He sent the advertisement by the evening post to two or three of the
best newspapers. He had seen the pastor after morning church, who had at
once poured into his ears all about Anna's twelve ladies, garnishing the
story with interjections warmly appreciative of the action of Providence
in the matter. Lohm had been considerably astonished, but had said
little; it was not his way to say much at any time to the parson, and
the ecstasies about the new neighbour jarred on him. Miss Estcourt's
need of advice must have been desperate for her to have confided in
Manske. He appreciated his good qualities, but his family had never been
intimate with the parson; perhaps because from time immemorial the Lohms
had been chiefly males, and the attitude of male Germans towards parsons
is, at its best, one of indulgence. This Lohm restricted his dealings
with him, as his father had done before him, to the necessary
deliberations on the treatment of the sick and poor, and to official
meetings in the schoolhouse. He was invariably kind to him, and lent as
willing an ear as his slender purse allowed to applications for
assistance; but the idea of discussing spiritual experiences with him,
or, in times of personal sorrow, of dwelling conversationally on his
griefs, would never have occurred to him. The easy familiarity with
which Manske spoke of the Deity offended his taste. These things, these
sacred and awful mysteries, were the secrets between the soul and its
God. No man, thought Lohm, should dare to touch with profane questioning
the veil shrouding his neighbour's inner life. Manske, however, knew no
fear and no compunction. He would ask the most tremendous questions
between two mouthfuls of pudding, backing himself up with the whole
authority of the Lutheran Church, besides the Scriptures; and if the
poor people and the partly educated liked it, and were edified, and
enjoyed stirring up and talking over their religious emotions almost as
much as they did the latest village scandal, Lohm, who had no taste
either for scandal or emotions, kept the parson at arm's length.
He thought a good deal about what Manske had told him during the
afternoon. She had gone to the parson, then, for help, because there was
no one else to go to. Poor little thing. He could imagine the sort of
speeches Manske had made her, and the sort of advertisement he would
have told her to write. Poor little thing. Well, what he could do was to
put her in the way of getting a companion as quickly as possible, and a
very sensible, capable woman it ought to be. No wonder she was not to be
past hard work. Work there would certainly be, with twelve women in the
house undergoing the process of being made happy. Lohm could not help
smiling at the plan. He thought of Miss Estcourt courageously trying to
demolish the crust of dejection that had formed in the course of years
over the hearts of her patients, and he trusted that she would not
exhaust her own youth and joyousness in the effort. Perhaps she would
succeed. He did not remember having heard of any scheme quite analogous,
and possibly she would override all obstacles in triumph, and the
patients who entered her home with the burden of their past misery heavy
upon them, would develop in the sunshine of her presence into twelve
riotously jovial ladies. But would not she herself suffer? Would not her
own strength and hopefulness be sapped up by those she benefited? He
could not think that it would be to the advantage of the world at large
to substitute twelve, nay fifty, nay any number of jolly old ladies, for
one girl with such sweet and joyous eyes.
This, of course, was the purely masculine point of view. The women to be
benefited--why he thought of them as old is not clear, for you need not
be old to be unhappy--would have protested, probably, with indignant
cries that individually they were well worth Miss Estcourt, in any case
were every bit as good as she was, and collectively--oh, absurd.
He thought of his sister Trudi. Perhaps she knew of some one who would
be both kind and clever, and protect Miss Estcourt in some measure from
the twelve. Trudi's friends, it is true, were not the sort among whom
staid companions are found. Their husbands were chiefly lieutenants, and
they spent their time at races. They lived in flats in Hanover, where
the regiment was quartered, and flats are easy to manage, and none of
these young women would endure, he supposed, to have an elderly
companion always hanging round. Still, there was a remote possibility
that some one of them might be able to recommend a suitable person. If
Trudi were staying with him now she would be a great help; not so much
because of what she would do, but because he could go with her to
Kleinwalde, and Miss Estcourt could come to his house when she wanted
anything, and need not depend solely on the parson. It was his duty,
considering old Joachim's unchanging kindness towards him, and the pains
the old man had taken to help him in the management of his estate, and
to encourage him at a time when he greatly needed help and
encouragement, to do all that lay in his power for old Joachim's niece.
