The May that year in Northern Germany was the May of a poet's dream. The
days were like a chain of pearls, increasing in beauty and preciousness
as the chain lengthened. The lilacs flowered a fortnight earlier than in
other years. The winds, so restless usually on those flat shores, seemed
all asleep, and hardly stirred. About the middle of the month the moon
was at the full, and the forest became enchanted ground. It was a time
for love and lovers, for vows and kisses, for all pretty, happy, hopeful
things. Only those farmers who were too old to love and vow, looked at
their rye fields and grumbled because there was no rain.
Karlchen, arriving on the first Saturday of that blessed month, felt all
disposed to love, if the _Engländerin_ should turn out to be in the
least degree lovable. He did not ask much of a young woman with a
fortune, but he inwardly prayed that she might not be quite so ugly as
wives with money sometimes are. He was a man used to having what he
wanted, and had spent his own and his mother's money in getting it.
There was a little bald patch on the top of his head, and there were
many debts on his mind, and he was nearing the critical point in an
officer's career, the turning of which is reserved exclusively for the
efficient; and so he had three excellent reasons for desiring to marry.
He had desired it, indeed, for some time, had attempted it often, and
had not achieved it. The fathers of wealthy German girls knew the state
of his finances with an exactitude that was unworthy; and they knew,
besides, every one of his little weaknesses. As a result, they gave
their daughters to other suitors. But here was a girl without a father,
who knew nothing about him at all. There was, of course, some story in
the background to account for her living in this way; but that was
precisely what would make her glad of a husband who would relieve her of
the necessity of building up the weaker parts of her reputation on a
foundation of what Karlchen, when he saw the inmates of the house,
rudely stigmatised as _alte Schachteln_. Reputations, he reflected,
staring at Fräulein Kuhräuber, may be too dearly bought. Naturally she
would prefer an easy-going husband, who would let her see life with all
its fun, to this dreary and aimless existence.
The Treumanns, he thought, were in luck. What a burden his mother had
been on him for the last five years! Miss Estcourt had relieved him of
it. Now there were his debts, and she would relieve him of those; and
the little entanglement she must have had at home would not matter in
Germany, where no one knew anything about her, except that she was the
highly respectable Joachim's niece. Anyway, he was perfectly willing to
let bygones be bygones. He left his bag at the inn at Kleinwalde, an
impossible place as he noted with pleasure, sent away his _Droschke_,
and walked round to the house; but he did not see Anna. She kept out of
the way till the evening, and he had ample time to be happy with his
mother. When he did see her, he fell in love with her at once. He had
quite a simple nature, composed wholly of instincts, and fell in love
with an ease acquired by long practice. Anna's face and figure were far
prettier than he had dared to hope. She was a beauty, he told himself
with much satisfaction. Truly the Treumanns were in luck. He entirely
forgot the _rôle_ he was to play of loving son, and devoted himself,
with his habitual artlessness, to her. Indeed, if he had not forgotten
it, he and his mother were so little accustomed to displays of affection
that they would have been but clumsy actors. There is a great difference
between affectionate letters written quietly in one's room, and
affectionate conversation that has to sound as though it welled up from
one's heart. Nothing of the kind ever welled up from Karlchen's heart;
and Anna noticed at once that there were no signs of unusual attachment
between mother and son. Karlchen was not even commonly polite to his
mother, nor did she seem to expect him to be. When she dropped her
scissors, she had to pick them up for herself. When she lost her
thimble, she hunted for it alone. When she wanted a footstool, she got
up and fetched one from under his very nose. When she came into the room
and looked about for a chair, it was Letty who offered her hers.
Karlchen sat comfortably with his legs crossed, playing with the
paper-knife he had taken out of the book Anna had been reading, and
making himself pleasant. He had his mother's large black eyes, and very
long thick black eyelashes of which he was proud, conscious that they
rested becomingly on his cheeks when he looked down at the paper-knife.
Letty was greatly struck by them, and inquired of Miss Leech in a
whisper whether she had ever seen their like.
"Mr. Jessup had silken eyelashes too," replied Miss Leech dreamily.
"These aren't silk--they're cotton eyelashes," said Letty scornfully.
"My dear Letty," murmured Miss Leech.
