mounting
guard over their bruised and dislocated offspring, and the whole group
transformed in the glow into a beautiful, rosy, dazzling white, into a
family of spiritualised, glorified storks, as they huddled ruefully
together in their place of refuge. Anna saw them without knowing that
she saw them; there were three little ones, and one was dead. The
princess and Letty found her standing beside them, watching the roaring
furnace of the stableyard with parted lips and wide-open,
horror-stricken eyes.

"Most of the horses were got out in time," said the princess, taking
Anna's arm, determined that she should not again slip away, "and they
say the buildings are fully insured, and he will be able to have much
better ones."

"But the time lost--they can't be built in a day----"

"The man I spoke to said they were such old buildings and in such a bad
state that Axel can congratulate himself that they have been burned. But
of course there will always be the time lost. Have you seen him? Let us
go on a little--we shall be scorched to cinders here."

Both Axel and Dellwig were superintending the working of the hose. "I do
not want my trees destroyed," he said to Dellwig, with whom in the
stress of the moment he had resumed his earlier manner; "they are not
insured." He had watched the stables go with an impassiveness that
struck several of the bystanders as odd. Dellwig and many others of the
dwellers in that district were used to making a great noise on all
occasions great and small, and they could by no means believe that it
was natural to Axel to remain so calm at such a moment. "It is a great
nuisance," Axel said more than once; but that also was hardly an
adequate expression of feelings.

"They are well insured, I believe?" said Dellwig.

"Oh yes. I shall be able to have nice tight buildings in their place."

"They were certainly rather--rather dilapidated," said Dellwig, eyeing
him.

"They were very dilapidated," said Axel.

Anna and the princess stood a little way from the engines watching the
efforts to check the spread of the fire for some time before Axel
noticed them. Manske, who had been the first to volunteer as a link in
the human chain to the pump, bowed and smiled from his place at them,
and was stared at in return by both women, who wondered who the begrimed
and friendly individual could be. "It is the pastor," then said the
princess, smiling back at him; on which Manske's smiles and bows
redoubled, and he spilt half the contents of the bucket passing through
his hands.

"So it is," said Anna.

"Take care there, No. 3!" roared Dellwig, affecting not to know who No.
3 was, and glad of an opportunity of calling the parson to order.
Dellwig was making so much noise flinging orders and reprimands about,
that a stranger would certainly have taken him for the frantic owner of
the burning property.

"You see the pastor looks anything but alarmed," said the princess. "If
Axel were losing much by this, Manske would be weeping into his bucket
instead of smiling so kindly at us."

"So he would," said Anna, a little reassured by that cheerful and grimy
countenance. Her eyes wandered to Axel, so cool and so vigilant, giving
the necessary orders so quietly, losing no precious moments in trying to
save what was past saving, and without any noise or any abuse getting
what he wanted done. "It _can't_ be a good thing, a fire like this," she
said to herself. "Whatever they say, it _can't_ be a good thing."

A huge pine-tree was dragged down at that moment, dragged in a direction
away from its fellows, against a beech, whose branches it tore down in
its fall, ruining the beech for ever, but smothering a few of its own
twigs that had begun to burn among the fresh young leaves. Anna watched
the havoc going on among poor Axel's trees in silence. "He _can't_ not
care," she said to herself. He turned round quickly at that moment, as
though he heard her thinking of him, and looked straight into her eyes.
"You here!" he exclaimed, striding across the road to her at once.

"Yes, we are here," replied the princess. "We cannot let our neighbour
burn without coming to see if we can do anything. But seriously, I hear
that it is a good thing for you."

"I prefer the less good thing that I had before, just now. But it is
gone. I shall not waste time fretting over it."

He ran back again to stop something that was being done wrong, but
returned immediately to tell them to go into his house and not stand
there in the heat. "You look so tired--and anxious," he said, his eyes
searching Anna's face. "Why are you anxious? The fire has frightened
you? It is all insured, I assure you, and there is only the bother of
having to build just now."

He could not stay, and hurried back to his men.

"We can go indoors a moment," said the princess, "and see what is going
on in his house. It will be standing empty and open, and it is not
necessary that he should suffer losses from thieves as well as from
fire. His Mamsell is like all bachelors' Mamsells--losing, I am sure, no
opportunity of feathering her nest at his expense."

Anna thought this a practical way of helping Axel, since the throwing of
water on the flames was not required of her. She turned to call Letty,
and found that no Letty was to be seen. "Why, where is Letty?" she
asked, looking round.

"I thought she was behind us," said the princess.

"So did I," said Anna anxiously.

They went back a few steps, looking for her among the bystanders. They
saw her at last a long way off, her handkerchief still round her head
and her long thick hair blowing round her shoulders, rapt in
contemplation of the fiery furnace. Then a shout went up from the people
in the road, and they all ran back into the potato field. Anna and the
princess stood rooted to the spot, clutching each other's hands. Letty
looked round when she heard the shout, and began to run too. The flaming
outer wall of the yard swayed and tottered and then fell outwards with a
terrific crash and crackling, filling the road with a smoking heap of
rubbish, and sending a shower of sparks on a puff of wind after the
flying spectators.

The princess had certainly not run so fast since her girlhood as she did
with Anna towards the spot in the field where they had last seen Letty.
A crowd had gathered round it, they could see, an excited, gesticulating
crowd. But they found her apparently unhurt, sitting on the ground,
surrounded by sympathisers, and with someone's coat over her head. She
looked up, very pale, but smiling apologetically at her aunt. "It's all
gone," she said, pointing to her head.

"What is gone?" cried Anna, dropping on her knees beside her.

"_Ach Gott, die Haare--die herrlichen Haare!_" lamented a woman in the
crowd. The smell of burnt hair explained what had happened.

Anna seized her in her arms. "You might have been killed--you might have
been killed," she panted, rocking her to and fro. "Oh, Letty--who saved
you?"

"Somebody put this beastly thing over my head--it smells of herrings.
Sparks got into my hair, and it all frizzled up. Can't I take this off?
It's out now--and off too."

The princess felt all over her head through the coat, patting and
pressing it carefully; then she took the coat off, and restored it with
effusive thanks to its sheepish owner. There was a murmur of sympathy
from the women as Letty emerged, shorn of those flowing curls that were
her only glory. "_Oh Weh, die herrlichen Haare!_" sighed the women to
one another, "_Oh Weh, oh Weh!_" But the handkerchief tied so tightly
round her head had saved her from a worse fate; she had been an ugly
little girl before--all that had happened was that she looked now like
an ugly little boy.

"I say, Aunt Anna, don't mind," said Letty; for her aunt was crying, and
kissing her, and tying and untying the handkerchief, and arranging and
rearranging it, and stroking and smoothing the singed irregular wisps of
hair that were left as though she loved them. "I'm frightfully sorry--I
didn't know you were so fond of my hair."

"Come, we'll go to the house," was all Anna said, stumbling on to her
feet and putting her arm round Letty. And they clung to each other so
close that they could hardly walk.

"We are going indoors a moment," called the princess, who was very pale,
to Axel as they passed the engines.

He smiled across at her, and lifted his hat.

"I never saw anyone quite so composed," she observed to Anna, trying to
turn her attention to other things. "Your man Dellwig, who has nothing
to do with it all, is displaying the kind of behaviour the people expect
on these occasions. I am sure that Axel has puzzled a great many people
to-night."

Anna did not answer. She was thinking only of Letty. What a slender
thread of chance had saved her from death, from a dreadful death, the
little Letty who was under her care, for whom she was responsible, and
whom she had quite forgotten in her stupid interest in Axel Lohm's
affairs. Woman-like, she felt very angry with Axel. What did it matter
to her whether his place burnt to ashes or not? But Letty mattered to
her, her own little niece, poor solitary Letty, practically motherless,
so ugly, and so full of good intentions. She had scolded her so much
about Klutz; wretched Klutz, it was entirely his fault that Letty had
been so silly, and yet only Letty had had the scoldings. Anna held her
closer. In the light of that narrow escape how trivial, how indifferent,
all this folly of love-talk and messages and anger seemed. For a short
space she touched the realities, she saw life and death in their true
proportion; and even while she was looking at them with clear and
startled vision they were blurred again into indistinctness, they faded
away and were gone--rubbed out by the inevitable details of the passing
hour.

"I thought as much," said the princess, as they drew near the house.
"All the doors wide open and the place deserted." And Anna came back
with a start from the reality to the well-known dream of daily life, and
immediately felt as though that other flash had been the dream and only
this were real.

The hall was in darkness, but there was light shining through the chinks
of a door, and they groped their way towards it. The house was as quiet
as death. They could hear the distant shouts of the men cutting down the
trees in the garden, and the blows of the axes. The princess pushed open
the door behind which the light was, and they found themselves in Axel's
study, where the candles he had lit in order to read Letty's poem were
still guttering and flaring in the draught from the open window. A clock
on the writing-table showed that it was past midnight. The room looked
very untidy and ill-cared for.

"A man without a wife," said the princess, gazing round at the litter,
composed chiefly of cigar-ashes and old envelopes, "is a truly miserable
being. What condition can be more wretched than to be at the mercy of a
Mamsell? I shall go and inquire into the whereabouts of this one. Axel
will want some food when he comes in."

She took up one of the candles and went out. Letty had sat down at once
on the nearest chair, and was looking very pale. Anna untied the
handkerchief, and tried to arrange what was left of her hair. "I must
cut off these uneven ends," she said, "but there won't be any scissors
here."

"I say," began Letty, staring very hard at her.

"I believe you were terribly scared, you poor little creature," said
Anna, struck by her pale face, and passing her hand tenderly over the
singed head.

"Oh, not much. A bit, of course. But it was soon over. Don't worry. What
will mamma say to my head?" And Letty's mouth widened into a grin at
this thought. "I say," she began again, relapsing into solemnity.

"Well, what?" smiled Anna, sitting down on the same chair and putting
her arm round her.

"You don't know the whole of that poetry business."

"That silly business with Herr Klutz? Oh, was there more of it? Oh,
Letty, what did you do more? I am so tired of it, and of him, and of
everything. Tell me, and then we'll forget it for ever."

"I'm afraid you won't forget it. I'm afraid I'm a bigger beast than you
think, Aunt Anna," said Letty, with a conviction that frightened Anna.

"Oh, Letty," she said faintly, "what did you do?"

"Why, I--I _will_ get it out--I--he was so miserable, and went on so
when you didn't answer that poetry--that he sent with the heart, you
know----"

"Oh yes, I know."

"Well, he was in such a state about it that I--that I made up a poem,
just to comfort him, you know, and keep him quiet, and--and pretended it
came from you." She threw back her head and looked up at her aunt.
"There now, it's out," she said defiantly.

Anna was silent for a moment. "Was it--was it very affectionate?" she
asked under her breath. Then she slipped down on to the floor, and put
both her arms round Letty. "Don't tell me," she cried, laying her face
on Letty's knees, "I don't want to know. Suppose you had been dreadfully
hurt just now, burnt, or--or dead, what would it have mattered? Oh, we
will forget all that ridiculous nonsense, and only never, never be so
silly again. Let us be happy together, and finish with Herr Klutz for
ever--it was all so stupid, and so little worth while." And she put up
her face, and they both began to cry and kiss each other through their
tears. And so it came about that Letty was in the same hour relieved of
the burden on her conscience, of most of her hair, and was taken once
again, and with redoubled enthusiasm, into Anna's heart. Logic had never
been Anna's strong point.




CHAPTER XXV


When Axel came in two hours later, bringing Dellwig and Manske and two
or three other helpers, farmers, who had driven across the plain to do
what they could, he found his house lit up and food and drink set out
ready in the dining-room.

Letty and Anna had had time to recover from their tears and vows, sundry
small blisters on the back of Letty's neck had been treated with cotton
wool, and they had emerged from their agitation to a calmer state in
which the helping of the princess in the middle of the night to make
somebody else's house comfortable was not without its joys. The Mamsell,
no more able than the Kleinwalde servants to withstand the authority of
the princess's name and eye, had collected the maids and worked with a
will; and when, all danger of the fire spreading being over, Axel came
in dirty and smoky and scorched, prepared to have to hunt himself in the
dark house for the refreshment he could not but offer his helpers, he
was agreeably surprised to find the lamp in the hall alight, and to be
met by a wide-awake Mamsell in a clean apron who proposed to provide the
gentlemen with hot water. This was very attentive. Axel had never known
her so thoughtful. The gentlemen, however, with one accord refused the
hot water; they would drink a glass of wine, perhaps, as Herr von Lohm
so kindly suggested, and then go to their homes and beds as quickly as
possible. Manske, by far the grimiest, was also the most decided in his
refusal; he was a godly man, but he did not love supererogatory
washings, under which heading surely a washing at two o'clock in the
morning came. Axel left them in the hall a moment, and went into his
study to fetch cigars; and there he found Letty, hiding behind the door.

"You here, young lady?" he exclaimed surprised, stopping short.

"Don't let anyone see me," she whispered. "Princess Ludwig and Aunt Anna
are in the dining-room. I ran in here when I heard people with you. My
hair is all burnt off."

"What, you went too near?"

"Sparks came after me. Don't let them come in----"

"You were not hurt?"

"No. A little--on the back of my neck, but it's hardly anything."

"I am very glad your hair was burnt off," said Axel with great severity.

"So am I," was the hearty reply. "The tangles at night were something
awful."

He stood silent for a moment, the cigar-boxes under his arm, uncertain
whether he ought not to enlighten her as to the reprehensibility of her
late conduct in regard to her aunt and Klutz. Evidently her conscience
was cloudless, and yet she had done more harm than was quite calculable.
Axel was fairly certain that Klutz had set fire to the stables.
Absolutely certain he could not be, but the first blaze had occurred so
nearly at the moment when Klutz must have reached them on his way home,
that he had hardly a doubt about it. It was his duty as Amtsvorsteher to
institute inquiries. If these inquiries ended in the arrest of Klutz,
the whole silly story about Anna would come out, for Klutz would be only
too eager to explain the reasons that had driven him to the act; and
what an unspeakable joy for the province, and what a delicious
excitement for Stralsund! He could only hope that Klutz was not the
culprit, he could only hope it fervently with all his heart; for if he
was, the child peeping out at him so cheerfully from behind the door had
managed to make an amount of mischief and bring an amount of trouble on
Anna that staggered him. Such a little nonsense, and such far-reaching
consequences! He could not speak when he thought of it, and strode past
her indignantly, and left the room without a word.

"Now what's the row with _him_?" Letty asked herself, her finger in her
mouth; for Axel had looked at her as he passed with very grave and angry
eyes.

The men waiting in the hall were slightly disconcerted, on being taken
into the dining-room, to find the Kleinwalde ladies there. None of them,
except Manske, liked ladies; and ladies in the small hours of the
morning were a special weariness to the flesh. Dellwig, having made his
two deep bows to them, looked meaningly at his friends the other
farmers; Miss Estcourt's private engagement to Lohm seemed to be placed
beyond a doubt by her presence in his house on this occasion.

"How delightful of you," said Axel to her in English.

"I am glad to hear," she replied stiffly in German, for she was still
angry with him because of Letty's hair, "I am glad to hear that you will
have no losses from this."

"Losses!" cried Manske. "On the contrary, it is the best thing that
could happen--the very best thing. Those stables have long been almost
unfit for use, Herr von Lohm, and I can say from my heart that I was
glad to see them go. They were all to pieces even in your father's
time."

"Yes, they ought to have been rebuilt long ago, but one has not always
the money in one's pocket. Help yourself, my dear pastor."

"Who is the enemy?" broke in Dellwig's harsh voice.

"Ah, who indeed?" said Manske, looking sad. "That is the melancholy side
of the affair--that someone, presumably of my parish, should commit such
a crime."

"He has done me a great service, anyhow," said Axel, filling the
glasses.

"He has imperilled his immortal soul," said Manske.

"Have you such an enemy?" asked Anna, surprised.