When he heard that she was coming he had decided that this was his plain
duty: that she was so pretty, so adorably pretty and simple and friendly
only made it an unusually pleasant one. "I will write to Trudi," he
thought, "and ask her to come over for a week or two."
He sat down at his writing-table in the big window overlooking the
farmyard, and began the letter. But he felt that it would be absurd to
ask her to come on Miss Estcourt's account. Why should she do anything
for Miss Estcourt, and why should he want his sister to do anything for
her? That would be the first thing that would strike the astute Trudi.
So he merely wrote reminding her that she had not stayed with him since
the previous summer, and suggested that she should come for a few days
with her children, now that the spring was coming and the snow had gone.
"The woods will soon be blue with anemones," he wrote, though he well
knew that Trudi's attitude towards anemones was cold. Perhaps her little
boys would like to pick them; anyhow, some sort of an inducement had to
be held out.
Outside his window was a duck-pond, thin sheets of ice still floating in
broken pieces on its surface; behind the duck-pond was the dairy; and on
either side of the yard were cow-sheds and pig-styes. The farm carts
stood in a peaceful Sunday row down one side, and at the other end of
the yard, shutting out the same view of the sea and island that Anna saw
from her bedroom window, was a mountainous range of manure. When Trudi
came, she never entered the rooms on this side of the house, because, as
she explained, it was one of her peculiarities not to like manure; and
she slept and ate and aired her opinions on the west side, where the
garden lay between the house and the road. She never would have come to
Lohm at all, not being burdened with any undue sentiment in regard to
ties of blood, if it had not been necessary to go somewhere in the
summer, and if the other places had not been beyond the resources of the
family purse, always at its emptiest when the racing season was over and
the card-playing at an end. As it was, this was a cheap and convenient
haven, and her brother Axel was kind to the little boys, and not too
angry when they plundered his apple-trees, damaged the knees of his
ponies, and did their best to twist off the tails of his disconcerted
sucking-pigs.
He was the eldest of three brothers, and she came last. She was
twenty-six, and he was ten years older. When the father died, the land
ought properly to have been divided between the four children, but such
a proceeding would have been extremely inconvenient, and the two younger
brothers, and the sister just married, agreed to accept their share in
money, and to leave the estate entirely to Axel. It was the best course
to take, but it threw Axel into difficulties that continued for years.
His father, with four times the money, had lived very comfortably at
Lohm, and the children had been brought up in prosperity. For eight
years his eldest son had farmed the estate with a quarter the means, and
had found it so far from simple that his hair had turned grey in the
process. It needed considerable skill and vigilance to enable a man to
extract a decent living from the soil of Lohm. Part of it was too boggy,
and part of it too sandy, and the trees had all been cut down thirty
years before by a bland grandfather, serenely indifferent to the opinion
of posterity. Axel's first work had been to make plantations of young
firs and pines wherever the soil was poorest, and when he rode through
the beautiful Kleinwalde forest he endeavoured to extract what pleasure
he could from the thought that in a hundred years Lohm too would have a
forest. But the pleasure to be extracted from this thought was of a
surprisingly subdued quality. All his pleasures were of a subdued
quality. His days were made up of hard work, of that effort to induce
both ends to meet which knocks the savour out of life with such a
singular completeness. He was born with an uncomfortably exact
conception of duty; and now at the end of the best half of his life,
after years of struggling on that poor soil against the odds of that
stern climate, this conception had shaped itself into a fixed belief
that the one thing entirely beautiful, the one thing wholly worthy of a
man's ambition, is the right doing of his duty. So, he thought, shall a
man have peace at the last.
It is a way of thinking common to the educated dwellers in solitary
places, who have not been very successful. Trudi scorned it. "Peace,"
she said, "at the last, is no good at all. What one wants is peace at
the beginning and in the middle. But you only think stuff like that
because you haven't got enough money. Poor people always talk about the
beauty of duty and peace at the last. If somebody left you a fortune
you'd never mention either of them again. Or if you married a girl with
money, now. I wish, I do wish, that _that_ duty would strike you as the
one thing wholly worth doing."
