Long before the carriage bringing the three chosen ones from the station
could possibly arrive, Anna and Letty began to wait in the hall,
standing at the windows, going out on to the steps, looking into the
different rooms every few minutes to make sure that everything was
ready. The bedrooms were full of the hepaticas of the morning; the
coffee had been set out with infinite care and an eye to effect by Anna
herself on a little table in the drawing-room by the open window,
through which the mild April air came in and gently fanned the curtains
to and fro; and the princess had baked her best cakes for the occasion,
inwardly deploring, as she did so, that such cakes should be offered to
such people. When she had seen that all was as it should be, she
withdrew into her own room, where she remained darning sheets, for she
had asked Anna to excuse her from being present at the arrival. "It is
better that you should make their acquaintance by yourself," she said.
"The presence of too many strangers at first might disconcert them under
the circumstances."
Miss Leech profited by this remark, made in her hearing, and did not
appear either; so that when the carriage drove in at the gate only Anna
and Letty were standing at the door in the sunshine.
Anna's heart bumped so as the three slowly disentangled themselves and
got out, that she could hardly speak. Her face flushed and grew pale by
turns, and her eyes were shining with something suspiciously like tears.
What she wanted to do was to put her arms right round the three poor
ladies, and kiss them, and comfort them, and make up for all their
griefs. What she did was to put out a very cold, shaking hand, and say
in a voice that trembled, "_Guten Tag_."
"_Guten Tag_," said the first lady to descend; evidently, from her
mourning, the widowed Frau von Treumann.
Anna took her extended hand in both hers, and clasping it tight looked
at its owner with all her heart in her eyes. "_Es freut mich so--es
freut mich so_," she murmured incoherently.
"_Ach_--you are Miss Estcourt?" asked the lady in German.
"Yes, yes," said Anna, still clinging to her hand, "and so happy, so
very happy to see you."
Frau von Treumann hereupon made some remarks which Anna supposed were of
a grateful nature, but she spoke so rapidly and in such subdued tones,
glancing round uneasily as she did so at the coachman and at the others,
and Anna herself was so much agitated, that what she said was quite
incomprehensible. Again Anna longed to throw her arms round the poor
woman's neck, and interrupt her with kisses, and tell her that gratitude
was not required of her, but only that she should be happy; but she felt
that if she did so she would begin to cry, and tears were surely out of
place on such a joyful occasion, especially as nobody else looked in the
least like crying.
"You are Frau von Treumann, I know," she said, holding her hand, and
turning to the next one and beaming on her, "and this is Baroness
Elmreich?"
"No, no," said the third lady quickly, "_I_ am Baroness Elmreich."
Fräulein Kuhräuber, an ample person whose body, swathed in travelling
cloaks, had blotted out the other little woman, looked frightened and
apologetic, and made deep curtseys.
Anna shook their hands one after the other with all the warmth that was
glowing in her heart. Her defective German forsook her almost
completely. She did nothing but repeat disconnected ejaculations, "_so
reizend--so glücklich--so erfreut_----" and fill in the gaps with happy,
quivering smiles at each in turn, and timid little pats on any hand
within her reach.
Letty meanwhile stood in the shadow of the doorway, wishing that she
were young enough to suck her thumb. It kept on going up to her mouth of
its own accord, and she kept on pulling it down again. This was one of
the occasions, she felt, when the sucking of thumbs is a relief and a
blessing. It gives one's superfluous hands occupation, and oneself a
countenance. She shifted from one foot to the other uneasily, and held
on tight to the rebellious thumb, for the tall lady who had got out
first was fixing her with a stare that chilled her blood. The tall lady,
who was very tall and thin, and had round unblinking dark eyes set close
together like an owl's, and strongly marked black eyebrows, said
nothing, but examined her slowly from the tip of the bow of ribbon
trembling on her head to the buckles of the shoes creaking on her feet.
Ought she to offer to shake hands with her, or ought she to wait to be
shaken hands with, Letty asked herself distractedly. Anyhow it was
rather rude to stare like that. She had always been taught that it was
rude to stare like that.
Anna had forgotten all about her, and only remembered her when they were
in the drawing-room and she had begun to pour out the coffee. "Oh,
Letty, where are you? This is my niece," she said; and Letty was at last
shaken hands with.
"Ah--she keeps you company," said the baroness. "You found it lonely
here, naturally."
"Oh no, I am never lonely," said Anna cheerfully, filling the cups and
giving them to Letty to carry round.
"How pleasant the air is to-day," observed Frau von Treumann, edging her
chair away from the window. "Damp, but pleasant. You like fresh air, I
see."
"Oh, I love it," said Anna; "and it is so beautiful here--so pure, and
full of the sea."
"You are not afraid of catching cold, sitting so near an open window?"