"I did not know it. Most likely it was some poor, half-witted devil, or
perhaps--perhaps a child."

"But I saw the blaze immediately after I passed you," said Dellwig. "You
were within a stone's throw of the stables, going home. I had hardly
reached them when the fire broke out. Did you then see no one on the
road?"

"No, I did not," said Axel shortly. There was an aggressive note in
Dellwig's voice that made him fear he was going to be very zealous in
helping to bring the delinquent to justice.

"It was the supper hour," said Dellwig, musing, "and the men would all
be indoors. Had you been to the stables, _gnädiger Herr_?"

"No, I had not. Take another glass of wine. A cigar? Whoever it was, he
has done me a good turn."

"Beyond all doubt he has," said Dellwig, his eyes fixed on Axel with an
odd expression.

"Some of us would have no objection to the same thing happening at our
places," remarked one of the farmers jocosely.

"No objection whatever," agreed another with a laugh.

"If the man could be trusted to display the same discrimination
everywhere," said the third.

"Joke not about crime," said Manske, rebuking them.

"The discrimination was certainly remarkable," said Dellwig.

"That is why I think it must have been done by some person more or less
imbecile," said Axel; "otherwise one of the good buildings, whose
destruction would really have harmed me, would have been chosen."

"He must be hunted down, imbecile or not," said Dellwig.

"I shall do my duty," said Axel stiffly.

"You may rely on my help," said Dellwig.

"You are very good," said Axel.

Dellwig's voice had something ominous about it that made Anna shiver.
What a detestable man he was, always and at all times. His whole manner
to-night struck her as specially offensive. "What will be done to the
poor wretch when he is caught?" she asked Axel.

"He will be imprisoned," Dellwig answered promptly.

She turned her back on him. "Even though he is half-witted?" she said to
Axel. "Are you obliged to look for him? Can't you leave him alone? He
has done you a service, after all."

"I must look for him," said Axel; "it is my duty as Amtsvorsteher."

"And the gracious Miss should consider----" shouted Dellwig from behind.

"I'll consider nothing," said Anna, turning to him quickly.

"--should consider the demands of justice----"

"First the demands of humanity," said Anna, her back to him.

"Noble," murmured Manske.

"The gracious Miss's sentiments invariably do credit to her heart," said
Dellwig, bowing profoundly.

"But not to her head, he thinks," said Anna to Axel in English, faintly
smiling.

"Don't talk to him," Axel replied in a low voice; "the man so palpably
hates us both. You must go home. Where is your carriage? Princess, take
her home."

"_Ach, Herr Dellwig, seien Sie so freundlich_----" began the princess
mellifluously; and despatched him in search of Fritz.

When they reached Kleinwalde, silent, wornout, and only desiring to
creep upstairs and into their beds, they were met by Frau von Treumann
and the baroness, who both wore injured and disapproving faces. Letty
slipped up to her room at once, afraid of criticisms of her
hairlessness.

"We have waited for you all night, Anna," said Frau von Treumann in an
aggrieved voice.

"You oughtn't to have," said Anna wearily.

"We could not suppose that you were really looking at the fire all this
time," said the baroness.

"And we were anxious," said Frau von Treumann. "My dear, you should not
make us anxious."

"You might have left word, or taken us with you," said the baroness.

"We are quite as much interested in Herr von Lohm as Letty or Princess
Ludwig can be," said Frau von Treumann.

"Nobody could tell us here for certain whether you had really gone there
or not."

"Nor could anybody give us any information as to the extent of the
disaster."

"We presumed the princess was with you, but even that was not certain."

"My dear baroness," murmured the princess, untying her shawl, "only you
would have had a doubt of it."

"The reflection in the sky faded hours ago," said Frau vein Treumann.

"And yet you did not return," said the baroness. "Where did you go
afterwards?"

"Oh, I'll tell you everything to-morrow. Good-night," said Anna, candle
in hand.

"What! Now that we have waited, and in such anxiety, you will tell us
nothing?"

"There really is nothing to tell. And I am so tired--good-night."

"We have kept the servants up and the kettle boiling in case you should
want coffee."

"That was very kind, but I only want bed. Good-night."

"We too were weary, but you see we have waited in spite of it."

"Oh, you shouldn't have. You will be so tired. Good-night."

She went upstairs, pulling herself up each step by the baluster.
The clock on the landing struck half-past three. Was it not
Napoleon, she thought, who said something to the point about
three-o'clock-in-the-morning courage? Had no one ever said anything to
the point about three-o'clock-in-the-morning love for one's
fellow-creatures? "Good-night," she said once more, turning her head and
nodding wearily to them as they watched her from below with indignant
faces.

She glanced at the clock, and went into her room dejectedly; for she had
made a startling discovery: at three o'clock in the morning her feeling
towards the Chosen was one of indifference verging on dislike.




CHAPTER XXVI


Looking up from her breakfast the morning after the fire to see who it
was riding down the street, Frau Manske beheld Dellwig coming towards
her garden gate. Her husband was in his dressing-gown and slippers, a
costume he affected early in the day, and they were taking their coffee
this fine weather at a table in their roomy porch. There was, therefore,
no possibility of hiding the dressing-gown, nor yet the fact that her
cap was not as fresh as a cap on which the great Dellwig's eyes were to
rest, should be. She knew that Dellwig was not a star of the first
magnitude like Herr von Lohm, but he was a very magnificent specimen of
those of the second order, and she thought him much more imposing than
Axel, whose quiet ways she had never understood. Dellwig snubbed her so
systematically and so brutally that she could not but respect and admire
him: she was one of those women who enjoy kissing the rod. In a great
flutter she hurried to the gate to open it for him, receiving in return
neither thanks nor greeting. "Good-morning, good-morning," she said,
bowing repeatedly. "A fine morning, Herr Dellwig."

"Where's Klutz?" he asked curtly, neither getting off his horse nor
taking off his hat.

"Oh, the poor young man, Herr Dellwig!" she began with uplifted hands.
"He has had a letter from home, and is much upset. His father----"

"Where is he?"

"His father? In bed, and not expected to----"

"Where's Klutz, I say--young Klutz? Herr Manske, just step down here a
minute--good-morning. I want to see your vicar."

"My vicar has had bad news from home, and is gone."

"Gone?"

"This very morning. Poor fellow, his aged father----"

"I don't care a curse for his aged father. What train?"

"The half-past nine train. He went in the post-cart at seven."

Dellwig jerked his horse round, and without a word rode away in the
direction of Stralsund. "I'll catch him yet," he thought, and rode as
hard as he could.

"What can he want with the vicar?" wondered Frau Manske.

"A rough manner, but I doubt not a good heart," said her husband,
sighing; and he folded his flapping dressing-gown pensively about his
legs.

Klutz was on the platform waiting for the Berlin train, due in five
minutes, when Dellwig came up behind and laid a hand on his shoulder.

"What! Are you going to jump out of your skin?" Dellwig inquired with a
burst of laughter.

Klutz stared at him speechlessly after that first start, waiting for
what would follow. His face was ghastly.

"Father so bad, eh?" said Dellwig heartily. "Nerves all gone, what?
Well, it's enough to make a boy look pale to have his father on his
last----"

"What do you _want_?" whispered Klutz with pale lips. Several persons
who knew Dellwig were on the platform, and were staring.

"Why," said Dellwig, sinking his voice a little, "you have heard of the
fire--I did not see you helping, by the way? You were with Herr von Lohm
last night--don't look so frightened, man--if I did not know about your
father I'd think there was something on your mind. I only want to ask
you--there is a strange rumour going about----"

"I am going home--_home_, do you hear?" said Klutz wildly.

"Certainly you are. No one wants to stop you. Who do you think they say
set fire to the stables?"

Klutz looked as though he would faint.

"They say Lohm did it himself," said Dellwig in a low voice, his eyes
fixed on the young man's face.

Klutz's ears burnt suddenly bright red. He looked down, looked up,
looked over his shoulder in the direction from whence the train would
come. Small cold beads of agitation stood out on his narrow forehead.

"The point is," said Dellwig, who had not missed a movement of that
twitching face, "that you must have been with Lohm nearly till the time
when--you went straight to him after leaving us?"

Klutz bowed his head.

"Then you couldn't have left him long before it broke out. I met him
myself between the stables and his gate five minutes, two minutes,
before the fire. He went past without a word, in a great hurry, as
though he hoped I had not recognised him. Now tell me what you know
about it. Just tell me if you saw anything. It is to both our interests
to cut his claws."

Klutz pressed his hands together, and looked round again for the train.

"Do you know what will certainly happen if you try to be generous and
shield him? He'll say _you_ did it, and so get rid of you and hush up
the affair with Miss Estcourt. I can see by your face you know who did
it. Everyone is saying it is Lohm."

"But why? Why should he? Why should he burn his own----" stammered
Klutz, in dreadful agitation.

"Why? Because they were in ruins, and well insured. Because he had no
money for new ones; and because now the insurance company will give him
the money. The thing is so plain--I am so convinced that he did it----"

They heard the train coming. Klutz stooped down quickly and clutched his
bag. "No, no," said Dellwig, catching his arm and gripping it tight, "I
shall not let you go till you say what you know. You or Lohm to be
punished--which do you prefer?"

Klutz gave Dellwig a despairing, hunted look. "He--he----" he began,
struggling to get the words over his dry lips.

"He did it? You know it? You saw it?"

"Yes, yes, I saw it--I saw him----"

Klutz burst into a wild fit of sobbing.

"_Armer Junge_," cried Dellwig very loud, patting his back very hard.
"It is indeed terrible--one's father so ill--on his death-bed--and such
a long journey of suspense before you----"

And sympathising at the top of his voice he looked for an empty
compartment, hustled him into it, pushing him up the high steps and
throwing his bag in after him, and then stood talking loudly of sick
fathers till the last moment. "I trust you will find the _Herr Papa_
better than you expect," he shouted after the moving train. "Don't give
way--don't give way. That is our vicar," he exclaimed to an acquaintance
who was standing near; "an only son, and he has just heard that his
father is dying. He is overwhelmed, poor devil, with grief."

To his wife on his arrival home he said, "My dear Theresa,"--a mode of
address only used on the rare occasions of supremest satisfaction--"my
dear Theresa, you may set your mind at rest about our friend Lohm. The
Miss will never marry him, and he himself will not trouble us much
longer." And they had a short conversation in private, and later on at
dinner they opened a bottle of champagne, and explaining to the servant
that it was an aunt's birthday, drank the aunt's health over and over
again, and were merrier than they had been for years.




CHAPTER XXVII


It was an odd and a nearly invariable consequence of Anna's cold morning
bath that she made resolutions in great numbers. The morning after the
fire there were more of them than ever. In a glow she assured herself
that she was not going to allow dejection and discouragement to take
possession of her so easily, that she would not, in future, be so much
the slave of her bodily condition, growing selfish, indifferent, unkind,
in proportion as she grew tired. What, she asked, tying her waist-ribbon
with great vigour, was the use of having a soul and its longings after
perfection if it was so absolutely the slave of its encasing body, if it
only received permission from the body to flutter its wings a little in
those rare moments when its master was completely comfortable and
completely satisfied? She was ashamed of herself for being so easily
affected by the heat and stress of the days with the Chosen. How was it
that her ideals were crushed out of sight continually by the mere weight
of the details of everyday existence? She would keep them more carefully
in view, pursue them with a more unfaltering patience--in a word, she
was going to be wise. Life was such a little thing, she reflected, so
very quickly done; how foolish, then, to forget so constantly that
everything that vexed her and made her sorry was flying past and away
even while it grieved her, dwindling in the distance with every hour,
and never coming back. What she had done and suffered last year, how
indifferent, of what infinitely little importance it was, now; and yet
she had been very strenuous about it at the time, inclined to resist and
struggle, taking it over-much to heart, acting as though it were always
going to be there. Oh, she would be wise in future, enjoying all there
was to enjoy, loving all there was to love, and shutting her eyes to the
rest. She would not, for instance, expect more from her Chosen than
they, being as they were, could give. Obviously they could not give her
more than they possessed, either of love, or comprehension, or
charitableness, or anything else that was precious; and it was because
she looked for more that she was for ever feeling disappointed. She
would take them as they were, being happy in what they did give her, and
ignoring what was less excellent. She herself was irritating, she was
sure, and often she saw did produce an irritating effect on the Chosen.
Of sundry minor failings, so minor that she was ashamed of having
noticed them, but which had yet done much towards making the days
difficult, she tried not to think. Indeed, they could hardly be made the
subject of resolutions at all, they were so very trivial. They included
a habit Frau von Treumann had of shutting every window and door that
stood open, whatever the weather was, and however pointedly the others
gasped for air; the exceedingly odd behaviour, forced upon her notice
four times a day, of Fräulein Kuhräuber at table; and an insatiable
curiosity displayed by the baroness in regard to other people's
correspondence and servants--every postcard she read, every envelope she
examined, every telegram, for some always plausible reason, she thought
it her duty to open: and her interest in the doings of the maids was
unquenchable. "These are little ways," thought Anna, "that don't
matter." And she thought it impatiently, for the little ways persisted
in obtruding themselves on her remembrance in the middle of her fine
plans of future wisdom. "If we could all get outside our bodies, even
for one day, and simply go about in our souls, how nice it would be!"
she sighed; but meanwhile the souls of the Chosen were still enveloped
in aggressive bodies that continued to shut windows, open telegrams, and
convey food into their mouths on knives.

The one belonging to Frau von Treumann was at that moment engaged in
writing with feverish haste to Karlchen, bidding him lose no time in
coming, for mischief was afoot, and Anna was showing an alarming
interest in the affairs of that specious hypocrite Lohm. "Come
unexpectedly," she wrote; "it will be better to take her by surprise;
and above all things come at once."

She gave the letter herself to the postman, and then, having nothing to
do but needlework that need not be done, and feeling out of sorts after
the long night's watch, and uneasy about Axel Lohm's evident attraction
for Anna, she went into the drawing-room and spent the morning
elaborately differing from the baroness.

They differed often; it could hardly be called quarrelling, but there
was a continual fire kept up between them of remarks that did not make
for peace. Over their needlework they addressed those observations to
each other that were most calculated to annoy. Frau von Treumann would
boast of her ancestral home at Kadenstein, its magnificence, and the
style in which, with a superb disregard for expense, her brother kept it
up, well knowing that the baroness had had no home more ancestral than a
flat in a provincial town; and the baroness would retort by relating, as
an instance of the grievous slanderousness of so-called friends, a
palpably malicious story she had heard of manure heaps before the
ancestral door, and of unprevented poultry in the _Schloss_ itself.
Once, stirred beyond the bounds of prudence enjoined by Karlchen, Frau
von Treumann had begun to sympathise with the Elmreich family's
misfortune in including a member like Lolli; but had been so much
frightened by her victim's immediate and dreadful pallor that she had
turned it off, deciding to leave the revelation of her full knowledge of
Lolli to Karlchen.

The only occasions on which they agreed were when together they attacked
Fräulein Kuhräuber; and more than once already that hapless young woman
had gone away to cry. Anna's thoughts had been filled lately by other
things, and she had not paid much attention to what was being talked
about; but yet it seemed to her that Frau von Treumann and the baroness
had discovered a subject on which Fräulein Kuhräuber was abnormally
sensitive and secretive, and that again and again when they were tired
of sparring together they returned to this subject, always in amiable
tones and with pleasant looks, and always reducing the poor Fräulein to
a pitiable state of confusion; which state being reached, and she gone
out to hide her misery in her bedroom, they would look at each other and
smile.

In all that concerned Fräulein Kuhräuber they were in perfect accord,
and absolutely pitiless. It troubled Anna, for the Fräulein was the one
member of the trio who was really happy--so long, that is, as the others
left her alone. Invigorated by her cold tub into a belief in the
possibility of peace-making, she made one more resolution: to establish
without delay concord between the three. It was so clearly to their own
advantage to live together in harmony; surely a calm talking-to would
make them see that, and desire it. They were not children, neither were
they, presumably, more unreasonable than other people; nor could they,
she thought, having suffered so much themselves, be intentionally
unkind. That very day she would make things straight.