But a man who is all day and every day in his fields, who farms not for
pleasure but for his bare existence, has no time to set out in search of
girls with money, and none came up his way. Besides, he had been engaged
a few years before, and the girl had died, and he had not since had the
least inclination towards matrimony. After that he had worked harder
than ever; and the years flew by, filled with monotonous labour.
Sometimes they were good years, and the ends not only met but lapped
over a little; but generally the bare meeting of the ends was all that
he achieved. His wish was that his brother Gustav who came after him
should find the place in good order; if possible in better order than
before. But the working up of an estate for a brother Gustav, with
whatever determination it may be carried on, is not a labour that evokes
an unflagging enthusiasm in the labourer; and Axel, however beautiful a
life of duty might be to him in theory, found it, in practice, of an
altogether remarkable greyness. Two-thirds of his house were shut up. In
the evenings his servants stole out to court and be courted, and left
the place to himself and echoes and memories. It was a house built for a
large family, for troops of children, and frequent friends. Axel sat in
it alone when the dusk drove him indoors, defending himself against his
remembrances by prolonged interviews with his head inspector, or a
zealous study of the latest work on potato diseases.
"I see that Bibi Bornstedt is staying with your Regierungspräsident,"
Trudi had written a little while before. "Now, then, is your chance. She
is a true gold-fish. You cannot continue to howl over Hildegard's memory
for ever. Bibi will have two hundred thousand marks a year when the old
ones die, and is quite a decent girl. Her nose is a fiasco, but when you
have been married a week you will not so much as see that she has a
nose. And the two hundred thousand marks will still be there. _Ach_,
Axel, what comfort, what consolation, in two hundred thousand marks! You
could put the most glorious wreaths on Hildegard's tomb, besides keeping
racehorses."
Lohm suddenly remembered this letter as he sat, having finished his own,
looking out of the window at two girls in Sunday splendour kissing one
of the stable boys behind a farm cart. They were all three apparently
enjoying themselves very much, the girls laughing, the boy with an
expression at once imbecile and beatific. They thought the master's eye
could not see them there, but the master's eye saw most things. He took
up his pen again and added a postscript. "If you come soon you will be
able to enjoy the society of your friend Bibi. She came on Wednesday, I
believe." Then, feeling slightly ashamed of using the innocent Miss Bibi
as a bait to catch his sister, he wrote the advertisement for Anna, and
put both letters in the post-bag.
The effect of his postscript was precisely the one he had expected.
Trudi was drinking her morning coffee in her bedroom at twelve o'clock,
when the letter came. Her hair was being done by a _Friseur_, an artist
in hairdressing, who rode about Hanover every day on a bicycle, his
pockets bulging out with curling-tongs, and for three marks decorated
the heads of Trudi and her friends with innumerable waves. Trudi was
devoted to him, with the devotion naturally felt for the person on whom
one's beauty depends, for he was a true artist, and really did work
amazing transformations. "What! You have never had Herr Jungbluth?"
Trudi cried, on the last occasion on which she met Bibi, the daughter of
a Hanover banker, and quite outside her set but for the riches that
ensured her an enthusiastic welcome wherever she went, "_aber_ Bibi!"
There was so much genuine surprise and compassion in this "_aber_ Bibi"
that the young person addressed felt as though she had been for years
missing a possibility of happiness. Trudi added, as a special
recommendation, that Jungbluth smelt of soap. He had carefully studied
the nature of women, and if he had to do with a pretty one would find an
early opportunity of going into respectful raptures over what he
described as her _klassisches Profil_; and if it was a woman whose face
was not all she could have wished, he would tell her, in a tone of
subdued enthusiasm, that her profile, as to which she had long been in
doubt, was _höchst interessant_. The popularity of this young man in
Trudi's set was enormous; and as all the less aristocratic Hanoverian
ladies hastened to imitate, Jungbluth lived in great contentment and
prosperity with a young wife whose hair was reposefully straight, and a
baby whose godmother was Trudi.