Anna was at a disadvantage because of her imperfect German. She could
not repress Karlchen when he was unduly kind as she would have done in
English, and with his mother presiding, as it were, at their opening
friendship, she did not like to begin by looking lofty. Luckily the
princess was unusually chatty that evening. She sat next to Karlchen,
and continually joined in the talk. She was cheerful amiability itself,
and insisted upon being told all about those sons of her acquaintances
who were in his regiment. When he half turned his back on her and
dropped his voice to a rapid undertone, thereby making himself
completely incomprehensible to Anna, the princess pleasantly advised him
to speak very slowly and distinctly, for unless he did Miss Estcourt
would certainly not understand. In a word, she took him under her wing
whether he would or no, and persisted in her friendliness in spite of
his mother's increasingly desperate efforts to draw her into
conversation.
"Why do we not go out, dear Anna?" cried Frau von Treumann at last,
unable to endure Princess Ludwig's behaviour any longer. "Look what a
fine evening it is--and quite warm." And she who till then had gone
about shutting windows, and had been unable to bear the least breath of
air, herself opened the glass doors leading into the garden and went
out.
But although they all followed her, nothing was gained by it. She
could have stamped her foot with rage at the princess's conduct.
Here was everything needful for the beginning of a successful
courtship--starlight, a murmuring sea, warm air, fragrant bushes, a girl
who looked like Love itself in the dusk in her pale beauty, a young man
desiring nothing better than to be allowed to love her, and a mother
only waiting to bless. But here too, unfortunately, was the princess.
She was quite appallingly sociable--"The spite of the woman!" thought
Frau von Treumann, for what could it matter to her?--and remained fixed
at Anna's side as they paced slowly up and down the grass, monopolising
Karlchen's attention with her absurd questions about his brother
officers. Anna walked between them, thinking of other things, holding up
her trailing white dress with one hand, and with the other the edges of
her blue cloak together at her neck. She was half a head taller than
Karlchen, and so was his mother, who walked on his other side. Karlchen,
becoming more and more enamoured the longer he walked, looked up at her
through his eyelashes and told himself that the Treumanns were certainly
in luck, for he had stumbled on a goddess.
"The grass is damp," cried Frau von Treumann, interrupting the endless
questions. "My dear princess--your rheumatism--and I who so easily get
colds. Come, we will go off the grass--we are not young enough to risk
wet feet."
"I do not feel it," said the princess, "I have thick shoes. But you,
dear Frau von Treumann, do not stay if you have fears."
"It _is_ damp," said Anna, turning up the sole of her shoe. "Shall we go
on to the path?"
On the path it was obvious that they must walk in couples. Arrived at
its edge, the princess stopped and looked round with an urbane smile.
"My dear child," she said to Anna, taking her arm, "we have been keeping
Herr von Treumann from his mother regardless of his feelings. I beg you
to pardon my thoughtlessness," she added, turning to him, "but my
interest in hearing of my old friends' sons has made me quite forget
that you took this long journey to be with your dear mother. We will not
interrupt you further. Come, my dear, I wanted to ask you----" And she
led Anna away, dropping her voice to a confidential questioning
concerning the engaging of a new cook.
There was nothing to be done. The only crumb of comfort Karlchen
obtained--but it was a big one--was a reluctantly given invitation, on
his mother's vividly describing at the hour of parting the place where
he was to spend the night, to remove his luggage from the inn to Anna's
house, and to sleep there.
"You are too good, _meine Gnädigste_," he said, consoled by this for the
_tête-à-tête_ he had just had with his mother; "but if it in any way
inconveniences you--we soldiers are used to roughing it----"
"But not like that, not like that, _lieber Junge_," interrupted his
mother anxiously. "It is not fit for a dog, that inn, and I heard this
very evening from the housemaid that one of the children there has the
measles."
That quite settled it. Anna could not expose Karlchen to measles. Why
did he not stay, as he had written he would, at Stralsund? As he was
here, however, she could not let him fall a prey to measles, and she
asked the princess to order a room to be got ready.
It is a proof of her solemnity on that first evening with Karlchen that
when his mother, praising her beauty, mentioned her dimples as specially
bewitching, he should have said, surprised, "What dimples?"
It is a proof, too, of the duplicity of mothers, that the very next day
in church the princess, sitting opposite the innkeeper's rosy family,
and counting its members between the verses of the hymn, should have
found that not one was missing.
Karlchen left on Sunday evening after a not very successful visit. He
had been to church, believing that it was expected of him, and had found
to his disgust that Anna had gone for a walk. So there he sat, between
his mother and Princess Ludwig, and extracted what consolation he could
from a studied neglect of the outer forms of worship and an elaborate
slumber during the sermon.
The morning, then, was wasted. At luncheon Anna was unapproachable.
