Элизабет фон Арним
The Benefactress
CHAPTER XIII
What the Princess Ludwig thought of her new place it would be difficult to say. She accepted her position as minister to the comforts of the hitherto comfortless without remark and entirely as a matter of course. She got up at hours exemplary in their earliness, and was about the house rattling a bunch of keys all day long. She was wholly practical, and as destitute of illusions as she was of education in the ordinary sense. Her knowledge of German literature was hardly more extensive than Letty's, and of other tongues and other literatures she knew and cared nothing. As for illusions, she saw things as they are, and had never at any period of her life possessed enthusiasms. Nor had she the least taste for hidden meanings and symbols. Maeterlinck, if she had heard of him, would have been dismissed by her with an easy smile. Anna's whitewash to her was whitewash; a disagreeable but economical wall-covering. She knew and approved of it as cheap; how could she dream that it was also symbolic? She never dreamed at all, either sleeping or waking. If by some chance she had fallen into musings, she would have mused blood and iron, the superiority of the German nation, cookery in its three forms feine, bürgerliche, and Hausmannskost, in all which forms she was preëminent in skill—she would have mused, that is, on facts, plain and undisputed. If she had had children she would have made an excellent mother; as it was she made excellent cakes—also a form of activity to be commended. She was a Dettingen before her marriage, and the Dettingens are one of the oldest Prussian families, and have produced more first-rate soldiers and statesmen and a larger number of mothers of great men than any other family in that part. The Penheims and Dettingens had intermarried continually, and it was to his mother's Dettingen blood that the first [German: Fürst] Penheim owed the energy that procured him his elevation. Princess Ludwig was a good example of the best type of female Dettingen. Like many other illiterates, she prided herself particularly on her sturdy common sense. Regarding this quality, which she possessed, as more precious than others which she did not possess, she was not likely to sympathise much either with Anna's plan for making people happy, or with those who were willing to be made happy in such a way. A sensible woman, she thought, will always find work, and need not look far for a home. She herself had been handicapped in the search by her unfortunate title, yet with patience even she had found a haven. Only the lazy and lackadaisical, the morally worthless, that is, would, she was convinced, accept such an offer as Anna's. It was not, however, her business. Her business was to look after Anna's house; and she did it with a zeal and thoroughness that struck terror into the hearts of the maid-servants. Trudi's fitful energy was nothing to it. Trudi had introduced workmen and chaos; the princess, with a rapidity and skill little short of amazing to anyone unacquainted with the capabilities of the well-trained German Hausfrau, cleared out the workmen and reduced the chaos to order. Within three weeks the house was ready, and Anna, palpitating, saw the moment approaching when the first batch of unhappy ones might be received.
Manske's time was entirely taken up writing letters of inquiry concerning the applicants, and it was surprising in what huge batches they had to be weeded out. Of fifty applications received in one day, three or four, after due inquiry, would alone remain for further consideration; and of these three or four, after yet closer inquiry, sometimes not one would be left.
At first Anna asked the princess's advice as well as Manske's, and it was when she was present at the consultations that the heap into which the letters of the unworthy were gathered was biggest. All those ladies belonging to the bürgerliche or middle classes were in her eyes wholly unworthy. If Anna had proposed to take washerwomen into her home, and required the princess's help in brightening their lives, it would have been given in the full measure, pressed down and running over, that befits a Christian gentlewoman; but for the Bürgerlichen, those belonging to the class more immediately below her own, the princess's feeling was only Christian so long as they kept a great way off. There was so much good sense in the objections she made that Anna, who did her best to keep an open mind and listen attentively to advice, was forced to agree with her, and added letters to the ever-increasing heap of the rejected which she might otherwise have reserved for riper consideration. After two or three days, however, it became clear to her that if she continued to consult the princess, no one would be accepted at all, for Manske's respect for that lady was so profound that he was invariably of her opinion. She did not, therefore, invite her again to assist at the interviews. Still, all she had said, and the knowledge that she must know her own countrywomen fairly thoroughly, made Anna prudent; and so it came about that the first arrivals were to be only three in number, chosen without reference to the princess, and one of them was bürgerlich.
"We can meanwhile proceed with our inquiries about the remaining nine," said Manske, "and the gracious Miss will be always gaining experience."