"Blue woods! Anemones!" read Trudi with immense contempt. "Is the boy in
his senses? The idea of expecting me to go to that dreary place now. Ah,
now I understand," she added, turning the page, "it is Bibi--he is
really after her, and of course can get along quicker if I am there to
help. Excellent Axel! And why did he go to the pains of trotting out the
anemones? What is the use of not being frank with me? I can see through
him, whatever he does. He is so good-natured that I am sure he will lend
us heaps of Bibi's money once he has got it. _So, lieber Jungbluth_,"
she said aloud, "that will do to-day. Beautiful--beautiful--better than
ever. I am in a hurry. I travel to Berlin this very afternoon."
And the next day she arrived at Stralsund, and was met by her brother at
the station.
She greeted him with enthusiasm. "As we are here," she said, when they
were driving through the town, "let us pay our respects to the
Regierungspräsidentin. It will save our coming in again to-morrow."
"No, I cannot to-day. I must get back as quickly as possible. The hands
had their Easter ball yesterday, and when I left Lohm this morning half
of them were still in bed."
"Well, then, the horses will have to do the journey again to-morrow, for
no time should be lost."
"Yes, you can come in to-morrow, if you long so much to see your
friend."
"And you?" asked Trudi, in a tone of astonishment.
"And I? I am up to my ears now in work. Last week was the first week for
four months that we could plough. Now we have lost these three days at
Easter. I cannot spare a single hour."
"But, my dear Axel, Bibi is of far greater importance for the future of
Lohm than any amount of ploughing."
"I confess I do not see how."
"I don't understand you."
"Why didn't you bring the little boys?"
"What have you asked me to come here for?"
"Come, Trudi, you've not been near me for eight months. Isn't it natural
that you should pay me a little visit?"
"No, it isn't natural at all to come to such a place in winter, and
leave all the fun at home. I came because of Bibi."
"What! You'll come for Bibi, but not for your own brother?"
"Now, Axel, you know very well that I have come for you both."
"For us both? What would Miss Bibi say if she heard you talking of
herself and of me as 'you both'?"
"I wish you would not bother to go on like this. It's a great waste of
time."
"So it is, my dear. Any talk about Bibi Bornstedt, as far as I am
concerned, is a hopeless waste of time."
"Axel!"
"Trudi?"
"You don't mean to say that you are not thinking of her?"
"Thinking of her? I never let my thoughts linger round strange young
ladies."
"Then what in heaven's name have you got me here for?"
"The anemones are coming out----"
"_Ach_----"
"They really are."
"Suppose instead of teasing me as though I were still ten and you a
great bully, you talked sensibly. The Hohensteins give a _bal masqué_
to-night, and I gave it up to come to you."
"Oh, my dear, that was really kind," said Lohm, touched by the
tremendousness of this sacrifice.
"Then be a good boy," said Trudi caressingly, edging herself closer to
him, "and tell me you are going to be wise about Bibi. Don't throw such
a chance away--it's positively wicked."
"My dear Trudi, you'll have us in the ditch. It is very nice when you
lean against me, but I can't drive. By the way, you remember my old
Kleinwalde neighbour? The old man who spoilt you so atrociously?"
"Bibi will make a most excellent wife," said Trudi, ungratefully
indifferent to the memory of old Joachim. "Oh, what a cold wind there is
to-day. Do drive faster, Axel. What a taste, to live here and to like it
into the bargain!"
"You know that I must live here."
"But you needn't like it."
"You've heard that old Joachim left Kleinwalde to his English niece?"
"You have only seen Bibi once, and she grows on one tremendously."
"I want to talk about old Joachim."
"And I want to talk about Bibi."
"Well, Bibi can wait. She is the younger. You know about the old man's
will?"
"I should think I did. One of his unfortunate sons has just joined our
regiment. You should hear him on the subject."
"A most disagreeable, grasping lot," said Lohm decidedly. "They received
every bit of their dues, and are all well off. Surely the old man could
do as he liked with the one place that was not entailed?"
"It isn't the usual thing to leave one's land to a foreigner. Is she
coming to live in it?"
"She came last week."
"Oh?" This in a tone of sudden interest.