She could not of course dream that the periodical putting to confusion
of Fräulein Kuhräuber was the one thing that kept the other two alive.
They found life at Kleinwalde terribly dull. There were no neighbours,
and they did not like forests. The princess hardly showed herself; Anna
was English, besides being more or less of a lunatic--the combination,
when you came to think of it, was alarming,--and they soon wearied of
pouring into each other's highly sceptical ears descriptions of the
splendours of their prosperous days. The visits of the parson had at
first been a welcome change, for they were both religious women who
loved to impress a new listener with the amount of their faith and
resignation; but when they knew him a little better, and had said the
same things several times, and found that as soon as they paused he
began to expatiate on the advantages and joys of their present mode of
life with Miss Estcourt, of which no one had been talking, they were
bored, and left off being pleased to see him, and fell back for
amusement on their own bickerings, and the probing of Fräulein
Kuhräuber's tender places.

About midday Anna, who had been writing German letters all the morning
helped by the princess, letters of inquiry concerning a new teacher for
Letty, came round by the path outside the drawing-room window looking
for the Chosen, and prepared to talk to them of concord. The window was
shut, and she knocked on the pane, trying to see into the shady room. It
was a broiling day, and she had no hat; therefore she knocked again, and
held her hands above her head, for the sun was intolerable. She wore one
of her last summer's dresses, a lilac muslin that in spite of its age
seemed in Kleinwalde to be quite absurdly pretty. She herself looked
prettier than ever out there in the light, the sun beating down on her
burnished hair.

"Anna wants to come in," said Frau von Treumann, looking up from her
embroidery at the figure in the sun.

"I suppose she does," said the baroness tranquilly.

Neither of them moved.

Anna knocked again.

"She will be sunstruck," observed Frau von Treumann.

"I think she will," agreed the baroness.

Neither of them moved.

Anna stooped down, and tried to look into the room, but could see
nothing. She knocked again; waited a moment; and then went away.

The two ladies embroidered in silence.

"Absurd old maid," Frau von Treumann thought, glancing at the baroness.
"As though a married woman of my age and standing could get up and open
windows when she is in the room."

"Ridiculous old Treumann," thought the baroness, outwardly engrossed by
her work. "What does she think, I wonder? I shall teach her that I am as
good as herself, and am not here to open windows any more than she is."

"Why, you _are_ here," said Anna, surprised, coming in at the door.

"Where have you been all the morning?" inquired Frau von Treumann
amiably. "We hardly ever see you, dear Anna. I hope you have come now to
sit with us a little while. Come, sit next to me, and let us have a nice
chat."

She made room for her on the sofa.

"Where is Emilie?" Anna asked; Emilie was Fräulein Kuhräuber, and Anna
was the only person in the house who called her so.

"She came in some time ago, but went away at once. She does not, I fear,
feel at ease with us."

"That is exactly what I want to talk about," said Anna.

"Is it? Why, how strange. Last night, while we were waiting for you, the
baroness and I had a serious conversation about Fräulein Kuhräuber, and
we decided to tell you what conclusions we came to on the first
opportunity."

"Certainly," said the baroness.

"It is surprising that Princess Ludwig should not have opened your
eyes."

"It is truly surprising," said the baroness.

"But they are open. And they have seen that you are not very--not
quite--well, not _very_ kind to poor Emilie. Don't you like her?"

"My dear Anna, we have found it quite impossible to like Fräulein
Kuhräuber."

"Or even endure her," amended the baroness.

"And yet I never saw a kinder, more absolutely amiable creature," said
Anna.

"You are deceived in her," said Frau von Treumann.

"We have found out that she is here under false pretences," said the
baroness.

"Which," said Frau von Treumann, unable to forbear glancing at the
baroness, "is a very dreadful thing."

"Certainly," agreed the baroness.

Anna looked from one to the other. "Well?" she said, as they did not go
on. Then the thought of her peace-making errand came into her mind, and
her certainty that she only needed to talk quietly to these two in order
to convince. "What do you think I came in to say to you?" she said, with
a low laugh in which there was no mirth. "I was going to propose that
you should both begin now to love Emilie. You have made her cry so
often--I have seen her coming out of this room so often with red
eyes--that I was sure you must be tired of that now, and would like to
begin to live happily with her, loving her for all that is so good in
her, and not minding the rest."

"My dear Anna," said Frau von Treumann testily, "it is out of the
question that ladies of birth and breeding should tolerate her."

"Certainly it is," emphatically agreed the baroness.

"And why? Isn't she a woman like ourselves? Wasn't she poor and
miserable too? And won't she go to heaven by and by, just as we, I hope,
shall?"

They thought this profane.

"We shall all, I trust, meet in heaven," said Frau von Treumann gently.
Then she went on, clearing her throat, "But meanwhile we think it our
duty to ask you if you know what her father was."

"He was a man of letters," said Anna, remembering the very words of
Fräulein Kuhräuber's reply to her inquiries.

"Exactly. But of what letters?"

"She tried to give us that same answer," said the baroness.

"Of what letters?" repeated Anna, looking puzzled.

"He carried all the letters he ever had in a bag," said Frau von
Treumann.

"In a bag?"

"In a word, dear child, he was a postman, and she has told you
untruths."

There was a silence. Anna pushed at a neighbouring footstool with the
toe of her shoe. "It is not pretty," she said after a while, her eyes on
the footstool, "to tell untruths."

"Certainly it is not," agreed the baroness.

"Especially in this case," said Frau von Treumann.

"Yes, especially in this case," said Anna, looking up.

"We thought you could not know the truth, and felt certain you would be
shocked. Now you will understand how impossible it is for ladies of
family to associate with such a person, and we are sure that you will
not ask us to do so, but will send her away."

"No," said Anna, in a low voice.

"No what, dear child?" inquired Frau von Treumann sweetly.

"I cannot send her away."

"You cannot send her away?" they cried together. Both let their work
drop into their laps, and both stared blankly at Anna, who looked at the
footstool.

"Have you made a lifelong contract with her?" asked Frau von Treumann,
with great heat, no such contract having been made in her own case.

"I did not quite say what I mean," said Anna, looking up again. "I do
not mean that I cannot really send her away, for of course I can if I
choose. Exactly what I mean is that I will not."

There was a pause. Neither of the ladies had expected such an attitude.

"This is very serious," then observed Frau von Treumann helplessly. She
took up her work again and pulled at the stitches, making knots in the
thread. Both she and the baroness had felt so certain that Anna would be
properly incensed when she heard the truth. Her manner without doubt
suggested displeasure, but the displeasure, strangely enough, seemed to
be directed against themselves instead of Fräulein Kuhräuber. What could
they, with dignity, do next? Frau von Treumann felt angry and perplexed.
She remembered Karlchen's advice in regard to ultimatums, and wished she
had remembered it sooner; but who could have imagined the extent of
Anna's folly? Never, she reflected, had she met anyone quite so foolish.

"It is a case for the police," burst out the baroness passionately, all
the pride of all the Elmreichs surging up in revolt against a fate
threatening to condemn her to spend the rest of her days with the
progeny of a postman. "Your advertisement specially mentioned good birth
as essential, and she is here under false pretences. You have the proofs
in her letters. She is within reach of the arm of the law."

Anna could not help smiling. "Don't denounce her," she said. "I should
be appalled if anything approaching the arm of the law got into my
house. I'll burn the proofs after dinner." Then she turned to Frau von
Treumann. "If you think it over," she said, "I _know_ you will not wish
me to be so merciless, so pitiless, as to send Emilie back to misery
only because her father, who has been dead thirty years, was a postman."

"But, Anna, you must be reasonable--you must look at the other side. No
Treumann has ever yet been required to associate----"

"But if he was a good man? If he did his work honestly, and said his
prayers, and behaved himself? We have no reason for doubting that he was
a most excellent postman," she went on, a twinkle in her eye; "punctual,
diligent, and altogether praiseworthy."

"Then you object to nothing?" cried the baroness with extraordinary
bitterness. "You draw the line nowhere? All the traditions and
prejudices of gentlefolk are supremely indifferent to you?"

"Oh, I object to a great many things. I would have liked it better if
the postman had really been the literary luminary poor Emilie said he
was--for her sake, and my sake, and your sakes. And I don't like
untruths, and never shall. But I do like Emilie, and I forgive it all."

"Then she is to remain here?"

"Yes, as long as she wants to. And do, _do_ try to see how good she is,
and how much there is to love in her. You have done her a real service,"
Anna added, smiling, "for now she won't have it on her mind any more,
and will be able to be really happy."

The baroness gathered up her work and rose. Frau von Treumann looked at
her nervously, and rose too.

"Then----" began the baroness, pale with outraged pride and propriety.

"Then really----" began Frau von Treumann more faintly, but feeling
bound in this matter to follow her example. After all, they could always
allow themselves to be persuaded to change their minds again.

Anna got up too, and they stood facing each other. Something awful was
going to happen, she felt, but what? Were they, she wondered, both going
to give her notice?

The baroness, drawn up to her full height, looked at her, opened her
lips to complete her sentence, and shut them again. She was exceedingly
agitated, and held her little thin, claw-like hands tightly together to
hide how they were shaking. All she had left in the world was the pride
of being an Elmreich and a baroness; and as, with the relentless years,
she had grown poorer, plainer, more insignificant, so had this pride
increased and strengthened, until, together with her passionate
propriety and horror of everything in the least doubtful in the way of
reputations, it had come to be the very mainspring of her being.
"Then----" she began again, with a great effort; for she remembered how
there had actually been no food sometimes when she was hungry, and no
fire when she was cold, and no doctor when she was sick, and how severe
weather had seemed to set in invariably at those times when she had
least money, making her first so much hungrier than usual, and
afterwards so much more sick, as though nature itself owed her a grudge.

"Oh, these ultimatums!" inwardly deplored Frau von Treumann; the
baroness was very absurd, she thought, to take the thing so tragically.

And at that instant the door was thrown open, and without waiting to be
announced, Karlchen, resplendent in his hussar uniform, and beaming from
ear to ear, hastened, clanking, into the room.

"Karlchen! _Du engelsgute Junge!_" shrieked his mother, in accents of
supremest relief and joy.

"I could not stay away longer," cried Karlchen, returning her embrace
with vigour, "I felt impelled to come. I obtained leave after many
prayers. It is for a few hours only. I return to-night. You forgive me?"
he added, turning to Anna and bowing over her hand.

"Yes," she said, smiling; Karlchen had come this time, she felt, exactly
at the right moment.

"I wrote this very morning----" began his mother in her excitement; but
she stopped in time, and covered her confusion by once again folding him
in her arms.

Karlchen was so much delighted by this unexpectedly cordial reception
that he lost his head a little. Anna stood smiling at him as she had not
done once last time. Yes, there were the dimples--oh, sweet
vision!--they were, indeed, glorious dimples. He seized her hand a
second time and kissed it. The pretty hand--so delicate and slender. And
the dress--Karlchen had an eye for dress--how dainty it was! "Your kind
welcome quite overcomes me," he said enthusiastically; and he looked so
gay, and so intensely satisfied with himself and the whole world, that
Anna laughed again. Besides, the uniform was really surprisingly
becoming; his civilian clothes on his first visit had been melancholy
examples of what a military tailor cannot do.

"Ah, baroness," said Karlchen, catching sight of the small, silent
figure. He brought his heels together, bowed, and crossing over to her
shook hands. "I have come laden with greetings for you," he said.

"Greetings?" repeated the baroness, surprised. Then an odd look of fear
came into her eyes.

He had not meant to do it then; he had not been certain whether he would
do it this time at all; but he was feeling so exhilarated, so buoyant,
that he could not resist. "I was at the Wintergarten last night," he
said, "and had a talk with your sister, Baroness Lolli. She dances
better than ever. She sends you her love, and says she is coming down to
see you."

The baroness made a queer little sound, shut her eyes, spread out her
hands, and dropped on to the carpet as though she had been shot.




CHAPTER XXVIII


"Is Herr von Treumann gone?"

It was late the same afternoon, and Princess Ludwig had come into the
bedroom where the Stralsund doctor was still vainly endeavouring to
bring the baroness back to life, to ask Anna whether she would see Axel
Lohm, who was waiting downstairs and hoped to be allowed to speak to
her. "But is Herr von Treumann gone?" inquired Anna; and would not move
till she was sure of that.

"Yes, and his mother has gone with him to the station."

Anna had not left the baroness's side since the catastrophe. She could
not see the unconscious face on the pillow for tears. Was there ever
such barbarous, such gratuitous cruelty as young Treumann's? His mother
had been in once or twice on tiptoe, the last time to tell Anna that he
was leaving, and would she not come down so that he might explain how
sorry he was for having unwittingly done so much mischief? But Anna had
merely shaken her head and turned again to the piteous little figure on
the bed. Never again, she told herself, would she see or speak to
Karlchen.

The movement with which she turned away was expressive; and Frau von
Treumann went out and heaped bitter reproaches on Karlchen, driving with
him to Stralsund in order to have ample time to heap all that were in
her mind, and doing it the more thoroughly that he was in a crushed
condition and altogether incapable of defending himself. For what had he
really cared about the baroness's relationship to Lolli? He had thought
it a huge joke, and had looked forward with enjoyment to seeing Anna
promptly order her out of the house. How could he, thick of skin and
slow of brain, have foreseen such a crisis? He was very much in love
with Anna, and shivered when he thought of the look she had given him as
she followed the people who were carrying the baroness out of the room.
Certainly he was exceedingly wretched, and his mother could not reproach
him more bitterly than he reproached himself. While she was vehemently
pointing out the obvious, he meditated sadly on the length of the
journey he had taken for worse than nothing. All the morning he had been
roasted in trains, and he was about to be roasted again for a dreary
succession of hours. His hot uniform, put on solely for Anna's
bedazzlement, added enormously to his torments; and the distance between
Rislar and Stralsund was great, and the journey proportionately
expensive--much too expensive, if all you got for it was one
intoxicating glimpse of dimples, followed by a flashing look of wrath
that made you feel cold with the thermometer at ninety. He had not felt
so dejected since the eighties, he reflected, in which dark ages he had
been forced to fight a duel. Karlchen had a prejudice against duelling;
he thought it foolish. But, being an officer--he was at that time a
conspicuously gay lieutenant--whatever he might think about it, if
anyone wanted to fight him fight he must, or drop into the awful ranks
of Unknowables. He had made a joke of a personal nature, and the other
man turned out to have no sense of humour, and took it seriously, and
expressed a desire for Karlchen's blood. Driving with his justly
incensed mother through the dust and heat to the station, he remembered
the dismal night he had passed before the duel, and thought how much his
dejection then had resembled in its profundity his dejection now; for he
had been afraid he was going to be hurt, and whatever people may say
about courage nobody really likes being hurt. Well, perhaps after all,
this business with Anna would turn out all right, just as that business
had turned out all right; for he had killed his man, and, instead of
wounds, had been covered with glory. Thus Karlchen endeavoured to snatch
comfort as he drove, but yet his heart was very heavy.

"I hope," said his mother bitingly when he was in the train, patiently
waiting to be taken beyond the sound of her voice, "I do hope that you
are ashamed of yourself. It is a bitter feeling, I can tell you, the
feeling that one is the mother of a fool."

To which Karlchen, still dazed, replied by unhooking his collar, wiping
his face, and appealing with a heart-rending plaintiveness to a passing
beer-boy to give him, _um Gottes Willen_, beer.

Axel was in the drawing-room, where the remains of Karlchen's
valedictory coffee and cakes were littered on a table, when Anna came
down. "I am so sorry for you," he said. "Princess Ludwig has been
telling me what has happened."

"Don't be sorry for me. Nothing is the matter with me. Be sorry for that
most unfortunate little soul upstairs."