"Oh, is it too much for you? Letty, shut the window. It is getting
chilly. The days are so fine that one forgets it is only April."
Anna talked German and poured out the coffee with a nervous haste
unusual to her. The three women sitting round the little table staring
at her made her feel terribly nervous. She was happy beyond words to
have got them safely under her own roof at last, but she was nervous.
She was determined that there should be no barriers of conventionality
from the first between themselves and her; not a minute more of their
lives was to be wasted; this was their home, and she was all ready to
love them; she had made up her mind that however shy she felt she was
going to behave as though they were her dear friends--which indeed, she
assured herself, was exactly what they were. Therefore she struggled
bravely against her nervousness, addressing them collectively and
singly, saying whatever came first into her head in her anxiety to say
something, smiling at them, pressing the princess's cakes on them,
hardly letting them drink their coffee before she wanted to give them
more. But it was no good; she was and remained nervous, and her hand
shook so when she lifted it that she was ashamed.
Fräulein Kuhräuber was the one who stared least. If she caught Anna's
eye her own drooped, whereas the eyes of the other two never wavered.
She sat on the edge of her chair in a way made familiar to Anna by
intercourse with Frau Manske, and whatever anybody said she nodded her
head and murmured "_Ja, eben_." She was obviously ill at ease, and
dropped the sugar-tongs when she was offered sugar with a loud clatter
on to the varnished floor, nearly sweeping the cups off the table in her
effort to pick them up again.
"Oh, do not mind," said Anna, "Letty will pick them up. They are stupid
things--much too big for the sugar-basin."
"_Ja, eben_," said Fräulein Kuhräuber, sitting up and looking perturbed.
The other two removed their eyes from Anna's face for a moment to stare
at the Fräulein. The baroness, a small, fair person with hair arranged
in those little flat curls called kiss-me-quicks on each cheek, and
wide-open pale blue eyes, and a little mouth with no lips, or lips so
thin that they were hardly visible, sat very still and straight, and had
a way of moving her eyes round from one face to the other without at the
same time moving her head. She was unmarried, and was probably about
thirty-five, Anna thought, but she had always evaded questions in the
correspondence about her age. Fräulein Kuhräuber was also thirty-five,
and as large and blooming as the baroness was small and pale. Frau von
Treumann was over fifty, and had had more sorrows, judging from her
letters, than the other two. She sat nearest Anna, who every now and
then laid her hand gently on hers and let it rest there a moment, in her
determination to thaw all frost from the very beginning. "Oh, I quite
forgot," she said cheerfully--the amount of cheerfulness she put into
her voice made her laugh at herself--"I quite forgot to introduce you to
each other."
"We did it at the station," said Frau von Treumann, "when we found
ourselves all entering your carriage."
"The Elmreichs are connected with the Treumanns," observed the baroness.
"We are such a large family," said Frau von Treumann quickly, "that we
are connected with nearly everybody."
The tone was cold, and there was a silence. Neither of them, apparently,
was connected with Fräulein Kuhräuber, who buried her face in her cup,
in which the tea-spoon remained while she drank, and heartily longed for
connections.
But she had none. She was absolutely without relations except deceased
ones. She had been an orphan since she was two, cared for by her one
aunt till she was ten. The aunt died, and she found a refuge in an
orphanage till she was sixteen, when she was told that she must earn her
bread. She was a lazy girl even in those days, who liked eating her
bread better than earning it. No more, however, being forthcoming in the
orphanage, she went into a pastor's family as _Stütze der Hausfrau_.
These _Stütze_, or supports, are common in middle-class German families,
where they support the mistress of the house in all her manifold duties,
cooking, baking, mending, ironing, teaching or amusing the
children--being in short a comfort and blessing to harassed mothers. But
Fräulein Kuhräuber had no talent whatever for comforting mothers, and
she was quickly requested to leave the busy and populous parsonage;
whereupon she entered upon the series of driftings lasting twenty years,
which landed her, by a wonderful stroke of fortune, in Anna's arms.
When she saw the advertisement, her future was looking very black. She
was, as usual, under notice to quit, and had no other place in view, and
had saved nothing. It is true the advertisement only offered a home to
women of good family; but she got over that difficulty by reflecting
that her family was all in heaven, and that there could be no relations
more respectable than angels. She wrote therefore in glowing terms of
the paternal Kuhräuber, "_gegenwärtig mit Gott_," as she put it,
expatiating on his intellect and gifts (he was a man of letters, she
said), while he yet dwelt upon earth. Manske, with all his inquiries,
could find out nothing about her except that she was, as she said, an
orphan, poor, friendless, and struggling; and Anna, just then impatient
of the objections the princess made to every applicant, quickly decided
to accept this one, against whom not a word had been said. So Fräulein
Kuhräuber, who had spent her life in shirking work, who was quite
thriftless and improvident, who had never felt particularly unhappy, and
whose father had been a postman, found herself being welcomed with an
enthusiasm that astonished her to Anna's home, being smiled upon and
patted, having beautiful things said to her, things the very opposite to
those to which she had been used, things to the effect that she was now
to rest herself for ever and to be sure and not do anything except just
that which made her happiest.
