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 masterlyrésuméof 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 allWeiber, 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 ofSchweinebraten, 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."
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 aherrschaftliche 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 whatIthink," 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 thatyouwon'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,mustgo 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 Imustdo it—Imusttry—Iwilldo 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 tolivehere—to livehere—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.
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 asdie liebe kleine Kinder, die herrliche Natur, die Frau als Schutzengel, and the sacredness ofdas 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 aChristianlady? 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 theJews."
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.
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, "hashegot 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.