Anna seemed always to be walking away during the days that separated
Karlchen's first visit from his second. Frau von Treumann noticed it
with some uneasiness, and hoped that it was only her fancy. The girl had
shown herself possessed of such an abnormally large and warm heart at
first, had been so eager in her offers of affection, so enthusiastic, so
sympathetic, so--well, absurd; was it possible that there was no warmth
and no affection left over from those vast stores for such a
good-looking, agreeable man as Karlchen? But she set such thoughts aside
as ridiculous. Her son's simple doctrine from his fourteenth year on had
been that all girls like all men. It had often been laid down by him in
their talks together, and her own experience of girls had sufficiently
proved its soundness. "The Penheim must have poisoned her mind against
him," she decided at last, unable otherwise to explain the apathy with
which Anna received any news of Karlchen. Was there ever such sheer
spite? For what could it matter to a woman with no son of her own, who
married Anna? Somebody would marry her, for certain, and the Penheim
would lose her place; then why should it not be Karlchen?
The princess, however, most innocent of excellent women, had never
spoken privately to Anna of Karlchen except once, when she inquired
whether he were to have the best sheets on his bed, or the second best
sheets; and Anna had replied, "The worst."
But if Frau von Treumann was uneasy about Anna, Anna was still more
uneasy about Frau von Treumann. Whenever she could, she went away into
the forest and tried to think things out. She objected very much to the
feeling that life seemed somehow to be thickening round her--yet, after
Karlchen's visit there it was. Each day there were fewer and fewer quiet
pauses in the trivial bustle of existence; clear moments, like windows
through which she caught glimpses of the serene tranquillity with which
the real day, nature's day, the day she ought to have had, was passing.
Frau von Treumann followed her about and talked to her of Karlchen.
Fräulein Kuhräuber followed her about, with a humble, dog-like
affection, and seemed to want to tell her something, and never got
further than dark utterances that perplexed her. Baroness Elmreich
repulsed all her advances, carefully called her Miss Estcourt, and made
acid comments on everything that was said and done. "I believe she
dislikes me," thought Anna, puzzled. "I wonder why?" The baroness did;
and the reason was simplicity itself. She disliked her because she was
younger, prettier, richer, healthier than herself. For this she disliked
her heartily; but with far greater heartiness did she dislike her
because she knew she ought to be grateful to her. The baroness detested
having to feel grateful--it is a detestation not confined to
baronesses--and in this case the burden of the obligations she was under
was so great that it was almost past endurance. And there was no escape.
She had been starving when Anna took her in, and she would starve again
if Anna turned her out. She owed her everything; and what more natural,
then, than to dislike her? The rarest of loves is the love of a debtor
for his creditor.
At night, alone in her room, Anna would wonder at the day lived through,
at the unsatisfactoriness of it, and the emptiness. When were they going
to begin the better life, the soul to soul life she was waiting for? How
busy they had all been, and what had they done? Why, nothing. A little
aimless talking, a little aimless sewing, a little aimless walking
about, a few letters to write that need not have been written, a
newspaper to glance into that did not really interest anybody, meals in
rapid succession, night, and oblivion. That was what was on the surface.
What was beneath the surface she could only guess at; for after a whole
fortnight with the Chosen she was still confronted solely by surfaces.
In the hot forest, drowsy and aromatic, where the white butterflies,
like points of light among the shadows of the pine-trunks, fluttered up
and down the unending avenues all day long, she wandered, during the
afternoon hour when the Chosen napped, to the most out-of-the-way nooks
she could find; and sitting on the moss where she could see some special
bit of loveliness, some distant radiant meadow in the sunlight beyond
the trees, some bush with its delicate green shower of budding leaves at
the foot of a giant pine, some exquisite effect of blue and white
between the branches so far above her head, she would ponder and ponder
till she was weary.