Axel kissed Anna's right hand, which was, she knew, the custom; and
immediately proceeded to kiss her other hand, which was not the custom
at all. She was looking woebegone, with red eyelids and white cheeks;
but a faint colour came into her face at this, for he did it with such
unmistakable devotion that for the first time she wondered uneasily
whether their pleasant friendship were not about to come to an end.

"Don't be too kind," she said, drawing her hands away and trying to
smile. "I--I feel so stupid to-day, and want to cry dreadfully."

"Well then, I should do it, and get it over."

"I did do it, but I haven't got it over."

"Well, don't think of it. How is the baroness?"

"Just the same. The doctor thinks it serious. And she has no
constitution. She has not had enough of anything for years--not enough
food, or clothes, or--or anything."

She went quickly across to the coffee table to hide how much she wanted
to cry. "Have some coffee," she said with her back to him, moving the
cups aimlessly about.

"Don't forget," said Axel, "that the poor lady's past misery is over now
and done with. Think what luck has come in her way at last. When she
gets over this, here she is, safe with you, surrounded by love and care
and tenderness--blessings not given to all of us."

"But she doesn't like love and care and tenderness. At least, if it
comes from me. She dislikes me."

Axel could not exclaim in surprise, for he was not surprised. The
baroness had appeared to him to be so hopelessly sour; and how, he
thought, shall the hopelessly sour love the preternaturally sweet? He
looked therefore at Anna arranging the cups with restless, nervous
fingers, and waited for more.

"Why do you say that?" she asked, still with her back to him.

"Say what?"

"That when she gets over this she will have all those nice things
surrounding her. You told me when first she came, that if she really
were the poor dancing woman's sister I ought on no account to keep her
here. Don't you remember?"

"Quite well. But am I not right in supposing that you _will_ keep her?
You see, I know you better now than I did then."

"If she liked being here--if it made her happy--I would keep her in
defiance of the whole world."

"But as it is----?"

She came to him with a cup of cold coffee in her hands. He took it, and
stirred it mechanically.

"As it is," she said, "she is very ill, and has to get well again before
we begin to decide things. Perhaps," she added, looking up at him
wistfully, "this illness will change her?"

He shook his head. "I am afraid it won't," he said. "For a little while,
perhaps--for a few weeks at first while she still remembers your
nursing, and then--why, the old self over again."

He put the untasted coffee down on the nearest table. "There is no
getting away," he said, coming back to her, "from one's old self. That
is why this work you have undertaken is so hopeless."

"Hopeless?" she exclaimed in a startled voice. He was saying aloud what
she had more than once almost--never quite--whispered in her heart of
hearts.

"You ought to have begun with the baroness thirty years ago, to have had
a chance of success."

"Why, she was five years old then, and I am sure quite cheerful. And I
wasn't there at all."

"Five ought really to be the average age of the Chosen. What is the use
of picking out unhappy persons well on in life, and thinking you are
going to make them happy? How can you _make_ them be happy? If it had
been possible to their natures they would have been so long ago, however
poor they were. And they would not have been so poor or so unhappy if
they had been willing to work. Work is such an admirable tonic. The
princess works, and finds life very tolerable. You will never succeed
with people like Frau von Treumann and the baroness. They belong to a
class of persons that will grumble even in heaven. You could easily make
those who are happy already still happier, for it is in them--the
gratitude and appreciation for life and its blessings; but those of
course are not the people you want to get at. You think I am preaching?"
he asked abruptly.

"But are you not?"

"It is because I cannot stand by and watch you bruising yourself."

"Oh," said Anna, "you are a man, and can fight your way well enough
through life. You are quite comfortable and prosperous. How can you
sympathise with women like Else? Because she is not young you haven't a
feeling for her--only indifference. You talk of my bruising myself--you
don't mind her bruises. And if I were forty, how sure I am that you
wouldn't mind mine."

"Yes, I would," said Axel, with such conviction that she added quickly,
"Well--I don't want to talk about bruises."

"I hope the baroness will soon get over the cruel ones that singularly
brutal young man has inflicted. You agree with me that he _is_ a
singularly brutal young man?"

"Absolutely."

"And I hope that when she is well again you will make her as happy as
she is capable of being."

"If I knew how!"

"Why, by letting her go away, and giving her enough to live on decently
by herself. It would be quite the best course to take, both for you and
for her."

Anna looked down. "I have been thinking the same thing," she said in a
low voice; she felt as though she were hauling down her flag.

"Perhaps you will let me help."

"Help?"

"Let me contribute. Why may I not be charitable too? If we join together
it will be to her advantage. She need not know. And you are not a
millionaire."

"Nor are you," said Anna, smiling up at him.

"We unfortunates who live by our potatoes are never millionaires. But
still we can be charitable."

"But why should _you_ help the baroness? I found her out, and brought
her here, and I am the only person responsible for her."

"It will be much more costly than just having her here."

"I don't mind, if only she is happy. And I will not have you pay the
cost of my experiments in philanthropy."

"Is Frau von Treumann happy?" he asked abruptly.

"No," said Anna, with a faint smile.

"Is Fräulein Kuhräuber happy?"

"No."

"Tell me one thing more," he said; "are _you_ happy?"

Anna blushed. "That is a queer question," she said. "Why should I not be
happy?"

"But are you?"

She looked at him, hesitating. Then she said, in a very small voice,
"No."

Axel took two or three turns up and down the room. "I knew it," he said;
and added something in German under his breath about _Weiber_. "After
this, you will not, I suppose, receive young Treumann again?" he asked,
coming to a halt in front of her.

"Never again."

"You have a difficult time before you, then, with his mother."

Anna blushed. "I am afraid I have," she admitted.

"You have a very difficult few weeks before you," he said. "The baroness
probably dangerously ill, and Frau von Treumann very angry with you. I
know Princess Ludwig does all she can, but still you are alone--against
odds."

The odds, too, were greater than she knew. All day he had been
officially engaged in making inquiries into the origin of the fire the
night before, and every circumstance pointed to Klutz as the culprit. He
had sent for Klutz, and Klutz, they said, had gone home. Then he sent a
telegram after him, and his father replied that he was neither expecting
his son nor was he ill. Klutz, then, had disappeared in order to avoid
the consequences of what he had done; but it was only a question of days
before the police brought him back again, and then he would tell the
whole absurd story, and Pomerania would chuckle at Anna's expense. The
thought of this chuckling made Axel cold with rage.

He stood looking out of the window at the parched garden, the drooping
lilac-bushes, the hazy island across the water. The wind had dropped,
and a gray film had drawn across the sky. At the bottom of the garden,
under a chestnut-tree, Miss Leech was sewing, while Letty read aloud to
her. The monotonous drone of Letty's reading, interrupted by her loud
complaints each time a mosquito stung her, reached Axel's ears as he
stood there in silence. A grim struggle was going on within him. He
loved Anna with a passion that would no longer be hidden; and he knew
that he must somehow hide it. He was so certain that she did not care
about him. He was so certain that she would never dream of marrying him.
And yet if ever a woman needed the protection of an all-enfolding love
it was Anna at that moment "That child down there has made a pretty fair
amount of mischief for a person of her age," he burst out with a
vehemence that startled Anna.

"What child?" she said, coming up behind him and looking over his
shoulder.

He turned round quickly. The feeling that she was so close to him tore
away the last shred of his self-control. "You know that I love you," he
said, his voice shaking with passion.

Her face in an instant was colourless. She stood quite still, almost
touching him, as though she did not dare move. Her eyes were fixed on
his with a frightened, fascinated look.

"You know it. You have known it a long time. Now what are you going to
say to me?"

She looked at him without speaking or moving.

"Anna, what are you going to say to me?" he cried; and he caught up her
hands and kissed them one after the other, hardly knowing what he did,
beside himself with love of her.

She watched him helplessly. She felt faint and sick. She had had a
miserable day, and was completely overwhelmed by this last misfortune.
Her good friend Axel was gone, gone for ever. The pleasant friendship
was done. In place of the friend she so much needed, of the friendship
she had found so comforting, there was--this.

"Won't you--won't you let my hands go?" she said faintly. She did not
know him again. Was it possible that this agony of love was for her? She
knew herself so well, she knew so well what it was for which he was
evidently going to break his heart. How wonderful, how pitiful beyond
expression, that a good man like Axel should suffer anything because of
her. And even in the midst of her fright and misery the thought would
not be put from her that if she had happened to look like the baroness
or Fräulein Kuhräuber, while inwardly remaining exactly as she was, he
would not have broken his heart for her. "Oh, let me go----" she
whispered; and turned her head aside, and shut her eyes, unable to look
any longer at the love and despair in his.

"But what are you going to say to me?"

"Oh, you know--you know----"

"But you are so sorry always for people who suffer----"

"Oh, stop--oh, stop!"

"No, I won't stop; here have I been condemned to look on at you
lavishing love on people who don't want it, don't like it, are wearied
by it--who don't know how precious it is, how priceless it is, and how I
am hungering and thirsting--oh, starving, starving, for one drop of
it----" His voice shook, and he fell once more to covering her hands
with kisses that seemed to scorch her soul.

This was very dreadful. Her soul had never been scorched before.
Something must be done to stop him. She could not stand there with her
eyes shut and her hands being kissed for ever. "_Please_ let me go," she
entreated faintly; and in her helplessness began to cry.

He instantly released her, and she stood before him crying. What a
horrible thing it was to lose her friend, to be forced to hurt him. "I
never dreamt that you--that you----" she wept.

"What, that I loved you?" he asked incredulously; but more gently,
subdued by her deep distress. His face grew very hopeless. She was
crying because she was sorry for him.

"I don't know--I think I did dream that--lately--once or twice--but I
never dreamt that it was so bad--that you were such a--such a--such a
volcano. Oh, Axel, why are you a volcano?" she cried, looking up at him,
the tears rolling down her cheeks. "Why have you spoilt everything? It
was so nice before. We were such friends. And now--how can I be friends
with a volcano?"

"Anna, if you make fun of me----"

"Oh no, no--as though I would--as though I could do anything so
unutterable. But don't let us be tragic. Oh, don't let us be tragic. You
know my plans--you know my plans inside out, from beginning to end--how
can I, how _can_ I marry anybody?"

"Good God, those women--those women who are not happy, who have spoilt
your happiness, they are to spoil mine now--ours, Anna?" He seized her
arm as though he would wake her at all costs from a fatal sleep. "Do you
mean to say that if it were not for those women you would be my wife?"

"Oh, if only you wouldn't be tragic----"

"Do you mean to say that is the reason?"

"Oh, isn't it sufficient----"

"No. If you cared for me it would be no reason at all."

She cried bitterly. "But I don't," she sobbed. "Not like that--not in
that way. It is atrocious of me not to--I know how good you are, how
kind, how--how everything. And still I don't. I don't know why I don't,
but I don't. Oh, Axel, I am so sorry--don't look so wretched--I can't
bear it."

"But what can it matter to you how I look if you don't care about me?"

"Oh, oh," sobbed Anna, wringing her hands.

He caught hold of her wrist. "See here, Anna. Look at me."

But she would not look at him.

"Look at me. I don't believe you know your own mind. I want to see into
your eyes. They were always honest--look at me."

But she would not look at him.

"Surely you will do that--only that--for me."

"There isn't anything to see," she wept, "there really isn't. It is
dreadful of me, but I can't help it."

"Well, but look at me."

"Oh, Axel, what _is_ the use of looking at you?" she cried in despair;
and pulled her handkerchief away and did it.

He searched her face for a moment in silence, as though he thought that
if only he could read her soul he might understand it better than she
did herself. Those dear eyes--they were full of pity, full of distress;
but search as he might he could find nothing else.

He turned away without a word.

"Don't, don't be tragic," she begged, anxiously following him a few
steps. "If only you are not tragic we shall still be able to be
friends----"

But he did not look round.

A servant with a tray was outside coming in to take the coffee away.
"Oh," exclaimed Anna, seeing that it was impossible to hide her
tear-stained face from the girl's calm scrutiny, "oh, Johanna, the poor
baroness--she is so ill--it is so dreadful----" And she dropped into a
chair and hid herself in the cushions, weeping hysterically with an
abandonment of woe that betokened a quite extraordinary affection for
the baroness.

"_Gott, die arme Baronesse_," sympathised Johanna perfunctorily. To
herself she remarked, "This very moment has the Miss refused to marry
_gnädiger Herr_."




CHAPTER XXIX


What Anna most longed for in the days that followed was a mother. "If I
had a mother," she thought, not once, but again and again, and her eyes
had a wistful, starved look when she thought it, "if I only had a
mother, a sweet mother all to myself, of my very own, I'd put my head on
her dear shoulder and cry myself happy again. First I'd tell her
everything, and she wouldn't mind however silly it was, and she wouldn't
be tired however long it was, and she'd say 'Little darling child, you
are only a baby after all,' and would scold me a little, and kiss me a
great deal, and then I'd listen so comfortably, all the time with my
face against her nice soft dress, and I would feel so safe and sure and
wrapped round while she told me what to do next. It is lonely and cold
and difficult without a mother."

The house was in confusion. The baroness had come out of her
unconsciousness to delirium, and the doctors, knowing that she was not
related to anyone there, talked openly of death. There were two doctors,
now, and two nurses; and Anna insisted on nursing too, wearing herself
out with all the more passion because she felt that it was of so little
importance really to anyone whether the baroness lived or died.

They were all strangers, the people watching this frail fighter for
life, and they watched with the indifference natural to strangers. Here
was a middle-aged person who would probably die; if she died no one lost
anything, and if she lived it did not matter either. The doctors and
nurses, accustomed to these things, could not be expected to be
interested in so profoundly uninteresting a case; Frau von Treumann
observed once at least every day that it was _schrecklich_, and went on
with her embroidery; Fräulein Kuhräuber cried a little when, on her way
to her bedroom, she heard the baroness raving, but she cried easily, and
the raving frightened her; the princess felt that death in this case
would be a blessing; and Letty and Miss Leech avoided the house, and
spent the burning days rambling in woods that teemed with prodigal,
joyous life.

As for Anna, to see her in the sick-room was to suppose her the nearest
and tenderest relative of the baroness; and yet the passion that
possessed her was not love, but only an endless, unfathomable pity. "If
she gets well, she shall never be unhappy again," vowed Anna in those
days when she thought she could hear Death's footsteps on the stairs.
"Here or somewhere else--anywhere she likes--she shall live and be
happy. She will see that her poor sister has made no difference, except
that there will be no shadow between us now."

But what is the use of vowing? When June was in its second week the
baroness slowly and hesitatingly turned the corner of her illness; and
immediately the corner was turned and the exhaustion of turning it got
over, she became fractious. "You will have a difficult time," Axel had
said on the day he spoilt their friendship; and it was true. The
difficult time began after that corner was turned, and the farther the
baroness drew away from it, the nearer she got to complete
convalescence, the more difficult did life for Anna become. For it
resumed the old course, and they all resumed their old selves, the same
old selves, even to the shadow of an unmentioned Lolli between them,
that Axel had said they would by no means get away from; but with this
difference, that the peculiarities of both Frau von Treumann and the
baroness were more pronounced than before, and that not one of the trio
would speak to either of the other two.

Frau von Treumann was still firmly fixed in the house, without the least
intention apparently of leaving it, and she spent her time lying in wait
for Anna, watching for an opportunity of beginning again about Karlchen.
Anna had avoided the inevitable day when she would be caught, but it
came at last, and she was caught in the garden, whither she had retired
to consider how best to approach the baroness, hitherto quite
unapproachable, on the burning question of Lolli.

Frau von Treumann appeared suddenly, coming softly across the grass, so
that there was no time to run away. "Anna," she called out
reproachfully, seeing Anna make a movement as though she wanted to run,
which was exactly what she did want to do, "Anna, have I the plague?"

"I hope not," said Anna.

"You treat me as if I had it."

Anna said nothing. "Why does she stay here? How can she stay here, after
what has happened?" she had wondered often. Perhaps she had come now to
announce her departure. She prepared herself therefore to listen with a
willing ear.