There was a pause. Then Trudi said, "Is she young?"
"Quite young."
"Pretty?"
"Exceedingly pretty."
Trudi looked up at him and smiled.
"Well?" said Axel, smiling back at her.
"Well?" said Trudi, continuing to smile.
Axel laughed outright. "My dear Trudi, your astuteness terrifies me. You
not only know already why I wrote to you, but you know more reasons for
the letter than I myself dream of. I want to be able to help this
extremely helpless young lady, and I can hardly be of any use to her
because I have no woman in the house. If I had a wife I could be of the
greatest assistance."
"Only then you wouldn't want to be."
"Certainly I should."
"Pray, why?"
"Because I have a greater debt of obligations to her uncle than I can
ever repay to his niece."
"Oh, nonsense--nobody pays their debts of obligations. The natural thing
to do is to hate the person who has forced you to be grateful, and to
get out of his way."
"My dear Trudi, this shrewdness----" murmured her brother. Then he
added, "I know perfectly well that your thoughts have already flown to a
wedding. Mine don't reach farther than an elderly companion."
"Who for? For you?"
"Miss Estcourt is looking for an elderly companion, and I would be
grateful to you if you would help her."
"But the elderly companion does not exclude the wedding."
"When you see Miss Estcourt you will understand how completely such a
possibility is outside her calculations. You won't of course believe
that it is outside mine. Why should you want to marry me to every girl
within reach? Five minutes ago it was Bibi, and now it is Miss Estcourt.
You do not in the least consider what views the girls themselves might
have. Miss Estcourt is absorbed at this moment in a search for twelve
old ladies."
"Twelve----?"
"Her ambition is to spend herself and her money on twelve old ladies.
She thinks happiness and money are as good for them as for herself, and
wants to share her own with persons who have neither."
"My dear Axel--is she mad?"
"She did not give me that impression."
"And you say she is young?"
"Yes."
"And really pretty?"
"Yes."
"And could be so well off in that flourishing place!"
"Of course she could."
"I'll go and call on her to-morrow," said Trudi decidedly.
"It will be kind of you," said Lohm.
"Kind! It isn't kindness, it's curiosity," said Trudi with a laugh. "Let
us be frank, and call things by their right names."
Anna was in the garden, admiring the first crocus, when Trudi appeared.
She drove Axel's cobs up to the door in what she felt was excellent
style, and hoped Miss Estcourt was watching her from a window and would
see that Englishwomen were not the only sportswomen in the world. But
Anna saw nothing but the crocus.
The wilderness down to the marsh that did duty as a garden was so
sheltered and sunny that spring stopped there first each year before
going on into the forest; and Anna loved to walk straight out of the
drawing-room window into it, bare-headed and coatless, whenever she had
time. Trudi saw her coming towards the house upon the servant's telling
her that a lady had called. "Nothing on, on a cold day like this!" she
thought. She herself wore a particularly sporting driving-coat, with an
immense collar turned up over her ears. "I wonder," mused Trudi,
watching the approaching figure, "how it is that English girls, so tidy
in the clothes, so trim in the shoes, so neat in the tie and collar,
never apparently brush their hair. A German Miss Estcourt vegetating in
this quiet place would probably wear grotesque and disconnected
garments, doubtful boots and striking stockings, her figure would
rapidly give way before the insidiousness of _Schweinebraten_, but her
hair would always be beautifully done, each plait smooth and in its
proper place, each little curl exactly where it ought to be, the parting
a model of straightness, and the whole well deserving to be dignified by
the name _Frisur_. English girls have hair, but they do not have
_Frisurs_."
Anna came in through the open window, and Trudi's face expanded into the
most genial smiles. "How glad I am to make your acquaintance!" she cried
enthusiastically. She spoke English quite as correctly as her brother,
and much more glibly. "I hope you will let me help you if I can be of
any use. My brother says your uncle was so good to him. When I lived
here he was very kind to me too. How brave of you to stay here! And what
wonderful plans you have made! My brother has told me about your twelve
ladies. What courage to undertake to make twelve women happy. I find it
hard enough work making one person happy."
"One person? Oh, Graf Hasdorf."