There was no mistaking Karlchen's looks; she had not been a pretty girl
for several seasons at home in vain. Karlchen meant to marry her. She,
of course, did not mean to marry Karlchen, but that did not smooth any
of the ruggedness out of the path she saw opening before her. She would
have to endure the preliminary blandishments of the wooing, and when the
wooing itself had reached the state of ripeness which would enable her
to let him know plainly her own intentions, there would be a grievous
number of scenes to be gone through with his mother. And then his mother
would shake the Kleinwalde dust from her offended feet and go, and
failure number one would be upon her. In the innermost recesses of her
heart, offensive as Karlchen's wooing would certainly be, she thought
that once it was over it would not have been a bad thing; for, since his
visit, it was clear that Frau von Treumann was not the sort of inmate
she had dreamed of for her home for the unhappy. Unhappy she had
undoubtedly been, poor thing, but happy with Anna she would never be.
She had forgiven the first fibs the poor lady had told her, but she
could not go on forgiving fibs for ever. All those elaborate untruths,
written and spoken, about Karlchen's visit, how dreadful they were.
Surely, thought Anna, truthfulness was not only a lovely and a pleasant
thing but it was absolutely indispensable as the basis to a real
friendship. How could any soul approach another soul through a network
of lies? And then more painful still--she confessed with shame that it
was more painful to her even than the lies--Frau von Treumann evidently
took her for a fool. Not merely for a person wanting in intelligence, or
slow-witted, but for a downright fool. She must think so, or she would
have taken more pains, at least some pains, to make her schemes a little
less transparent. Anna hated herself for feeling mortified by this; but
mortified she certainly was. Even a philosopher does not like to be
honestly mistaken during an entire fortnight for a fool. Though he may
smile, he will almost surely wince. Not being a philosopher, Anna winced
and did not smile.
"I think," she said to Manske, when he came in one morning with a list
of selected applications, "I think we will wait a little before choosing
the other nine."
"The gracious one is not weary of well-doing?" he asked quickly.
"Oh no, not at all; I like well-doing," Anna said rather lamely, "but it
is not quite--not quite as simple as it looks."
"I have found nine most deserving cases," he urged, "and later there may
not be----"
"No, no," interrupted Anna, "we will wait. In the autumn, perhaps--not
now. First I must make the ones who are here happy. You know," she said,
smiling, "they came here to be made happy."
"Yes, truly I know it. And happy indeed must they be in this home,
surrounded by all that makes life fair and desirable."
"One would think so," said Anna, musing. "It is pretty here, isn't
it--it should be easy to be happy here,--yet I am not sure that they
are."
"Not sure----?" Manske looked at her, startled.
"What do people--most people, ordinary people, need, to make them
happy?" she asked wistfully. She was speaking to herself more than to
him, and did not expect any very illuminating answer.
"The fear of the Lord," he replied promptly; which put an end to the
conversation.
But besides her perplexities about the Chosen, Anna had other worries.
Dellwig had received the refusal to let him build the brick-kiln with
such insolence, and had, in his anger, said such extraordinary things
about Axel Lohm, that Anna had blazed out too, and had told him he must
go. It had been an unpleasant scene, and she had come out from it white
and trembling. She had intended to ask Axel to do the dismissing for her
if she should ever definitely decide to send him away; but she had been
overwhelmed by a sudden passion of wrath at the man's intolerable
insinuations--only half understood, but sounding for that reason worse
than they were--and had done it herself. Since then she had not seen
him. By the agreement her uncle had made with him, he was entitled to
six months' notice, and would not leave until the winter, and she knew
she could not continue to refuse to see him; but how she dreaded the
next interview! And how uneasy she felt at the thought that the
management of her estate was entirely in the hands of a man who must now
be her enemy. Axel was equally anxious, when he heard what she had done.
It had to be done, of course; but he did not like Dellwig's looks when
he met him. He asked Anna to allow him to ride round her place as often
as he could, and she was grateful to him, for she knew that not only her
own existence, but the existence of her poor friends, depended on the
right cultivation of Kleinwalde. And she was so helpless. What creature
on earth could be more helpless than an English girl in her position?