She was sitting in the shade of a copper beech facing the oily sea and
the coast of Rügen quivering opposite in the heat-haze. She was not
doing anything; she never did seem to do anything, as these ladies of
the busy fingers often noticed.

"Blue and white," said Anna, looking up at the gulls and the sky to give
Frau von Treumann time, "the Pomeranian colours. I see now where they
come from."

But Frau von Treumann had not come out to talk about the Pomeranian
colours. "My Karlchen has been ill," she said, her eyes on Anna's face.

Anna watched the gulls overhead in the deep blue. "So has Else," she
remarked.

"Dear me," thought Frau von Treumann, "what rancour."

She laid her hand on Anna's knee, and it was taken no notice of. "You
cannot forgive him?" she said gently. "You cannot pardon a momentary
indiscretion?"

"I have nothing to forgive," said Anna, watching the gulls; one dropped
down suddenly, and rose again with a fish in its beak, the sun for an
instant catching the silver of the scales. "It is no affair of mine. It
is for Else to forgive him."

Frau von Treumann began to weep; this way of looking at it was so
hopelessly unreasonable. She pulled out her handkerchief. "What a heap
she must use," thought Anna; never had she met people who cried so much
and so easily as the Chosen; she was quite used now to red eyes; one or
other of her sisters had them almost daily, for the farther their old
bodily discomforts and real anxieties lay behind them the more tender
and easily lacerated did their feelings become.

"He could not bear to see you being imposed upon," said Frau von
Treumann. "As soon as he knew about this terrible sister he felt he must
hasten down to save you. 'Mother,' he said to me when first he suspected
it, 'if it is true, she must not be contaminated.'"

"Who mustn't?"

"Oh, Anna, you know he thinks only of you!"

"Well, you see," said Anna, "I don't mind being contaminated."

"Oh, dear child, a young pretty girl ought to mind very much."

"Well, I don't. But what about yourself? Are you not afraid of--of
contamination?" She was frightened by her own daring when she had said
it, and would not have looked at Frau von Treumann for worlds.

"No, dear child," replied that lady in tones of tearful sweetness, "I am
too old to suffer in any way from associating with queer people."

"But I thought a Treumann----" murmured Anna, more and more frightened
at herself, but impelled to go on.

"Dear Anna, a Treumann has never yet flinched before duty."

Anna was silenced. After that she could only continue to watch the
gulls.

"You are going to keep the baroness?"

"If she cares to stay, yes."

"I thought you would. It is for you to decide who you will have in your
house. But what would you do if this--this Lolli came down to see her
sister?"

"I really cannot tell."

"Well, be sure of one thing," burst out Frau von Treumann
enthusiastically, "I will not forsake you, dear Anna. Your position now
is exceedingly delicate, and I will not forsake you."

So she was not going. Anna got up with a faint sigh. "It is frightfully
hot here," she said; "I think I will go to Else."

"Ah--and I wanted to tell you about my poor Karlchen--and you avoid
me--you do not want to hear. If I am in the house, the house is too hot.
If I come into the garden, the garden is too hot. You no longer like
being with me."

Anna did not contradict her. She was wondering painfully what she ought
to do. Ought she meekly to allow Frau von Treumann to stay on at
Kleinwalde, to the exclusion, perhaps, of someone really deserving? Or
ought she to brace herself to the terrible task of asking her to go? She
thought, "I will ask Axel"--and then remembered that there was no Axel
to ask. He never came near her. He had dropped out of her life as
completely as though he had left Lohm. Since that unhappy day, she had
neither seen him nor heard of him. Many times did she say to herself, "I
will ask Axel," and always the remembrance that she could not came with
a shock of loneliness; and then she would drop into the train of thought
that ended with "if I had a mother," and her eyes growing wistful.

"Perhaps it is the hot weather," she said suddenly, an evening or two
later, after a long silence, to the princess. They had been speaking of
servants before that.

"You think it is the hot weather that makes Johanna break the cups?"

"That makes me think so much of mothers."

The princess turned her head quickly, and examined Anna's face. It was
Sunday evening, and the others were at church. The baroness, whose
recovery was slow, was up in her room.

"What mothers?" naturally inquired the princess.

"I think this everlasting heat is dreadful," said Anna plaintively. "I
have no backbone left. I am all limp, and soft, and silly. In cold
weather I believe I wouldn't want a mother half so badly."

"So you want a mother?" said the princess, taking Anna's hand in hers
and patting it kindly. She thought she knew why. Everyone in the house
saw that something must have been said to Axel Lohm to make him keep
away so long. Perhaps Anna was repenting, and wanted a mother's help to
set things right again.

"I always thought it would be so glorious to be independent," said Anna,
"and now somehow it isn't. It is tiring. I want someone to tell me what
I ought to do, and to see that I do it. Besides petting me. I long and
long sometimes to be petted."

The princess looked wise. "My dear," she said, shaking her head, "it is
not a mother that you want. Do you know the couplet:--

      _Man bedarf der Leitung
    Und der männlichen Begleitung?_

A truly excellent couplet."

Anna smiled. "That is the German idea of female bliss--always to be led
round by the nose by some husband."

"Not _some_ husband, my dear--one's own husband. You may call it leading
by the nose if you like. I can only say that I enjoyed being led by
mine, and have missed it grievously ever since."

"But you had found the right man."

"It is not very difficult to find the right man."

"Yes it is--very difficult indeed."

"I think not," said the princess. "He is never far off. Sometimes, even,
he is next door." And she gazed over Anna's head at the ceiling with
elaborate unconsciousness.

"And besides," said Anna, "why does a woman everlastingly want to be led
and propped? Why can't she go about the business of life on her own
feet? Why must she always lean on someone?"

"You said just now it is because it is hot."

"The fact is," said Anna, "that I am not clever enough to see my way
through puzzles. And that depresses me."

"I well know that you must be puzzled."

"Yes, it is puzzling, isn't it? I can talk to you about it, for of
course you see it all. It seems so absurd that the only result of my
trying to make people happy is to make everyone, including myself,
wretched. That is waste, isn't it. Waste, I mean, of happiness. For I,
at least, was happy before."

"And, my dear, you will be happy again."

Anna knit her brows in painful thought. "If by being wretched I had
managed to make the others happy it wouldn't have been so bad. At least
it wouldn't have been so completely silly. The only thing I can think of
is that I must have hit upon the wrong people."

"_I Gott bewahre!_" cried the princess with energy. "They are all alike.
Send these away, you get them back in a different shape. Faces and names
would be different, never the women. They would all be Treumanns and
Elmreichs, and not a single one worth anything in the whole heap."

"Well, I shall not desert them--Else and Emilie, I mean. They need help,
both of them. And after all, it is simple selfishness for ever wanting
to be happy oneself. I have begun to see that the chief thing in life is
not to be as happy as one can, but to be very brave."

The princess sighed. "Poor Axel," she said.

Anna started, and blushed violently. "Pray what has my being brave to do
with Herr von Lohm?" she inquired severely.

"Why, you are going to be brave at his expense, poor man. You must not
expect anything from me, my dear, but common sense. You give up all hope
of being happy because you think it your duty to go on sacrificing him
and yourself to a set of thankless, worthless women, and you call it
being brave. I call it being unnatural and silly."

"It has never been a question of Herr von Lohm," said Anna coldly,
indeed freezingly. "What claims has he on me? My plans were all made
before I knew that he existed."

"Oh, my dear, your plans are very irritating things. The only plan a
sensible young woman ought to make is to get as good a husband as
possible as quickly as she can."

"Why," said Anna, rising in her indignation, and preparing to leave a
princess suddenly become objectionable, "why, you are as bad as Susie!"

"Susie?" said the princess, who had not heard of her by that name. "Was
Susie also one who told you the truth?"

But Anna walked out of the room without answering, in a very dignified
manner; went into the loneliest part of the garden; sat down behind some
bushes; and cried.

She looked back on those childish tears afterwards, and on all that had
gone before, as the last part of a long sleep; a sleep disturbed by
troubling and foolish dreams, but still only a sleep and only dreams.
She woke up the very next day, and remained wide awake after that for
the rest of her life.




CHAPTER XXX


Anna drove into Stralsund the next morning to her banker, accompanied by
Miss Leech. When they passed Axel's house she saw that his gate-posts
were festooned with wreaths, and that garlands of flowers were strung
across the gateway, swaying to and fro softly in the light breeze. "Why,
how festive it looks," she exclaimed, wondering.

"Yesterday was Herr von Lohm's birthday," said Miss Leech. "I heard
Princess Ludwig say so."

"Oh," said Anna. Her tone was piqued. She turned her head away, and
looked at the hay-fields on the opposite side of the road. Axel must
have birthdays, of course, and why should he not put things round his
gate-posts if he wanted to? Yet she would not look again, and was silent
the rest of the way; nor was it of any use for Miss Leech to attempt to
while away the long drive with pleasant conversation. Anna would not
talk; she said it was too hot to talk. What she was thinking was that
men were exceedingly horrid, all of them, and that life was a snare.

Far from being festive, however, Axel's latest birthday was quite the
most solitary he had yet spent. The cheerful garlands had been put up by
an officious gardener on his own initiative. No one, except Axel's own
dependents, had passed beneath them to wish him luck. Trudi had
telegraphed her blessings, administering them thus in their easiest
form. His Stralsund friends had apparently forgotten him; in other years
they had been glad of the excuse the birthday gave for driving out into
the country in June, but this year the astonished Mamsell saw her
birthday cake remain untouched and her baked meats waiting vainly for
somebody to come and eat them.

Axel neither noticed nor cared. The haymaking season had just begun, and
besides his own affairs he was preoccupied by Anna's. If she had not
been shut up so long in the baroness's sick-room she would have met him
often enough. She thought he never intended to come near her again, and
all the time, whenever he could spare a moment and often when he could
not, he was on her property, watching Dellwig's farming operations. She
should not suffer, he told himself, because he loved her; she should not
be punished because she was not able to love him. He would go on doing
what he could for her, and was certainly, at his age, not going to sulk
and leave her to face her difficulties alone.

The first time he met Dellwig on these incursions into Anna's domain, he
expected to be received with a scowl; but Dellwig did not scowl at all;
was on the contrary quite affable, even volunteering information about
the work he had in hand. Nor had he been after all offensively zealous
in searching for the person who had set the stables on fire; and luckily
the Stralsund police had not been very zealous either. Klutz was looked
for for a little while after Axel had denounced him as the probable
culprit, but the matter had been dropped, apparently, and for the last
ten days nothing more had been said or done. Axel was beginning to hope
that the whole thing had blown over, that there was to be no
unpleasantness after all for Anna. Hearing that the baroness was nearly
well, he decided to go and call at Kleinwalde as though nothing had
happened. Some time or other he must meet Anna. They could not live on
adjoining estates and never see each other. The day after his birthday
he arranged to go round in the afternoon and take up the threads of
ordinary intercourse again, however much it made him suffer.

Meanwhile Anna did her business in Stralsund, discovered on interviewing
her banker that she had already spent more than two-thirds of a whole
year's income, lunched pensively after that on ices with Miss Leech,
walked down to the quay and watched the unloading of the fishing-smacks
while Fritz and the horses had their dinner, was very much stared at by
the inhabitants, who seldom saw anything so pretty, and finally, about
two o'clock, started again for home.

As they drew near Axel's gate, and she was preparing to turn her face
away from its ostentatious gaiety, a closed _Droschke_ came through it
towards them, followed at a short distance by a second.

Miss Leech said nothing, strange though this spectacle was on that quiet
road, for she felt that these were the departing guests, and, like Anna,
she wondered how a man who loved in vain could have the heart to give
parties. Anna said nothing either, but watched the approaching
_Droschkes_ curiously. Axel was sitting in the first one, on the side
near her. He wore his ordinary farming clothes, the Norfolk jacket, and
the soft green hat. There were three men with him, seedy-looking
individuals in black coats. She bowed instinctively, for he was looking
out of the window full at her, but he took no notice. She turned very
white.

The second _Droschke_ contained four more queer-looking persons in black
clothes. When they had passed, Fritz pulled up his horses of his own
accord, and twisting himself round stared after the receding cloud of
dust.

Anna had been cut by Axel; but it was not that that made her turn so
white--it was something in his face. He had looked straight at her, and
he had not seen her.

"Who are those people?" she asked Fritz in a voice that faltered, she
did not know why.

Fritz did not answer. He stared down the road after the _Droschkes_,
shook his head, began to scratch it, jerked himself round again to his
horses, drove on a few yards, pulled them up a second time, looked back,
shook his head, and was silent.

"Fritz, do you know them?" Anna asked more authoritatively.

But Fritz only mumbled something soothing and drove on.

Anna had not failed to notice the old man's face as he watched the
departing _Droschkes_; it wore an oddly amazed and scared expression.
Her heart seemed to sink within her like a stone, yet she could give
herself no reason for it. She tried to order him to turn up the avenue
to Axel's house, but her lips were dry, and the words would not come;
and while she was struggling to speak the gate was passed. Then she was
relieved that it was passed, for how could she, only because she had a
presentiment of trouble, go to Axel's house? What did she think of doing
there? Miss Leech glanced at her, and asked if anything was the matter.

"No," said Anna in a whisper, looking straight before her. Nor was there
anything the matter; only that blind look on Axel's face, and the
strange feeling in her heart.

A knot of people stood outside the post office talking eagerly. They all
stopped talking to stare at Anna when the carriage came round the
corner. Fritz whipped up his horses and drove past them at a gallop.

"Wait--I want to get out," cried Anna as they came to the parsonage. "Do
you mind waiting?" she asked Miss Leech. "I want to speak to Herr
Pastor. I will not be a moment."

She went up the little trim path to the porch. The maid-of-all-work was
clearing away the coffee from the table. Frau Manske came bustling out
when she heard Anna's voice asking for her husband. She looked
extraordinarily excited. "He has not come back yet," she cried before
Anna could speak, "he is still at the _Schloss_. _Gott Du Allmächtiger_,
did one ever hear of anything so terrible?"

Anna looked at her, her face as white as her dress. "Tell me," she tried
to say; but no sound passed her lips. She made a great effort, and the
words came in a whisper: "Tell me," she said.

"What, the gracious Miss has not heard? Herr von Lohm has been
arrested."

It was impossible not to enjoy imparting so tremendous a piece of news,
however genuinely shocked one might be. Frau Manske brought it out with
a ring of pride. It would not be easy to beat, she felt, in the way of
news. Then she remembered the gossip about Anna and Axel, and observed
her with increased interest. Was she going to faint? It would be the
only becoming course for her to take if it were true that there had been
courting.

But Anna, whose voice had failed her before, when once she had heard
what it was that had happened, seemed curiously cold and composed.

"What was he accused of?" was all she asked; so calmly, Frau Manske
afterwards told her friends, that it was not even womanly in the face of
so great a misfortune.

"He set fire to the stables," said Frau Manske.

"It is a lie," said Anna; also, as Frau Manske afterwards pointed out to
her friends, an unwomanly remark.

"He did it himself to get the insurance money."

"It is a lie," repeated Anna, in that cold voice.

"Eye-witnesses will swear to it."

"They will lie," said Anna again; and turned and walked away. "Go on,"
she said to Fritz, taking her place beside Miss Leech.

She sat quite silent till they were near the house. Then she called to
the coachman to stop. "I am going into the forest for a little while,"
she said, jumping out "You drive on home." And she crossed the road
quickly, her white dress fluttering for a moment between the
pine-trunks, and then disappearing in the soft green shadow.

Miss Leech drove on alone, sighing gently. Something was troubling her
dear Miss Estcourt. Something out of the ordinary had happened. She
wished she could help her. She drove on, sighing.