Karlchen was invited to sit next to his mother, and Anna was protected
by Letty on the one hand and Fräulein Kuhräuber on the other, and she
talked the whole time to Fräulein Kuhräuber.
"Who _is_ Fräulein Kuhräuber?" he inquired irritably of his mother, when
they found themselves alone together again in the afternoon.
"Well, you can see who she is, I should think," replied his mother
equally irritably. "She is just Fräulein Kuhräuber, and nothing more."
"Anna talks to her more than to anyone," he said; she was already "Anna"
to him, _tout court_.
"Yes. It is disgusting."
"It is very disgusting. It is not right that Treumanns should be forced
to associate on equal terms with such a person."
"It is scandalous. But you will change all that."
Karlchen twisted up the ends of his moustache and looked down his nose.
He often looked down his nose because of his eyelashes. He began to hum
a tune, and felt happy again. Axel Lohm was right when he doubted
whether there had ever been a permanently crushed Treumann.
"She has a strange assortment of _alte Schachteln_ here," he said, after
a pause during which his thoughts were rosy. "That Elmreich, now. What
relation does she say she is to Arthur Elmreich?"
"The man who shot himself? Oh, she is no relation at all. At most a
distant cousin."
"_Na, na_," was Karlchen's reply; a reply whose English equivalent would
be a profoundly sceptical wink.
His mother looked at him, waiting for more.
"What do you really think----?" she began, and then stopped.
He stood before the glass readjusting his moustache into the regulation
truculent upward twist. "Think?" he said. "You know Arthur's sister
Lolli was engaged at the Wintergarten this winter. She was not much of a
success. Too old. But she was down on the bills as Baroness Elmreich,
and people went to see her because of that, and because of her brother."
"Oh--terrible," murmured Frau von Treumann.
"Well, I know her; and I shall ask her next time I see her if she has a
sister."
"But this one has no relations living at all," said his mother,
horrified at the bare suggestion that Lolli was the sister of a person
with whom she ate her dinner every day.
"_Na, na_," said Karlchen.
"But my dear Karlchen, it is so unlikely--the baroness is the veriest
pattern of primness. She has such very strict views about all such
things--quite absurdly strict. She even had doubts, she told me, when
first she came here, as to whether Anna were a fit companion for her."
Karlchen stopped twisting his moustache, and stared at his mother. Then
he threw back his head and shrieked with laughter. He laughed so much
that for some moments he could not speak. His mother's face, as she
watched him without a smile, made him laugh still more. "_Liebste
Mama_," he said at last, wiping his eyes, "it may of course not be true.
It is just possible that it is not. But I feel sure it _is_ true, for
this Elmreich and the little Lolli are as alike as two peas. Anna not a
fit companion for Lolli's sister! _Ach Gott, ach Gott!_" And he shrieked
again.
"If it is true," said Frau von Treumann, drawing herself up to her full
height, "it is my duty to tell Anna. I cannot stay under the same roof
with such a woman. She must go."
"Take care," said her son, illumined by an unaccustomed ray of sapience,
"take care, _Mutti_. It is not certain that Anna would send her away."
"What! if she knew about this--this Lolli, as you call her?"
Karlchen shook his head. "It is better not to begin with ultimatums," he
said sagely. "If you say you cannot stay under the same roof with the
Elmreich, and she does not after that go, why then you must. And that,"
he added, looking alarmed, "would be disastrous. No, no, leave it alone.
In any case leave it alone till I have seen Lolli. I shall come down
soon again, you may be sure. I wish we could get rid of the Penheim. Now
that really would be a good thing. Think it over."
But Frau von Treumann felt that by no amount of thinking it over would
they ever get rid of the Penheim.
"You do not like my Karlchen?" she said plaintively to Anna that
evening, coming out into the dusky garden where she stood looking at the
stars. Karlchen was well on his way to Berlin by that time.
"I am sure I should like him very much if I knew him," replied Anna,
putting all the heartiness she could muster into her voice.
Frau von Treumann shook her head sadly. "But now? I see you do not like
him now. You hardly spoke to him. He was hurt. A mother"--"Oh," thought
Anna, "I am tired of mothers,"--"a mother always knows."
Her handkerchief came out. She had put one hand through Anna's arm, and
with the other began to wipe her eyes. Anna watched her in silence.
"What? What? Tears? Do I see tears? Are we then missing our son so
much?" exclaimed a cheery voice behind them. And there was the princess
again.
"Serpent," thought Frau von Treumann; but what is the use of thinking
serpent? She had to submit to being consoled all the same, while Anna
walked away.