She trod on air during the days preceding the arrival of the chosen. To say that she was blissful would be but an inadequate description of her state of mind. The weather was beautiful, and it increased her happiness tenfold to know that their new life was to begin in sunshine. She had never a doubt as to their delight in the sun-chequered forest, in the freshness of the glittering sea, in the peacefulness of the quiet country life, so quiet that the week seemed to be all Sundays. Were not these things sufficient for herself? Did she ever tire of those long pine vistas, with the narrow strip of clearest blue between the gently waving tree-tops? The dreamy murmur of the forest gave her an exquisite pleasure. To see the bloom on the pink and grey trunks of the pines, and the sun on the moss and lichen beneath, was so deep a satisfaction to her soul that the thought that others who had been knocked about by life would not feel it too, would not enter with profoundest thankfulness into this other world of peace, never struck her at all. When these poor tired women, freed at last from every care and every anxiety, had refreshed themselves with the music and fragrance of the forest, there was the garden across the road to enjoy, with the marsh already strewn with kingcups on the other side of the hedge already turning green; and the sea with the fishing-smacks passing up and down, and the silver gleam of gulls' wings circling round the orange sails, and eagles floating high up aloft, specks in the infinite blue; and then there were drives along the coast towards the north, where the wholesome wind blew fresher than in the woods; and quiet evenings in the roomy house, where all that was asked of them was that they should be happy.
"It's a lovely plan, isn't it, Letty?" she said joyously, the evening before they were to arrive, as she stood with her arm round Letty's shoulder at the bottom of the garden, where they had both been watching the sails of the fishing-smacks during those short sunset moments when they looked like the bright wings of spirits moving over the face of the placid waters.
"I should rather think it was," replied Letty, who was profoundly interested.
They got up at sunrise the next morning, and went out into the forest in search of hepaticas and windflowers with which to decorate the three bedrooms. These bedrooms were the largest and pleasantest in the house. Anna had given up her own because she thought the windows particularly pleasing, and had gone into a little one in the fervour of her desire to lavish all that was best on her new friends. The rooms were furnished with special care, an immense amount of thought having been bestowed on the colour of the curtains, the pattern of the porcelain, and the books filling the shelves above each writing-table. The colours and patterns were the nearest approach Berlin could produce to Anna's own favourite colours and patterns. She wasted half her time, when the rooms were ready, sitting in them and picturing what her own delight would have been if she, like the poor ladies for whom they were intended, had come straight out of a cold, unkind world into such pretty havens.
The choice of books had been a great difficulty, and there had been much correspondence on the subject with Berlin before a selection had been made. Books there must be, for no room, she thought, was habitable without them; and she had tried to imagine what manner of literature would most appeal to her unhappy ones. It was to be presumed that their ages were such as to exclude frivolity; therefore she bought very few novels. She thought Dickens translated into German would be a safe choice; also Schlegel's Shakespeare for loftier moments. The German classics were represented by Goethe in one room, Schiller in another, and Heine in the third. In each room also there was a German-English dictionary, for the facilitation of intercourse. Finally, she asked the princess to recommend something they would be sure to like, and she recommended cookery books.
"But they are not going to cook," said Anna, surprised.
"Es ist egal—it is always interesting to read good recipes. No other reading affords me the same pleasure."
"But only when you want something new cooked."
"No, no, at all times," insisted the princess.
Anna could not quite believe that such a taste was general; but in case one of the three should share it, she put a cookery book in one bookcase. In the other two severally to balance it, she slipt at the last moment a volume of Maeterlinck, to which at that period she was greatly attached; and Matthew Arnold's poems, to which also at that period she was greatly attached.
The princess went about with pursed lips while these preparations were in progress; and when, at sunrise on the last morning, she was awakened by stealthy footsteps and smothered laughter on the landing outside her room, and, opening her door an inch and peering out as in duty bound in case the sounds should be emanating from some unaccountably mirthful maid-servant, she saw Anna and Letty creeping downstairs with their hats on and baskets in their hands, she guessed what they were going to do, and got back into bed with lips more pursed than ever. Did she not know who had been chosen, and that one of the three was a Bürgerliche?
About eight o'clock, when the two girls were coming out of the forest with their baskets full and their faces happy, Axel Lohm was riding thoughtfully past, having just settled an unpleasant business at Kleinwalde. Dellwig had sent him an urgent message in the small hours; there had been a brawl among the labourers about a woman, and a man had been stabbed. Axel had ordered the aggressor to be locked up in the little room that served as a temporary prison till he could be handed over to the Stralsund authorities. His wife, a girl of twenty, was ill, and she and her three small children depended entirely on the man's earnings. The victim appeared to be dying, and the man would certainly be punished. What, then, thought Axel, was to become of the wife and the children? Frau Dellwig had told him that she sent soup every day at dinner-time, but soup once a day would neither comfort them nor make them fat. Besides, he had a notion that the soup of Frau Dellwig's charity was very thin. He was riding dejectedly enough down the road on his way home, looking straight before him, his mouth a mere grim line, thinking how grievous it was that the consequences of sin should fall with their most terrific weight nearly always on the innocent, on the helpless women-folk and the weak little children, when Anna and Letty appeared, talking and laughing, on the edge of the forest.