Directly the road was out of sight, Anna struck back again to the left,
across the moss and lichen, towards the place where she knew there was a
path that led to Lohm. She walked very straight and very quickly. She
did not miss her way, but found the path and hastened her steps to a
run. What were they doing to Axel? She was going to his house, alone.
People would talk. Who cared? And when she had heard all that could be
told her there, she was going to Axel himself. People would talk. Who
cared? The laughable indifference of slander, when big issues of life
and death were at stake! All the tongues of all the world should not
frighten her away from Axel. Her eyes had a new look in them. For the
first time she was wide awake, was facing life as it is without dreams,
facing its absolute cruelty and pitilessness. This was life, these were
the realities--suffering, injustice, and shame; not to be avoided
apparently by the most honourable and innocent of men; but at least to
be fought with all the weapons in one's power, with unflinching courage
to the end, whatever that end might be. That was what one needed most,
of all the gifts of the gods--not happiness--oh, foolish, childish
dream! how could there be happiness so long as men were wicked?--but
courage. That blind look on Axel's face--no, she would not think of
that; it tore her heart. She stumbled a little as she ran--no, she would
not think of that.

Out in the open, between the forest and Lohm, she met Manske. "I was
coming to you," he said.

"I am going to him," said Anna.

"Oh, my dear young lady!" cried Manske; and two big tears rolled down
his face.

"Don't cry," she said, "it does not help him."

"How can I not do so after seeing what I have this day seen?"

She hurried on. "Come," she said, "we must not waste time. He needs
help. I am going to his house to see what I can do. Where did they take
him?"

"They took him to prison."

"Where?"

"Stralsund."

"Will he be there long?"

"Till after the trial."

"And that will be?"

"God knows."

"I am going to him. Come with me. We will take his horses."

"Oh, dear Miss, dear Miss," cried Manske, wringing his hands, "they will
not let us see him--you they will not let in under any circumstances,
and me only across mountains of obstacles. The official who conducted
the arrest, when I prayed for permission to visit my dear patron, was
brutality itself. 'Why should you visit him?' he asked, sneering. 'The
prison chaplain will do all that is needful for his soul.' 'Let it be,
Manske,' said my dear patron, but still I prayed. 'I cannot give you
permission,' said the man at last, weary of my importunity, 'it rests
with my chief. You must go to him.'"

"Who is the chief?"

"I know not. I know nothing. My head is in a whirl."

"He must be somewhere in Stralsund. We will find him, if we have to ask
from door to door. And I'll get permission for myself."

"Oh, dearest Miss, none will be given you. The man said only his nearest
relatives, and those only very seldom--for I asked all I could, I felt
the moments were priceless--my dear patron spoke not a word. 'His wife,
if he has one,' said the man, making hideous pleasantries--he well knew
there is no wife--or his _Braut_, if there is one, or a brother or a
sister, but no one else."

"Do his brothers and Trudi know?"

"I at once telegraphed to them."

"Then they will be here to-night."

The women and children in the village ran out to look at Anna as she
passed. She did not see them. Axel's house stood open. The Mamsell,
overcome by the shame of having been in such a service, was in hysterics
in the kitchen, and the inspector, a devoted servant who loved his
master, was upbraiding her with bitterest indignation for daring to say
such things of such a master. The Mamsell's laments and the inspector's
furious reproaches echoed through the empty house. The door, like the
gate, was garlanded with flowers. Little more than an hour had gone by
since Axel passed out beneath them to ruin.

Anna went straight to the study. His papers were lying about in
disorder; the drawer of the writing-table was unlocked, and his keys
hung in it He had been writing letters, evidently, for an unfinished one
lay on the table. She stood a moment quite still in the silent room.
Manske had gone to find the coachman, and she could hear his steps on
the stones beneath the open windows. The desolation of the deserted
room, the terrible sense of misfortune worse than death that brooded
over it, struck her like a blow that for ever destroyed her cheerful
youth. She never forgot the look and the feeling of that room. She went
to the writing-table, dropped on her knees, and laid her cheek, with an
abandonment of tenderness, on the open, unfinished letter. "How are such
things possible--how are they possible----" she murmured passionately,
shutting her eyes to press back the useless tears. "So useless to cry,
so useless," she repeated piteously, as she felt the scalding tears, in
spite of all her efforts to keep them back, stealing through her
eyelashes. And everything else that she did or could do--how useless.
What could she do for him, who had no claim on him at all? How could she
reach him across this gulf of misery? Yes, it was good to be brave in
this world, it was good to have courage, but courage without weapons, of
what use was it? She was a woman, a stranger in a strange land, she had
no friends, no influence--she was useless. Manske found her kneeling
there, holding the writing-table tightly in her outstretched arms,
pressing her bosom against it as though it were something that could
feel, her eyes shut, her face a desolation. "Do not cry," he begged in
his turn, "dearest Miss, do not cry--it cannot help him."

They locked up his papers and everything that they thought might be of
value before they left. Manske took the keys. Anna half put out her hand
for them, then dropped it at her side. She had less claim than Manske:
he was Axel's pastor; she was nothing to him at all.

They left the dog-cart at the entrance to the town and went in search of
a _Droschke_. Manske's weather-beaten face flushed a dull red when he
gave the order to drive to the prison. The prison was in a by-street of
shabby houses. Heads appeared at the windows of the houses as the
_Droschke_ rattled up over the rough stones, and the children playing
about the doors and gutters stopped their games and crowded round to
stare.

They went up the dirty steps and rang the bell. The door was immediately
opened a few inches by an official who shouted "The visiting hour is
past," and shut it again.

Manske rang a second time.

"Well, what do you want?" asked the man angrily, thrusting out his head.

Manske stated, in the mildest, most conciliatory tones, that he would be
infinitely obliged if he would tell him what steps he ought to take to
obtain permission to visit one of the inmates.

"You must have a written order," snapped the man, preparing to shut the
door again. The street children were clustering at the bottom of the
steps, listening eagerly.

"To whom should I apply?" asked Manske.

"To the judge who has conducted the preliminary inquiries."

The door was slammed, and locked from within with a great noise of
rattling keys. The sound of the keys made Anna feel faint; Axel was on
the other side of that ostentation of brute force. She leaned against
the wall shivering. The children tittered; she was a very fine lady,
they thought, to have friends in there.

"The judge who conducted the preliminary inquiries," repeated Manske,
looking dazed. "Who may he be? Where shall we find him? I fear I am
sadly inexperienced in these matters."

There was nothing to be done but to face the official's wrath once more.
He timidly rang the bell again. This time he was kept waiting. There was
a little round window in the door, and he could see the man on the other
side leaning against a table trimming his nails. The man also could see
him. Manske began to knock on the glass in his desperation. The man
remained absorbed by his nails.

Anna was suffering a martyrdom. Her head drooped lower and lower. The
children laughed loud. Just then heavy steps were heard approaching on
the pavement, and the children fled with one accord. Immediately
afterwards an official, apparently of a higher grade than the man
within, came up. He glanced curiously at the two suppliants as he thrust
his hand into his pocket and pulled out a key. Before he could fit it in
the lock the man on the other side had seen him, had sprung to the door,
flung it open, and stood at attention.

Manske saw that here was his opportunity. He snatched off his hat.
"Sir," he cried, "one moment, for God's sake."

"Well?" inquired the official sharply.

"Where can I obtain an order of admission?"

"To see----?"

"My dear patron, Herr von Lohm, who by some incomprehensible and
appalling mistake----"

"You must go to the judge who conducted the preliminary inquiries."

"But who is he, and where is he to be found?"

The official looked at his watch. "If you hurry you may still find him
at the Law Courts. In the next street. Examining Judge Schultz."

And the door was shut.

So they went to the Law Courts, and hurried up and down staircases and
along endless corridors, vainly looking for someone to direct them to
Examining Judge Schultz. The building was empty; they did not meet a
soul, and they went down one passage after the other, anguish in Anna's
heart, and misery hardly less acute in Manske's. At last they heard
distant voices echoing through the emptiness. They followed the sound,
and found two women cleaning.

"Can you direct me to the room of the Examining Judge Schultz?" asked
Manske, bowing politely.

"The gentlemen have all gone home. Business hours are over," was the
answer. Could they perhaps give his private address? No, they could not;
perhaps the porter knew. Where was the porter? Somewhere about.

They hurried downstairs again in search of the porter. Another ten
minutes was wasted looking for him. They saw him at last through the
glass of the entrance door, airing himself on the steps.

The porter gave them the address, and they lost some more minutes trying
to find their _Droschke_, for they had come out at a different entrance
to the one they had gone in by. By this time Manske was speechless, and
Anna was half dead.

They climbed three flights of stairs to the Examining Judge's flat, and
after being kept waiting a long while--"_Der Herr Untersuchungsrichter
ist bei Tisch_," the slovenly girl had announced--were told by him very
curtly that they must go to the Public Prosecutor for the order. Anna
went out without a word. Manske bowed and apologised profusely for
having disturbed the _Herr Untersuchungsrichter_ at his repast; he felt
the necessity of grovelling before these persons whose power was so
almighty. The Examining Judge made no reply whatever to these piteous
amiabilities, but turned on his heel, leaving them to find the door as
best they could.

The Public Prosecutor lived at the other end of the town. They neither
of them spoke a word on the way there. In answer to their anxious
inquiry whether they could speak to him, the woman who opened the door
said that her master was asleep; it was his hour for repose, having just
supped, and he could not possibly be disturbed.

Anna began to cry. Manske gripped hold of her hand and held it fast,
patting it while he continued to question the servant. "He will see no
one so late," she said. "He will sleep now till nine, and then go out.
You must come to-morrow."

"At what time?"

"At ten he goes to the Law Courts. You must come before then."

"Thank you," said Manske, and drew Anna away. "Do not cry, _liebes
Kind_," he implored, his own eyes brimming with miserable tears. "Do not
let the coachman see you like this. We must go home now. There is
nothing to be done. We will come early to-morrow, and have more
success."

They stopped a moment in the dark entrance below, trying to compose
their faces before going out. They did not dare look at each other. Then
they went out and drove away.

The stars were shining as they passed along the quiet country road, and
all the way was drenched with the fragrance of clover and freshly-cut
hay. The sky above the rye fields on the left was still rosy. Not a leaf
stirred. Once, when the coachman stopped to take a stone out of a
horse's shoe, they could hear the crickets, and the cheerful humming of
a column of gnats high above their heads.




CHAPTER XXXI


Gustav von Lohm found Manske's telegram on his table when he came in
with his wife from his afternoon ride in the Thiergarten.

"What is it?" she inquired, seeing him turn pale; and she took it out of
his hand and read it. "Disgraceful," she murmured.

"I must go at once," he said, looking round helplessly.

"Go?"

When a wife says "Go?" in that voice, if she is a person of
determination and her husband is a person of peace, he does not go; he
stays. Gustav stayed. It is true that at first he decided to leave
Berlin by the early train next morning; but his wife employed the hours
of darkness addressing him, as he lay sleepless, in the language of
wisdom; and the wisdom being of that robust type known as worldly, it
inevitably produced its effect on a mind naturally receptive.

"Relations," she said, "are at all times bad enough. They do less for
you and expect more from you than anyone else. They are the last to
congratulate if you succeed, and the first to abandon if you fail. They
are at one and the same time abnormally truthful, and abnormally
sensitive. They regard it as infinitely more blessed to administer
home-truths than to receive them back again. But, so long as they do not
actually break the laws, prejudice demands that they shall be borne
with. In my family, no one ever broke the laws. It has been reserved for
my married life, this connection with criminals."

She was a woman of ready and frequent speech, and she continued in this
strain for some time. Towards morning, nature refusing to endure more,
Gustav fell asleep; and when he woke the early train was gone.

In the same manner did his wife prevent his writing to his unhappy
brother. "It is sad that such things should be," she said, "sad that a
man of birth should commit so vulgar a crime; but he has done it, he has
disgraced us, he has struck a blow at our social position which may
easily, if we are not careful, prove fatal. Take my advice--have nothing
to do with him. Leave him to be dealt with as the law shall demand. We
who abide by the laws are surely justified in shunning, in abhorring,
those who deliberately break them. Leave him alone."

And Gustav left him alone.

Trudi was at a picnic when the telegram reached her flat. With several
of her female friends and a great many lieutenants she was playing at
being frisky among the haycocks beyond the town. Her two little boys,
Billy and Tommy, who would really have enjoyed haycocks, were left
sternly at home. She invited the whole party to supper at her flat, and
drove home in the dog-cart of the richest of the young men, making
immense efforts to please him, and feeling that she must be looking very
picturesque and sweet in her flower-trimmed straw hat and muslin dress,
silhouetted against the pale gold of the evening sky.

Her eye fell on the telegram as the picnic party came crowding in.

"Bill coming home?" inquired somebody.

"I'm afraid he is," she said, opening it.

She read it, and could not prevent a change of expression. There was a
burst of laughter. The young men declared they would never marry. The
young women, prone at all times to pity other women's husbands,
criticised Trudi's pale face, and secretly pitied Bill. She lit a
cigarette, flung herself into a chair, and became very cheerful. She had
never been so amusing. She kept them in a state of uproarious mirth till
the small hours. The richest lieutenant, who had found her distinctly a
bore during the drive home, went away feeling quite affectionate. When
they had all gone, she dropped on to her bed, and cried, and cried.

It was in the papers next morning, and at breakfast Trudi and her family
were in every mouth. Bibi came running round, genuinely distressed. She
had not been invited to the picnic, but she forgot that in her sympathy.
"I wanted to catch you before you start," she said, vigorously embracing
her poor friend.

"Where should I start for?" asked Trudi, offering a cold cheek to Bibi's
kisses.

"Are you not going to Herr von Lohm?" exclaimed Bibi, open-mouthed.

"What, when he tries to cheat insurance companies?"

"But he never, never set fire to those buildings himself."

"Didn't he, though?" Trudi turned her head, and looked straight into
Bibi's eyes. "I know him better than you do," she said slowly.

She had decided that that was the only way--to cast him off altogether;
and it must be done at once and thoroughly. Indeed, how was it possible
not to hate him? It was the most dreadful thing to happen to her. She
would suffer by it in every way. If he were guilty or not guilty, he was
anyhow a fool to let himself get into such a position, and how she hated
such fools! She registered a solemn vow that she had done with Axel for
ever.

At Kleinwalde the effect of the news was to make Frau Dellwig slay a pig
and send out invitations for an unusually large Sunday party. She and
her husband could hardly veil their beaming satisfaction with a decent
appearance of dismay. "What would his poor father, our gracious master's
oldest friend, have said!" ejaculated Dellwig at dinner, when the
servant was in the room.

"It is truly merciful that he did not live to see it," said his wife,
with pious head-shakings.

What Anna was doing at Stralsund, no one knew. She said she was having
some bother with her bank. Miss Leech related how they had been to the
bank on the Monday. "I must go again," Anna said on the evening of the
fruitless Tuesday, when she had been the whole day again with Manske,
vainly trying to obtain permission to visit Axel; and she added, her
head drooping, her voice faint, that it was a great bore. Certainly she
looked profoundly unhappy.

"One cannot be too careful in money matters," remarked Frau von
Treumann, alarmed by Anna's white looks, and afraid lest by some foolish
neglect on her part supplies should cease. She enthusiastically
encouraged these visits to the bank. "Take care of your bank," she said,
"and your bank will take care of you. That is what we say in Germany."

But Anna did not hear. There was but one thought in her mind, one cry in
her heart--how could she reach, how could she help, Axel?

He was in a cell about five yards long by three wide. There was just
room to pass between the camp bedstead and the small deal table standing
against the opposite wall. Besides this furniture, there was one chair,
an empty wooden box turned up on end, with a tin basin on it--that was
his washstand--a little shelf fixed on the wall, and on the little shelf
a tin mug, a tin plate, a pot of salt, a small loaf of black bread, and
a Bible. The walls were painted brown, and the window, fitted with
ground glass, was high up near the ceiling; it was barred on the
outside, and could only be opened a few inches at the top. On the door a
neat printed card was fastened, giving, besides information for the
guidance of the habitually dirty as to the cleansing properties of
water, the quantity of oakum the occupant of the cell would be expected
to pick every day. The cell was used sometimes for condemned criminals,
hence the mention of the oakum; but the card caught Axel's eye whenever
he reached that end of the room in his pacings up and down, and without
knowing it he learnt its rules by heart.