"Oh no, myself. You see, if each person devoted his energies to making
himself happy, everybody would be happy."
"No, they wouldn't," said Anna, "because they do, but they're not."
They looked at each other and laughed. "She only needs Jungbluth to be
perfect," thought Trudi; and with her usual impulsiveness began
immediately to love her.
Anna was delighted to meet someone of her own class and age after the
severe though short course she had had of Dellwigs and Manskes; and
Trudi was so much interested in her plans, and so pressing in her offers
of help, that she very soon found herself telling her all her
difficulties about servants, sheets, wall-papers, and whitewash. "Look
at this paper," she said, "could you live in the same room with it? No
one will ever be able to feel cheerful as long as it is here. And the
one in the dining-room is worse."
"It isn't beautiful," said Trudi, examining it, "but it is what we call
_praktisch_."
"Then I don't like what you call _praktisch_."
"Neither do I. All the hideous things are _praktisch_--oil-cloth, black
wall-papers, handkerchiefs a yard square, thick boots, ugly women--if
ever you hear a woman praised as a _praktische Frau_, be sure she's
frightful in every way--ugly and dull. The uglier she is the
_praktischer_ she is. Oh," said Trudi, casting up her eyes, "how
terrible, how tragic, to be an ugly woman!" Then, bringing her gaze down
again to Anna's face, she added, "My flat in Hanover is all pinks and
blues--the most becoming rooms you can imagine. I look so nice in them."
"Pinks and blues? That is just what I want here. Can't I get any in
Stralsund?"
Trudi was doubtful. She could not think it possible that anybody should
ever get anything in Stralsund.
"But I must do my shopping there. I am in such a hurry. It would be
dreadful to have to keep anyone waiting only because my house isn't
ready."
"Well, we can try," said Trudi. "You will let me go with you, won't
you?"
"I shall be more than grateful if you will come."
"What do you think if we went now?" suggested Trudi, always for prompt
action, and quickly tired of sitting still. "My brother said I might
drive into Stralsund to-day if I liked, and I have the cobs here now.
Don't you think it would be a good thing, as you are in such a hurry?"
"Oh, a very good thing," exclaimed Anna. "How kind you are! You are sure
it won't bore you frightfully?"
"Oh, not a bit. It will be rather amusing to go into those shops for
once, and I shall like to feel that I have helped the good work on a
little."
Anna thought Trudi delightful. Trudi's new friends always did think her
delightful; and she never had any old ones.
She drove recklessly, and they lurched and heaved through the sand
between Kleinwalde and Lohm at an alarming rate. They passed Letty and
Miss Leech, going for their afternoon walk, who stood on one side and
stared.
"Who's that?" asked Trudi.
"My brother's little girl and her governess."
"Oh yes, I heard about them. They are to stay and take care of you till
you have a companion. Your sister-in-law didn't like Kleinwalde?"
"No."
Trudi laughed.
They passed Dellwig, riding, who swept off his hat with his customary
deference, and stared.
"Do you like him?" asked Trudi.
"Who?"
"Dellwig. I know him from the days before I married."
"I don't know him very well yet," said Anna, "but he seems to be
very--very polite."
Trudi laughed again, and cracked her whip.
"My uncle had great faith in him," said Anna, slightly aggrieved by the
laugh.
"Your uncle was one of the best farmers in Germany, I have always heard.
He was so experienced, and so clever, that he could have led a hundred
Dellwigs round by the nose. Dellwig was naturally quite small, as we
say, in the presence of your uncle. He knew very well it would be
useless to be anything but immaculate under such a master. Perhaps your
uncle thought he would go on being immaculate from sheer habit, with
nobody to look after him."
"I suppose he did," said Anna doubtfully. "He told me to keep him. It's
quite certain that _I_ can't look after him."
They passed Axel Lohm, also riding. He was on Trudi's side of the road.
He looked pleased when he saw Anna with his sister. Trudi whipped up the
cobs, regardless of his feelings, and tore past him, scattering the sand
right and left. When she was abreast of him, she winked her eye at him
with perfect solemnity.
Axel looked stony.