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.