She left off reading Maeterlinck, borrowed books on farming from Axel,
and eagerly studied them, learning by heart before breakfast long pages
concerning the peculiarities of her two chief products, potatoes and
pigs.
"He cannot do much harm," Axel assured her; "the potatoes, I see, are
all in, and what can he do to the pigs? His own vanity would prevent his
leaving the place in a bad state. I have heard of a good man--shall I
have him down and interview him for you?"
"How kind you are," said Anna gratefully; indeed, he seemed to her to be
a tower of strength.
"Anyone would do what they could to help a forlorn young lady in the
straits you are in," he said, smiling at her.
"I don't feel like a forlorn young lady with you next door to help me
out of the difficulties."
"People in these lonely country places learn to be neighbourly," he
replied in his most measured tones.
He had not again spoken of the Chosen since his walk with her through
the forest; and though he knew that Karlchen had been and gone he did
not mention his name. Nor did Anna. The longer she lived with her
sisters the less did she care to talk about them, especially to Axel. As
for Frau von Treumann's plans, how could she ever tell him of those?
And just then Letty, the only being who was really satisfactory, became
a cause to her of fresh perplexity. Letty had been strangely content
with her German lessons from Herr Klutz. Every day she and Miss Leech
set out without a murmur, and came back looking placid. They brought
back little offerings from the parsonage, a bunch of narcissus, the
first lilac, cakes baked by Frau Manske, always something. Anna took the
flowers, and ate the cakes, and sent pleased messages in return. If she
had been less preoccupied by Dellwig and the eccentricities of her three
new friends, she would certainly have been struck by Letty's silence
about her lessons, and would have questioned her. There was no grumbling
after the first day, and no abuse of Schiller and the muses. Once Anna
met Klutz walking through Kleinwalde, and asked him how the studies were
progressing. "Colossal," was the reply, "the progress made is colossal."
And he crushed her rings into her fingers when she gave him her hand to
shake, and blushed, and looked at her with eyes that he felt must burn
into her soul. But Anna noticed neither his eyes nor his blush; for his
eyes, whatever he might feel them to be doing, were not the kind that
burn into souls, and he was a pale young man who, when he blushed, did
it only in his ears. They certainly turned crimson as he crushed Anna's
fingers, but she was not thinking of his ears.
"Frau Manske is too kind," she said, as the nosegays, at first
intermittent, became things of daily occurrence. They grew bigger, too,
every day, attaining such a girth at last that Letty could hardly carry
them. "She must not plunder her garden like this."
"It is very full of flowers," said Miss Leech. "Really a wonderful
display. The bunch is always ready, tied together and lying on the table
when we arrive. I tried to tell her yesterday that you were afraid she
was spoiling her garden, sending so much, but she did not seem to
understand. She is showing me how to make those cakes you said you
liked."
"I wish I had some of these in my garden," said Anna, laying her cheek
against the posy of wallflowers Letty had just given her. There was
nothing in her garden except grass and trees; Uncle Joachim had not been
a man of flowers.
She took them up to her room, kissing them on the way, and put them in a
jar on the window-sill; and it was not until two or three days later,
when they began to fade, that she saw the corner of an envelope peeping
out from among them. She pulled it out and opened it. It was addressed
to _Ihr Hochwohlgeboren Fräulein Anna Estcourt_; and inside was a sheet
of notepaper with a large red heart painted on it, mangled, and pierced
by an arrow; and below it the following poem in a cramped, hardly
readable writing:--
The earth am I, and thou the heaven,
The mass am I, and thou the leaven,
No other heaven do I want but thee,
Oh Anna, Anna, Anna, pity me!
AUGUST KLUTZ, Kandidat.
In an instant Letty's unnatural cheerfulness about her lessons flashed
across her. _What_ had they been doing, and where was Miss Leech, that
such things could happen?
It was a very terrible, stern-browed aunt who met Letty that day on the
stairs when she came home.
