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.