Letty, we know, had not been kindly treated by nature, but even she was a pleasing object in her harmless morning cheerfulness after the faces he had just seen; and Anna's beauty, made radiant by happiness and contentment, startled him. He had a momentary twinge, gone almost before he had realised it, a sudden clear conception of his great loneliness. The satisfaction he strove to extract from improving his estate for the benefit of his brother Gustav appeared to him at that moment to bear a singular resemblance, in its thinness, to Frau Dellwig's charitable soup. He got off his horse to speak to her, and rested his eyes, tired by looking at the hideous passions on the brawler's face, on hers. "To-day is the important day, is it not?" he asked, glancing from her flower-like face to the flowers.
"The first three come this afternoon."
"So Manske told me. You are very happy, I can see," he said, smiling.
"I never was so happy before."
"Your uncle was a wise man. He told me he was going to leave you Kleinwalde because he felt sure you would be happy leading the simple life here."
"Did he talk about me to you?"
"After his last visit to England he talked about you all the time."
"Oh?" said Anna, looking at him thoughtfully. Uncle Joachim, she remembered perfectly, had urged two things—the leading of the better life, and the marrying of a good German gentleman. A faint flush came into her face and faded again. She had suddenly become aware that Axel was the good German gentleman he had meant. Well, the wisest uncle was subject to errors of judgment.
"I trust those women will not worry you too much," he said, thinking how immense would be the pity if those happy eyes ever lost their joyousness.
"Worry me? Poor things, they won't have any energy of any sort left after all they have gone through. I never read such pitiful letters."
"Well, I don't know," said Axel doubtfully. "Manske says one of them is a Treumann. It is a family distinguished by its size and its disagreeableness."
"Oh, but she only married a Treumann, and isn't one herself."
"But a woman generally adopts the peculiarities of the family she marries into, especially if they are unpleasant."
"But she has been a widow for years. And is so poor. And is so crushed."
"I never yet heard of a permanently crushed Treumann," said Axel, shaking his head.
"You are trying to make me uneasy," said Anna, a slight touch of impatience in her voice. She was singularly sensitive about her chosen ones; sensitive in the way mothers are about a child that is deformed.
"No, no," he said quickly, "I only wish to warn you. You maybe disappointed—it is just possible." He could not bear to think of her as disappointed.
"Pray, do you know anything against the other two?" she asked with some defiance. "One of them is a Baroness Elmreich, and the other is a Fräulein Kuhräuber."
Axel looked amused. "I never heard of Fräulein Kuhräuber," he said. "What does Princess Ludwig say to her coming?"
"Nothing at all. What should she say?"
It was Fräulein Kuhräuber's coming that had more particularly occasioned the pursing of the princess's lips.
"I know some Elmreichs," said Axel. "A few of them are respectable; but one branch at least of the family is completely demoralised. A Baron Elmreich shot himself last year because he had been caught cheating at cards. And one of his sisters—oh, well, some of them are harmless, I believe."
"Thank you."
"You are angry with me?"
"Very."
"And why?"
"You want to prejudice me against these poor things. They can't help what distant relations do. They will get away from them in my house, at least, and have peace."
"Miss Letty, is your aunt often—what is the word—so fractious?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Letty, who found it dull waiting in silence while other people talked. "It's breakfast time, you know, and people can't stand much just about then."
"Oh, youthful philosopher!" exclaimed Axel. "So young, and of the female sex, and yet to have pierced to the very root of human weakness!"
"Stuff," said Letty, offended.
"What, are you going to be angry too? Then let me get on my horse and go."
"It's the best thing you can do," said Letty, always frank, but doubly so when she was hungry.
"Shall you come and see us soon?" Anna asked, gathering up her skirts in her one free hand, preparatory to crossing the muddy road.
"But you are angry with me."
She looked up and laughed. "Not now," she said; "I've finished. Do you think I'm going to be angry long this pleasant April morning?"
"I smell the coffee," observed Letty, sniffing.
"Then I will come to-morrow if I may," said Axel, "and make the acquaintance of Frau von Treumann and Baroness Elmreich."
"And Fräulein Kuhräuber," said Anna, with emphasis. She thought she saw the same tendency in him that was so manifest in the princess, a tendency to ignore the very existence of any one called Kuhräuber.
"And Fräulein Kuhräuber," repeated Axel gravely.
"They've burnt the toast again," said Letty; "I can hear them scraping off the black."
"I wish you good luck, then," said Axel, taking off his hat; "with all my heart I wish you good luck, and that these ladies may very soon be as happy as you are yourself."
"That's nice," said Anna, approvingly; "so much, much nicer than the other things you have been saying." And she nodded to him, all smiles, as she crossed over to the house and he rode away.
CHAPTER XIV
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.