"Hullo, Aunt Anna, seen a ghost?" Letty inquired pleasantly; but her
heart sank into her boots all the same as she followed her into her
room.
"Look," said Anna, showing her the paper, "how could you do it? For of
course you did it. Herr Klutz doesn't speak English."
"Doesn't he though--he gets on like anything. He sits up all night----"
"How is it that _this_ was possible?" interrupted Anna, striking the
paper with her hand.
"It's pretty, isn't it," said Letty, faintly grinning. "The last line
had to be changed a little. It isn't original, you know, except the
Annas. I put in those. That footman mother got cheap because he had one
finger too few sent it to Hilton on her birthday last year--she liked it
awfully. The last line was 'Oh Hilton, Hilton, Hilton----'"
"_How_ came you to talk such hideous nonsense with Herr Klutz, and about
me?"
"I didn't. He began. He talked about you the whole time, and started
doing it the very first day Leechy cooked."
"Cooked?"
"She is always in the kitchen with Frau Manske. We brought you some of
the cakes one day, and you seemed as pleased as anything."
"And instead of learning German you and he have been making up this sort
of thing?"
Anna's voice and eyes frightened Letty. She shifted from one foot to the
other and looked down sullenly. "What's the good of being angry?" she
said, addressing the carpet; "it's only Mr. Jessup over again. Leechy
wasn't angry with Mr. Jessup. She was frightfully pleased. She says it's
the greatest compliment a person can pay anybody, going on about them
like Herr Klutz does, and talking rot."
Anna stared at her, bewildered. "Mr. Jessup?" she repeated. "And do you
mean to tell me that Miss Leech knows of this--this disgusting
nonsense?" She held the mangled heart at arm's length, crushing it in
her hand.
"I say, you'll spoil it. He worked at it for days. There weren't any
paints red enough for the wound, and he had to go to Stralsund on
purpose. He thought no end of it." And Letty, scared though she was,
could not resist giggling a little.
"Do you mean to tell me that Miss Leech knows about this?" insisted
Anna.
"Rather not. It's a secret. He made me promise faithfully never to tell
a soul. Of course it doesn't matter talking to you, because you're one
of the persons concerned. You can't be married, you know, without
knowing about it, so I'm not breaking my promise talking to you----"
"Married? What unutterable rubbish have you got into your head?"
"That's what I said--or something like it. I said it was jolly rot. He
said, 'What's rot?' I said 'That.'"
"But what?" asked Anna angrily. She longed to shake her.
"Why, that about marrying you. I told him it was rot, and I was sure you
wouldn't, but as he didn't know what rot was, it wasn't much good. He
hunted it out in the dictionary, and still he didn't know."
Anna stood looking at her with indignant eyes. "You don't know what you
have done," she said, "evidently you don't. It is a dreadful thing that
the moment Miss Leech leaves you you should begin to talk of such
things--such horrid things--with a stranger. A little girl of your
age----"
"I didn't begin," whimpered Letty, overcome by the wrath in Anna's
voice.
"But all this time you have been going on with it, instead of at once
telling Miss Leech or me."
"I never met a--a lover before--I thought it--great fun."
"Then all those flowers were from him?"
"Ye--es." Letty was in tears.
"He thought I knew they were from him?"
No answer.
"Did he?" insisted Anna.
"Ye--es."
"You are a very wicked little girl," said Anna, with awful sternness.
"You have been acting untruths every day for ages, which is just as bad
as telling them. I don't believe you have an idea of the horridness of
what you have done--I hope you have not. Of course your lessons at Lohm
have come to an end. You will not go there again. Probably I shall send
you home to your mother. I am nearly sure that I shall. Go away." And
she pointed to the door.
That night neither Letty nor Miss Leech appeared at supper; both were
shut up in their rooms in tears. Miss Leech was quite unable to forgive
herself. It was all her fault, she felt. She had been appalled when Anna
showed her the heart and told her what had been going on while she was
learning to cook in Frau Manske's kitchen. "Such a quiet,
respectable-looking young man!" she exclaimed, horror-stricken. "And
about to take holy orders!"