At first he had been completely dazed, absolutely unable to understand
the meaning and extent of the misfortune that had overtaken him; but
there was a grim, uncompromising reality about the prison, about the
heavy doors he passed through, each one barred and locked behind him,
each one cutting him off more utterly from the common free life outside,
about the look of the miserable beings he met being taken to or from
their work by armed warders, about the warders themselves with their
great keys, polished by frequent use--there was about these things an
inexorable reality that shook him out of the blind apathy into which he
had fallen after his arrest. Some extraordinary mistake had been made;
and, knowing that he had done nothing, when first he began to think
connectedly he was certain that it could only be a matter of hours
before he was released. But the horror of his position was there.
Released or not released, who would make good to him what he was
suffering and what he would have lost? He had been searched on his
arrival--his money, watch, and a ring he wore of his mother's taken from
him. The young official who arrested him--he was the Junior Public
Prosecutor--presided at these operations with immense zeal. Being young
and obscure, he thirsted to make a name for himself, and opportunities
were few in that little town. To be put in charge, therefore, of this
sensational case, was to behold opening out before him the rosiest
prospects for the future. His name, which was Meyer, would flare up in
flames of glory from the ashes of Axel's honour. Stralsund, ringing with
the ancient name of Lohm, would be forced to ring simultaneously with
the less ancient and not in itself interesting name of Meyer. He had
arrested Lohm, he had special charge of the case, he could not but be
talked about at last. His zeal and satisfaction accordingly were great,
carrying him far beyond the limits usual on such occasions. Axel stood
amazed at the trick of fortune that had so suddenly flung him into the
power of a young man called Meyer.

Soon after he was locked in his cell, a warder came in with a great pot
of liquid food, a sort of thick soup made chiefly of beans, with other
bodies, unknown to Axel, floating about among them.

"Your plate," said the warder, jerking his head in the direction of the
little shelf on which stood Axel's dining facilities; and he raised the
pot preparatory to pouring out some of its contents.

"Thank you," said Axel, "I don't want any."

"You'll be hungry then," said the man, going away. "There is no more
food to-day."

Axel said nothing, and he went out. The smell of the soup, which was
apparently of great potency, filled the little room. Axel tried to open
the window wider, but though he was tall and he stood on his table, he
could not reach it.

It began to get dark. The lamps in the street below were lit, and the
shouts of the children at play came up to him. He guessed that it must
be past nine, and wondered how long he was to be left there without a
light. As it grew darker, his thoughts grew very dark. He paced up and
down more and more restlessly, trying to force them into clearness. In
the hurry and dismay he had left his keys at Lohm, he remembered, and
all his money and papers were at the mercy of the first-comer. And he
was poor; he could not afford to lose any money, or any time. Supposing
he were to be kept here more than a few hours, what would become of his
farming, just now at its busiest season, his people used to his constant
direction and control, his inspector accustomed to do nothing without
the master's orders? And what would be the moral effect on them of his
arrest? If he had a pencil and paper he would write some hasty messages
to keep them all at their posts till his return; but he had no writing
materials, he was quite helpless. He had sent urgent word to his lawyer
in Stralsund, telegraphing to him through Manske before leaving home,
and he had expected to find him waiting for him at the prison. But he
had not come. Why did he not come? Why did he leave him helpless at such
a moment? Axel was determined to face his misfortune quietly; yet the
feeling of absolute impotence, of being as it were bound hand and foot
when there was such dire necessity for immediate action, almost broke
down his resolution.

But it was only for a few hours, he assured himself, walking faster,
thrusting his hands deeper into his pockets, and he could bear anything
for a few hours. His brothers would come to him--to-morrow the first
thing his lawyer would certainly come. It was all so extremely absurd;
yet it was amazing the amount of suffering one such absurd mistake could
inflict. "Thank God," he exclaimed aloud, stopping in his walk, struck
by a new thought, "thank God that I have neither wife nor children." And
he paced up and down again more slowly, his shoulders bent, his head
sunk, a dull flush on his face; he was thinking of Anna.

The door was unlocked, and a warder with a bull's-eye lantern came in
quickly. "The Public Prosecutor is coming up," he said breathlessly.
"When he comes in, you stand at attention and recite your name and the
crime of which you are accused."

He had hardly finished when the Public Prosecutor appeared. The warder
sprang to attention. Axel slowly and unwillingly did the same.

"Well?" snarled the great man, as Axel did not speak. He was an old man,
with a face grown sly and hard during years of association with
criminals, of experiences confined solely to the ugly sides of life.

"My name is Lohm," said Axel, feeling the folly of attempting to defy
anyone so absolutely powerful in the place where he was; and he
proceeded to explain the crime of which he was suspected.

The Public Prosecutor, who knew perfectly well everything about him,
having himself arranged every detail of the arrest, said something
incomprehensible and was going away.

"May I have a light of some sort?" asked Axel, "and writing materials? I
absolutely must be able to----"

"You cannot expect the luxuries of a _Schloss_ here," said the Public
Prosecutor with a scowl, turning on his heel and signing to the warder
to lock the door again. And he continued his rounds, congratulating
himself on having demonstrated that in his independent eye the bearer of
the most ancient name and the offscourings of the street, tried or
untried, were equal--sinners, that is, all of them--and would receive
exactly the same treatment at his hands. Indeed, he was so anxious to
impress this laudable impartiality on the members of the little
prison-world, which was the only world he knew, that he overshot the
mark, refusing Axel small conveniences that he would have unhesitatingly
granted a suppliant called Schmidt, Schultz, or Meyer.

It was now quite dark, except for the faint light from the lamps in the
street below. Weary to death, Axel flung himself down on the little bed.
He had brought a few necessaries, hastily thrown into a bag by his
servant, necessaries that had first been carefully handled and inspected
with every symptom of distrust by the Junior Public Prosecutor Meyer;
but he did not unpack them. Judging from the shortness of the bed, he
concluded that criminals must be a stunted race. Sleeping was not made
easy by this bed, and he lay awake staring at the shadows cast by the
iron bars outside his window on to the ceiling. These shadows affected
him oddly. He shut his eyes, but still he saw them; he turned his head
to the wall and tried not to think of them, but still he saw them. They
expressed the whole misery of his situation.

He had dozed off, worn out, when a bright light on his face woke him. He
started up in bed, confused, hardly remembering where he was. A feeling
very nearly resembling horror came over him. A bull's-eye lantern was
being held close to his face. He could see nothing but the bright light.
The man holding it did not speak, and presently backed out again,
bolting the door behind him. Axel lay down, reflecting that such
surprises, added to anxiety and bad food, must wear out a suspected
culprit's nerves with extraordinary rapidity and thoroughness. There
could not, he thought, be much left of a man in the way of brains and
calmness by the time he was taken before the judge to clear himself. The
incident completely banished all tendency to sleep. He remained wide
awake after that, tormented by anxious thoughts.

Towards dawn, for which he thanked God when it came, the silence of the
prison was broken by screams. He started up again and listened, his
blood frozen by the sound of them. They were terrible to hear, echoing
through that place. Again a feeling of sheer horror came over him. How
long would he be able to endure these things? The screams grew more and
more appalling. He sprang up and went to the door, and listened there.
He thought he heard steps outside, and knocked. "What is that
screaming?" he cried out. But no one answered. The shrieks reached a
climax of anguish, and suddenly stopped. Death-like stillness fell again
upon the prison. Axel spent what was left of the night pacing up and
down.

The prison day did not begin till six. Axel, used to his busy country
life that got him out of his bed and on to his horse at four these fine
summer mornings, heard sounds of life below in the street--early carts
and voices--long before life stirred within the walls. He understood
afterwards why the inmates were allowed to lie in bed so long: it was
convenient for the warders. The prisoners rose at six, and went to bed
again at six, in the full sunshine of those June afternoons. Thus
disposed of, the warders could relax their vigilance and enjoy some
hours of rest. The effect, moralising or the reverse, on the prisoners,
who could by no means get themselves off to sleep at six o'clock, was of
the supremest indifference to everyone concerned. Axel, not yet having
been tried, and not yet therefore having been placed in the common
dormitory, was not forced into bed at any particular time. He might
enjoy evenings as long as those of the warders if he chose, and he might
get up as early as though his horse were waiting below to take him to
his hay-fields if he liked; but this privilege, without the means of
employing the extra hours, was valueless. He watched anxiously for the
broad daylight that would bring his lawyer and put an end to this first
martyrdom of helpless waiting. Towards seven, one of the prisoners,
whose good conduct had procured him promotion to cleaning the passages
and doing other work of the kind, brought him another loaf of bread and
a pot of coffee. From this young man, a white-faced, artful-looking
youth, with closely-cropped hair and wearing the coarse, brown prison
dress, Axel heard that the ghastly screams in the night came from a
prisoner who had _delirium tremens_; he had been put in the cellar to
get over the attack; he could scream as loud as he liked there, and no
one would hear him; they always put him in the cellar when the attacks
came on. The young man grinned. Evidently he thought the arrangement
both good and funny.

"Poor wretch," said Axel, profoundly pitying those other wretched human
beings, his fellow-prisoners.

"Oh, he is very happy there. He plays all day long at catching the
rats."

"The rats?"

"They say there are no rats--that he only thinks he sees them. But
whether the rats are real or not it amuses him trying to catch them.
When he is quiet again, he is brought back to us."

A warder appeared and said there was too much talking. The young man
slid away swiftly and silently. He was a thief by profession, of
superior skill and intelligence.

Axel ate part of the bread, and succeeded in swallowing some of the
coffee, and then began his walk again, up and down, up and down,
listening intently at the door each time he came to it for sounds of his
lawyer's approach. The morning must be halfway through, he thought; why
did he not come? How could he let him wait at such a crisis? How could
any of them--Gustav, Trudi, Manske--let him wait at such a crisis? He
grew terribly anxious. He had expected Gustav by the first train from
Berlin; he might have been with him by nine o'clock. The other brother,
he knew, would be less easily reached by the telegram--he was attached
to the person of a prince whose movements were uncertain; but Gustav?
Well, he must be patient; he may not have been at home; the next train
arrived in the afternoon; he would come by that.

The door opened, and he turned eagerly; but it was the Public Prosecutor
again.

"Name, name, and crime!" frantically whispered the accompanying warder,
as Axel stood silent. Axel repeated the formula of the night before.
Every time these visits were made he had to go through this performance,
his heels together, his body rigid.

"Bed not made," said the Public Prosecutor.

"Bed not made," repeated the warder, glaring at Axel.

"Make it," ordered the chief; and went out.

"Make it," hissed the warder; and followed him.

His lawyer came in simultaneously with his dinner.

"Plate," said the warder with the pot.

"This is a sad sight, Herr von Lohm," said the lawyer.

"It is," agreed Axel, reaching down his plate. He allowed some of the
mess to be poured into it; he was not going to starve only because the
soup was potent.

"I expected you yesterday," he said to the lawyer.

"Ah--I was engaged yesterday."

The lawyer's manner was so peculiar that Axel stared at him, doubtful if
he really were the right man. He was a native of Stralsund, and Axel had
employed him ever since he came into his estate, and had found his work
satisfactory, and his manners exceedingly polite--so polite, indeed, as
to verge on cringing; but then, as Manske would have pointed out, he was
a Jew. Now the whole man was changed. The ingratiating smiles, the bows,
the rubbed hands, where were they? The lawyer sat at his ease on the one
chair, his hands in his pockets, a toothpick in his mouth, and
scrutinised Axel while he told him his case, with an insolent look of
incredulity.

"He actually believes I set the place on fire," thought Axel, struck by
the look.

He did actually believe it. He always believed the worst, for his
experience had been that the worst is what comes most often nearest the
truth; but then, as Manske would have explained, he was a Jew.

The interview was extremely unsatisfactory. "I have an appointment,"
said the lawyer, pulling out his watch before they had half discussed
the situation.

"You appear to forget that this is a matter of enormous importance to
me," said Axel, wrath in his eyes and voice.

"That is what each of my clients invariably says," replied the lawyer,
stretching across the table for his gloves.

"How can we arrange anything in a ten minutes' conversation?" inquired
Axel indignantly.

The lawyer shrugged his shoulders. "I cannot neglect all my other
business."

"I do not remember your having been so pressed for time formerly. I
shall expect you again this afternoon."

"An impossibility."

"Then to-morrow the first thing. That is, if I am still here."

The lawyer grinned. "It is not so easy to get out of these places as it
is to get in," he said, drawing on his gloves. "By the way, my fees in
such cases are payable beforehand."

Axel flushed. He could hardly believe the evidence of his senses that
this was the obsequious person who had for so long managed his affairs.
"My brother Gustav will arrange all that," he said stiffly. "You know I
can do nothing here. He is coming this afternoon."

"Oh, is he?" said the lawyer sceptically. "Is he indeed, now? That will
be a remarkable instance of brotherly devotion. I am truly glad to hear
that. Good-afternoon," he nodded; and went out, leaving Axel in a fury.

The one good result of his visit was that some time later Axel was
provided with writing materials. He immediately fell to writing letters
and telegrams; urgent letters and telegrams, of a desperate importance
to himself. When his coffee was brought he gave them to the warder, and
begged him to see that they were despatched at once; then he paced up
and down again, relieved at least by feeling that he could now
communicate with the outer world.

"They have gone?" he asked anxiously, next time he saw the warder.
"_Jawohl_," was the reply. And gone they had, but only by slow stages to
the office of the Examining Judge Schultz, where they lay in a heap
waiting till he should have leisure and inclination to read them, and,
if he approved of their contents, order them to be posted. There they
lay for three days, and most of them were not passed after all, because
the Examining Judge disliked the tone of the assurances in them that the
writer was innocent. He knew that trick; every prisoner invariably
protested the same thing. But these protestations were unusually strong.
They were of such strength that they actually produced in his own
hardened and experienced mind a passing doubt, absurd of course, and not
for one moment to be considered, whether the Stralsund authorities might
not have blundered. It was a dangerous notion to put into people's
heads, that the Stralsund authorities, of whom he was one, could
blunder. Blunders meant a reproof from headquarters and a retarded
career; their possibility, therefore, was not to be entertained for a
moment. Even should they have been made, it must not get about that they
had been made. He accordingly suppressed nearly all the letters.

Gustav must have missed the second train as well, for when the sky grew
rosy, and Axel knew that the sun was setting, he was still alone.

The few hours he had thought to stay in that place were lengthening out
into days, he reflected. If Gustav did not come soon, what should he do?
Someone he must have to look after his affairs, to arrange with the
lawyer, to be a link connecting him with outside. And who but his
brother and heir? Still, he would certainly come soon, and Trudi too.
Poor little Trudi--he was afraid she would be terribly upset.

But the hours passed, and no one came.

That evening he was given a lamp. It burnt badly and smelt atrociously.
He asked if the window might be opened a little wider. The request had
to be made in writing, said the warder, and submitted through the usual
channels to the Public Prosecutor, without whose permission no window
might be touched. Axel wrote the request, and the warder took it away.
It came back two days later with an intimation scrawled across it that
if the prisoner von Lohm were not satisfied with his cell he would be
given a worse one.