It was very wonderful. It seemed much, much too good to be true. And the
delight that filled her as she sat eating excellent cakes, and the
discomfort she endured because of the stares of the other two women, and
the consciousness that she had never learned how to behave in the
society of persons with _von_ before their names, produced such mingled
feelings of ecstasy and fright in her bosom that it was quite natural
she should drop the sugar-tongs, and upset the cream-jug, and choke over
her coffee--all of which things she did, to Anna's distress, who
suffered with her in her agitation, while the eyes of the other two
watched each successive catastrophe with profoundest attention.
It was an uncomfortable half hour. "I am shy, and they are shy," Anna
said to herself, apologising as it were for the undoubted flatness that
prevailed. How could it be otherwise, she thought? Did she expect them
to gush? Heaven forbid. Yet it was an important crisis in their lives,
this passing for ever from neglect and loneliness to love, and she
wondered vaguely that the obviously paramount feeling should be interest
in the awkwardness of Fräulein Kuhräuber.
Her German faltered, and threatened to give out entirely. The inevitable
pause came, and they could hear the sparrows quarrelling in the golden
garden, and the creaking of a distant pump.
"How still it is," observed the baroness with a slight shiver.
"You have no farmyard near the house to make it more cheerful," said
Frau von Treumann. "My father's house had the garden at the back, and
the farmyard in the front, and one did not feel so cut off from
everything. There was always something going on in the yard--always life
and noises."
"Really?" said Anna; and again the pump and the sparrows became audible.
"The stillness is truly remarkable," observed the baroness again.
"_Ja, eben_," said Fräulein Kuhräuber.
"But it is beautiful, isn't it," said Anna, gazing out at the light on
the water. "It is so restful, so soothing. Look what a lovely sunset
there must be this evening. We can't see it from this side of the house,
but look at the colour of the grass and the water."
"_Ach_--you are a friend of nature," said Frau von Treumann, turning her
head for a brief moment towards the window, and then examining Anna's
face. "I am also. There is nothing I like more than nature. Do you
paint?"
"I wish I could."
"Ah, then you sing--or play?"
"I can do neither."
"_So?_ But what have you here, then, in the way of distractions, of
pastimes?"
"I don't think I have any," said Anna, smiling. "I have been very busy
till now making things ready for you, and after this I shall just enjoy
being alive."
Frau von Treumann looked puzzled for a moment. Then she said "_Ach so._"
There was another silence.
"Have some more coffee," said Anna, laying hold of the pot persuasively.
She was feeling foolish, and had blushed stupidly after that _Ach so_.
"No, no," said Frau von Treumann, putting up a protesting hand, "you are
very kind. Two cups are a limit beyond which voracity itself could not
go. What do you say? You have had three? Oh, well, you are young, and
young people can play tricks with their digestions with less danger than
old ones."
At this speech Fräulein Kuhräuber's four cups became plainly written on
her guilty face. The thought that she had been voracious at the very
first meal was appalling to her. She hastily pushed away her half-empty
cup--too hastily, for it upset, and in her effort to save it it fell on
to the floor and was broken. "_Ach, Herr Je!_" she cried in her
distress.
The other two looked at each other; the expression is an unusual one on
the lips of gentle-women.
"Oh, it does not matter--really it does not," Anna hastened to assure
her. "Don't pick it up--Letty will. The table is too small really. There
is no room on it for anything."
"_Ja, eben_," said Fräulein Kuhräuber, greatly discomfited.
"You would like to go upstairs, I am sure," said Anna hurriedly, turning
to the others. "You must be very tired," she added, looking at Frau von
Treumann.
"I am," replied that lady, closing her eyes for a moment with a little
smile expressive of patient endurance.
"Then we will go up. Come," she said, holding out her hand to Fräulein
Kuhräuber. "No, no--let Letty pick up the pieces----" for the Fräulein,
in her anxiety to repair the disaster, was about to sweep the remaining
cups off the table with the sleeve of her cloak.
Anna drew her hand through her arm, and gave it a furtive and
encouraging stroke. "I will go first and show you the way," she said
over her shoulder to the others.
And so it came about that Frau von Treumann and Baroness Elmreich
actually found themselves going through doors and up stairs behind a
person called Kuhräuber. They exchanged glances again. Whatever might be
their private objections to each other, they had one point already on
which they agreed, for with equal heartiness they both disapproved of
Fräulein Kuhräuber.