"Well, you see he isn't quiet and respectable at all," said Anna. "He is
unusually enterprising, and quite without morals. Only a demoralised
person would take advantage of a poor little pupil in that way."
She lit a candle, and burnt the heart. "There," she said, when it was in
ashes, "that's the end of that. Heaven knows what Letty has been led
into saying, or what ideas he has put into her head. I can't bear to
think of it. I hadn't the courage to cross-question her much--I was
afraid I should hear something that would make me too angry, and I'd
have to tell the parson. Anyhow, dear Miss Leech, we will not leave her
alone again, ever, will we? I don't suppose a thing like this will
happen twice, but we won't let it have a chance, will we? Now don't be
too unhappy. Tell me about Mr. Jessup."
It was Miss Leech's fault, Anna knew; but she so evidently knew it
herself, and was so deeply distressed, that rebukes were out of the
question. She spent the evening and most of the night in useless
laments, while, in the room adjoining, Letty lay face downwards on her
bed, bathed in tears. For Letty's conscience was in a grievous state of
tumult. She had meant well, and she had done badly. She had not thought
her aunt would be angry--was she not in full possession of the facts
concerning Mr. Jessup's courtship? And had not Miss Leech said that no
higher honour could be paid to a woman than to fall in love with her and
make her an offer of marriage? Herr Klutz, it is true, was not the sort
of person her aunt could marry, for her aunt was stricken in years, and
he looked about the same age as her brother Peter; besides, he was
clearly, thought Letty, of the guttersnipe class, a class that bit its
nails and never married people's aunts. But, after all, her aunt could
always say No when the supreme moment arrived, and nobody ought to be
offended because they had been fallen in love with, and he was
frightfully in love, and talked the most awful rot. Nor had she
encouraged him. On the contrary, she had discouraged him; but it was
precisely this discouragement, so virtuously administered, that lay so
heavily on her conscience as she lay so heavily on her bed. She had been
proud of it till this interview with her aunt; since then it had taken
on a different complexion, and she was sure, dreadfully sure, that if
her aunt knew of it she would be very angry indeed--much, much angrier
than she was before. Letty rolled on her bed in torments; for the
discouragement administered to Klutz had been in the form of poetry, and
poetry written on her aunt's notepaper, and purporting to come from her.
She had meant so well, and what had she done? When no answer came by
return to his poem hidden in the wallflowers, he had refused to believe
that the bouquet had reached its destination. "There has been
treachery," he cried; "you have played me false." And he seemed to fold
up with affliction.
"I gave it to her all right. She hasn't found the letter yet," said
Letty, trying to comfort, and astonished by the loudness of his grief.
"It's all right--you wait a bit. She liked the flowers awfully, and
kissed them."
"Poor young lover," she thought romantically, "his heart must not bleed
too much. Aunt Anna, if she ever does find the letter, will only send
him a rude answer. I will answer it for her, and gently discourage him."
For if the words that proceeded from Letty's mouth were inelegant, her
thoughts, whenever they dwelt on either Mr. Jessup or Herr Klutz, were
invariably clothed in the tender language of sentiment.
And she had sat up till very late, composing a poem whose mission was
both to discourage and console. It cost her infinite pains, but when it
was finished she felt that it had been worth them all. She copied it out
in capital letters on Anna's notepaper, folded it up carefully, and tied
it with one of her own hair-ribbons to a little bunch of
lilies-of-the-valley she had gathered for the purpose in the forest.
This was the poem:--
It is a matter of regret
That circumstances won't
Allow me to call thee my pet,
But as it is they don't.
For why? My many years forbid,
And likewise thy position.
So take advice, and strive amid
Thy tears for meek submission.
ANNA.
And this poem was, at that very moment, as she well knew, in Herr
Klutz's waistcoat pocket.