The night came, and had to be gone through somehow. Axel sat for hours
on the side of his bed, his head supported in his hands, struggling with
despair. A profound gloom was settling down on him. The knowledge that
he had done nothing had ceased to reassure him. The lawyer was right
when he said that it was easier to get into such a place than to get out
again. Klutz had denounced him, to save himself; of that he had not a
doubt. And Dellwig, well known and greatly respected, had supported
Klutz. This explained Dellwig's conduct lately completely. Axel's
courage was perilously near giving way as he recognised the difficulty
he would have in proving that he was innocent. If no one helped him from
outside, his case was indeed desperate. He did not remember ever to have
turned his back on a friend in distress; how was it, then, that not a
friend was to be found to come to him in his extremity? Where were they
all, those jovial companions who shot over his estate with him so often,
driving any distance for the pleasure of killing his game? What was
keeping Gustav back? Why did he not even send a message? How was it that
Manske, who professed so much attachment to his house, besides such
stores of Christian charity, did not make an effort to reach him? He had
never asked or wanted anything of anyone in his life; but this was so
terrible, his need was so extreme. What a failure his whole life was. He
had been alone, always. During all the years when other men have wives
and children he had been working hard, alone. He had had no happy days,
as the old Romans would have said. And now total ruin was upon him.
Sitting there through the night, he began to understand the despair that
impels unhappy beings in a like situation, forsaken of God and men, to
make wild efforts to get out of such places, conscious that they avail
nothing, but at least bruising and crushing themselves into the blessed
indifference of exhaustion.

The hours dragged by, each one a lifetime, each one so packed with
opportunities for going mad, he thought, as he counted how many of them
separated him already from his free, honourable past life. By the time
morning came, added to his other torturing anxieties, was the fear lest
he should fall ill in there before any steps had been taken for his
release. He sat leaning his head against the wall, indifferent to what
went on around him, hardly listening any more for Gustav's footsteps. He
had ceased to expect him. He had ceased to expect anyone. He sat
motionless, suffering bodily now, a strange feeling in his head, his
thoughts dwelling dully on his physical discomforts, on the closeness of
the cell, on the horrible nights. He made a great effort to eat some
dinner, but could not. What would become of him if he could neither eat
nor sleep? On what stores of energy would he be able to draw when the
time came for defending himself? He was sitting by the table, leaning
his head against the wall, his eyes closed, when the prisoner-attendant
came to take away his dinner. "Ill?" inquired the young man cheerfully.
Axel did not move or answer. It was too much trouble to speak.

The warder, upon the attendant's remarking that No. 32 seemed unwell,
examined him through the peep-hole in the door, but decided that he was
not ill yet; not ill enough, that is. In another week he would be ready
for the prison doctor, but not yet. These things must take their course.
It was always the same course; he had been a warder twenty years, and
knew almost to an hour the date on which, after the arrest, the doctor
would be required.

Axel was sitting in the same position when, about three o'clock, the
door was unlocked again. He did not move or open his eyes.

"_Ihr Fräulein Braut ist hier_," said the warder.

The word _Braut_, betrothed, sent Axel's thoughts back across the years
to Hildegard. His betrothed? Had he heard the mocking words, or had he
been dreaming? He turned his head and looked vaguely towards the door.
All the sunlight was out there in the wide corridor, and in it, on the
threshold, stood Anna.

What had she meant to say? She never could remember. It had been
something deeply apologetic, ashamed. But her fears and her shame fell
from her like a garment when she saw him. "Oh, poor Axel--oh, poor
Axel----" she murmured with a quick sob.

He tried to get up to come to her. In an instant she was at his side,
and, stumbling, he fell on his knees, holding her by the dress, clinging
to her as to his salvation. "It is not pity, Anna?" he asked in a voice
sharp with an intolerable fear.

And Anna, half blinded by her tears, deliberately put her arms round his
neck, relinquishing by that one action herself and her future entirely
to him, hauling down for ever her flag of independent womanhood, and
bending down her face to that upturned face of agonised questioning laid
her lips on his. "No," she whispered, and she kissed him with a
passionate tenderness between the words, "it is only love--only
love----"




CHAPTER XXXII


There was a grave beauty, an austerity almost, about this betrothal in
the prison. Here was no room for the archnesses and coynesses of
ordinary lovemaking. All that was not simple truth fell away from them
both like tawdry ornaments, for which there was no use in that sad
place. Soul to soul, unseparated by even the flimsiest veil of
conventionality, of custom; soul to soul, clear-visioned, steadfast, as
those may be who are quietly watching the approach of death, they looked
into each other's eyes and knew that they were alone, he and she,
against the world. To cleave to one another, to stand together, he and
she, against the whole world,--that was what their betrothal meant.
Axel, cut off for ever from his kind if he should not be able to clear
himself, Anna, cutting herself off for ever to follow him. Her feet had
found the right path at last. Her eyes were open. As two friends on the
eve of a battle in which both must fight and whose end may be death, or
as two friends starting on a long journey, whose end too, after tortuous
ways of suffering, may well be death, they quietly made their plans,
talked over what was best to be done, gravely encouraging each other,
always with the light of perfect trustfulness in their eyes. How strong
they felt together! How able to go fearlessly towards the future to meet
any pain, any sorrow, together! The warder standing by, the miserable
little room, the wretched details of the situation, no longer existed
for either of them. Nothing could harm them, nothing could hurt them any
more, if only they might be together. They were safe within a circle
drawn round them by love--safe, and warm, and blest. So long as he had
her and she him, though they saw how great their misery would be if they
came to be less brave, they could not but believe in the benevolence of
the future, they could not but have hope. If he were sentenced, she
said, what, at the worst, would it mean? Two years', three years',
waiting, and then together for the rest of their life. Was not that
worth looking forward to? Would not that take away every sting? she
asked, her hands on his shoulders, her face beautiful with confidence
and courage. When he told her that she ought not now to cast in her lot
with his, she only smiled, and laid her cheek against his sleeve. All
her childish follies, and incertitudes, and false starts were done with
now. Life had grown suddenly simple. It was to be a cleaving to him till
death. Yet they both knew that when that golden hour was over, and she
must go, the suffering would begin again. She was only to come twice a
week; and the days between would be days of torture. And when the moment
had come, and they had said good-bye with brave eyes, each telling the
other that so short a separation was nothing, that they did not mind it,
that it would be over before they had had time to feel it, and the door
was shut, and he was left behind, she went out to find misery again,
waiting for her there where she had left it, taking entire possession of
her, brooding heavily, immovably over her, a desolation of misery that
threatened by its dreadful weight to break her heart.

A sense of physical cold crept over her as she drove home with
Letty--the bodily expression of the unutterable forlornness within. Away
from him, how weak she was, how unable to be brave. Would Letty
understand? Would she say some kind word, some little word, something,
anything, that might make her feel less terribly alone? With many pauses
and falterings she told her the story, looking at her with eyes tortured
by the thought of him waiting so patiently there till she should come
again. Letty was awestruck, as much by the profound grief of Anna's face
as by the revelation. She knew of course that Axel had been
arrested--did anyone at Kleinwalde talk of anything else all day
long?--but she had not dreamt of this. She could find nothing to say,
and put out her hand timidly and laid it on Anna's. "I am so cold," was
all Anna said, her head drooping; and she did not speak again.

As they passed between his fields, by his open gate, through the village
that belonged, all of it, to him, she shut her eyes. She could not look
at the happy summer fields, at the placid faces, knowing him where he
was. Not the poorest of his servants, not a ragged child rolling in the
dust, not a wretched, half-starved dog sunning itself in a doorway,
whose lot was not blessed compared to his. The haymakers were piling up
his hay on the waggons. Girls in white sun-bonnets, with bare arms and
legs, stood on the top of the loads catching the fragrant stuff as the
men tossed it up. Their figures were sharply outlined against the serene
sky; their shouts and laughter floated across the fields. Freedom to
come and go at will in God's liberal sunlight--just that--how precious
it was, how unspeakably precious it was. Of all God's gifts, surely the
most precious. And how ordinary, how universal. Only for Axel there was
none.

When they reached the house, the hall seemed to be full of people. The
supper bell had lately rung, and the inmates, talking and laughing, were
going into the dining-room. Dellwig, his hands full of papers, not
having found Anna at home, was in the act of making elaborate farewell
bows to the assembled ladies. After the two silent hours of suffering
that lay between herself and Axel, how strange it was, this noisy bustle
of daily life. She caught fragments of what they were saying, fragments
of the usual prattle, the same nothings that they said every day,
accompanied by the same vague laughs. How strange it was, and how awful,
the tremendousness of life, the nearness of death, the absolute
relentlessness of suffering, and all the prattle.

"_Um Gottes Willen!_" shrieked Frau von Treumann, when she caught sight
of this white image of grief set suddenly in their midst. "It has
smashed up, then, your bank?" And she made a hasty movement towards the
hall table, on which lay a letter for Anna from Karlchen, containing, as
she knew, an offer of marriage.

Anna turned with a blind sort of movement, and stretched out her hand
for Letty, drawing her to her side, instinctively seeking any comfort,
any support; and she stood a moment clinging to her, gazing at the
little crowd with sombre, unseeing eyes.

"What has happened, Anna?" asked the princess uneasily.

"You must congratulate me," said Anna slowly in German, her head held
very high, her face of a deathly whiteness.

A lightening look of comprehension flashed into Dellwig's eyes; he
scarcely needed to hear the words that came next.

"Herr von Lohm and I were to-day," she said. Then she looked round at
them with a vague, piteous look, and put her hand up to her throat. "We
shall be married--we shall be married--when--when it pleases God."




CONCLUSION


The moral of this story, as Manske, wise after the event, pointed out
when relating those parts of it that he knew on winter evenings to a
dear friend, plainly is that all females--_alle Weiber_--are best
married. "Their aspirations," he said, "may be high enough to do credit
to the noblest male spirit; indeed, our gracious lady's aspirations were
nobility itself. But the flesh of females is very weak. It cannot stand
alone. It cannot realise the aspirations formed by its own spirit. It
requires constant guidance. It is an excellent material, but it is only
material in the raw."

"What?" cried his wife.

"Peace, woman. I say it is only material in the raw. And it is never of
any practical use till the hand of the master has moulded it into
shape."

"_Sehr richtig_," agreed the friend; with the more heartiness that he
was conscious of a wife at home who had successfully withstood moulding
during a married life of twenty years.

"That," said Manske, "is the most obvious moral. But there is yet
another."

"The story is full of them," said the friend, who had had them all
pointed out to him, different ones each time, during those evenings of
howling tempests and indoor peace--the perfect peace of pipes, hot
stoves, and _Glühwein_.

"The other," said Manske, "is, that it is very sinful for little girls
to write love-poetry in the name of their aunts."

"To write love-poetry is at no time the function of little girls," said
the friend.

"Such conduct cannot be too strongly censured," said Manske. "But to do
it in the name of someone else is not only not _mädchenhaft_, it is
sinful."

"These English little girls appear to know no shame," said his wife.

"Truly they might learn much from our own female youth," said the
friend.

Letty's poems had undoubtedly been the indirect cause of the fire, of
Axel's arrest, and of his marriage with Anna. But if they had brought
about Anna's happiness, a happiness more complete and perfect than any
of which she had dreamed, they had also brought about Klutz's ruin. For
Klutz, shattered in nerves, weak of will, overcome by the state of his
conscience and the possible terrors of the next world, with the blood of
three generations of pastors in his veins, every drop of which cried out
to him day and night to save his soul at least, whatever became of his
body, Klutz had confessed. He was only twenty, he knew himself to be
really harmless, he had never had any intentions worse than foolish, and
here he was, ruined. The act had been an act of temporary madness; and
influenced by Dellwig, he had saved his skin afterwards as best he
could. Now there was the price to pay, the heavy price, so tremendous
when compared to the smallness of the follies that had led him on step
by step. His bad genius, Dellwig, went free; and later on lived
sufficiently far away from Kleinwalde to be greatly respected to the end
of his days. Manske's eyes filled with tears when he came to the action
of Providence in this matter--the mysteriousness of it, the utter
inscrutableness of it, letting the morally responsible go unpunished,
and allowing the poor young vicar, handicapped from his very entrance
into the world by his weakness of character, to be overtaken on the
threshold of life by so terrific a fate. "Truly the ways of Providence
are past finding out," said Manske, sorrowfully shaking his head.

"I never did believe in Klutz," said his wife, thinking of her apple
jelly.

"Woman, kick not him who is down," said her husband, turning on her with
reproachful sternness.

"Kick!" echoed his wife, tossing her head at this rebuke, administered
in the presence of the friend; "I am not, I hope, so unwomanly as to
kick."

"It is a figure of speech," mildly explained the friend.

"I like it not," said Frau Manske gloomily.

"Peace," said her husband.




BY THE SAME AUTHOR


Elizabeth and Her German Garden

     "What a captivating book it is--how merry and gentle and sunny, how
     whimsically wise and tender! There is real humor in these pages,
     and for that reason, if for no other, it deserves to live. The new
     chapter, describing the author's pious pilgrimage to the garden of
     her childhood, is inimitable in its way, and should not be missed
     by any admirer of this most winning Elizabeth."--_New York
     Tribune._

     "Elizabeth is pure sunshine and without a shadow, the reflection,
     as it were, of a quiet existence, and never a commonplace one; for,
     without knowing it or suspecting it, she is an idealist. Elizabeth
     never tires, for has she not her husband, her little ones, and her
     books to talk about? These passages, as found in 'Elizabeth' in the
     quiet history of a woman's life, act as useful tonics or are the
     necessary sedatives in our somewhat fevered existence."--_New York
     Times._


The Solitary Summer

     "'The Solitary Summer' affords a generous harvest of beautiful and
     poetic thoughts, together with some keen observations of life, all
     of which are expressed in a graceful and supple prose.... It is a
     privilege to have stood for a time upon the veranda steps and to
     have caught a glimpse of that sane refuge."--_Chicago Tribune._

     "Full of sunshine and fresh breezes, riotous with the bloom and
     fragrance of flowers, spicy with the damp cool breath of pines....
     The quaint, whimsical fancies of a cultivated, lovable woman create
     a golden atmosphere through which we see her life, and we dream
     with her on her bench in her garden, in the fields where the yellow
     lupins grow, and in the mossy deeps of the pine forest. We feel we
     have made another friend, one who sees life with gentle, smiling
     eyes and from a deliciously humorous point of view."--_Recreation._

     "A garden of absorbing interest to its owner, a library full of
     books to comfort rainy days, a hamlet of German peasants, three
     delightful babies, and a 'man of wrath' who by no means merits the
     title,--these are the simple elements from which a bright woman,
     too cosmopolitan to be thought wholly German, as she calls herself,
     has evolved a charming little book."--_The Nation._

     "She has a depth of feeling, a sense of humor, and an impetuous and
     ardent manner that make her chronicles thoroughly alive. Beside
     this lovable book other feminine essays on nature, literature, and
     life seem only tame and artificial performances."--_New York
     Tribune._


The April Baby's Book of Tunes

WITH THE STORY OF HOW THEY CAME TO BE WRITTEN

Illustrated by KATE GREENAWAY

A running commentary in the quaintly humorous style characteristic of
the writer, describes the teaching of a dozen or more popular nursery
songs to the author's three little maids, the April, May, and June Baby
respectively. The music for each is given, and charming illustrations in
color complete an unusually attractive holiday book.

Full of the sayings of three of the most delightfully amusing and
original children in the book world--the June Baby who loudly sings "The
King of Love My Shepherd is," swinging her kitten around by its tail to
emphasize the rhythm,--the loving little May Baby who says, "Directly
you comes home, the fun begins," sitting very close to her mother,--and
the quaint April Baby, concerning whom there are fears that she may turn
out a genius and thus disgrace her parents, Elizabeth and "The Man of
Wrath."

Readers of the charming companion volumes whose authorship has been the
subject of so much recent discussion will delight in this little sequel,
which will make a most appropriate gift during the coming season to many
a mother of little ones who has had at some time to meet the problem of
how the babies can be saved from corners when there are no lessons, and
storms have forbidden exercise for them and their nurses, too. Its
pictures of a German nursery and the delicious discussions of these
toddlers over the various songs are extremely bright and entertaining,
and most aptly supplemented by Kate Greenaway's quaint and daintily
colored illustrations, of which there are sixteen, besides decorative
designs, chapter headings, etc.







End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Benefactress, by Elizabeth Beauchamp

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