“It’s the custom of the country, I suppose,” said Anna.
“Is it? Well the sooner we get out of such a country the better. You are determined to stay in spite of everything? I can tell you I don’t at all like my child being here, but you force me to leave her because you know very well that I can’t let you stay here alone.”
Anna glanced at Hilton, folding a dress with immense deliberation.
“Oh, Hilton knows what I think,” said Susie, with a shrug.
“But she doesn’t know what I think,” said Anna. “I must talk to you before you leave, so please let her finish packing afterwards. Go and have your breakfast, Hilton.”
“Did you say breakfast, m’m?” inquired Hilton with an innocent look.
“Breakfast?” repeated Susie; “poor thing, I’d like to know how and where she is to get any.”
“Well, then, go and don’t have your breakfast,” said Anna impatiently. She had something to tell Susie that must be told soon, and was not in a mood to bear with Hilton’s ways.
“How hospitable,” remarked Susie as the door closed. “Really you are a delightful hostess.”
Anna laughed. “I don’t mean to be brutal,” she said, “but if we can exist on the food without looking tragic I suppose she can too, especially as it is only for one day.”
“My one consolation in leaving Letty here is that she will be dieted in spite of herself. I expect you to bring her back quite thin.”
Anna got up restlessly and went to the window.
“And whatever you do, don’t forget that the return tickets only last till the 24th. But you’ll be sick of it long before then.”
Anna turned round and leaned her back against the window. The strong morning light was on her hair, and her face was in shadow, yet Susie had a feeling that she was looking guilty.
“Susie, I’ve been thinking,” she said with an effort.
“Really? How nice.”
“Yes, it was, for I found out what it is that I must do if I mean to be happy. But I’m afraid that you won’t think it nice, and will scold me. Now don’t scold me.”
“Well, tell me what it is.” Susie lay staring at Anna’s form against the light, bracing herself to hear something disagreeable. She knew very well from past experience that Anna’s new plan, whatever it was, was certain to be wild and foolish.
“I am going to stay here.”
“I know you are, and I know that nothing I can say will make you change your mind. Peter is just like you — the more I show him what a fool he’s going to make of himself the more he insists on doing it. He calls it determination. Average people like myself, with smaller and more easily managed brains than you two wonders have got, call it pigheadedness.”
“I don’t mean only for Letty’s holidays; I mean for good.”
“For good?” Susie opened her mouth and stared in much the same blank consternation that Dellwig had shown on hearing that she did not like eating pig.
“Don’t be angry with me,” said Anna, coming over to the sofa and sitting on the floor by Susie’s side; and she caught hold of her hand and began to talk fast and eagerly. “I always intended spending this money in helping poor people, but didn’t quite know in what way — now I see my way clearly, and I must, must go it. Don’t you remember in the catechism there’s the duty towards God and the duty towards one’s neighbour — —”
“Oh, if you’re going to talk religion — —” said Susie, pulling away her hand in great disgust.
“No, no, do listen,” said Anna, catching it again and stroking it while she talked, to Susie’s intense irritation, who hated being stroked.
“If you are going into the catechism,” she said, “Hilton had better come in again. It might do her good.”
“No, no — I only wanted to say that there’s another duty not in the catechism, greater than the duty towards one’s neighbour — —”
“My dear Anna, it isn’t likely that you can improve on the catechism. And fancy wanting to, at breakfast time. Don’t stroke my hand — it gives me the fidgets.”
“But I want to explain things — do listen. The duty the catechism leaves out is the duty towards oneself. You can’t get away from your duties, you know, Susie — —” And she knit her brows in her effort to follow out her thought.
“My goodness, as though I ever tried! If ever a poor woman did her duty, I’m that woman.”
“ — and I believe that if I do those two duties, towards my neighbour and myself, I shall be doing my duty towards God.”
Susie gave her body an impatient twist. She thought it positively indecent to speak of sacred things so early in the morning in cold blood. “What has this drivel to do with your stopping here?” she asked angrily.
“It has everything to do with it — my duty towards myself is to be as happy and as good as possible, and my duty towards my neighbour — —”
“Oh, bother your neighbour and your duty!” cried Susie in exasperation.
“ — is to help him to be good and happy too.”
“Him? Her, I hope. Don’t forget decency, my dear. A girl has no duties whatever towards male neighbours.”
“Well, I do mean her,” said Anna, looking up and laughing.
“So you think that by living here you’ll make yourself happy?”
“Yes, I do — I do think so. Perhaps I am wrong, and shall find out I’m wrong, but I must try.”
“You’ll leave all your friends and relations and stay in this God-forsaken place where you can’t even live like a lady?”
“Uncle Joachim said it was my one chance of leading the better life.”
“Unutterable old fool,” said Susie with bitterest contempt. “That money, then, is going to be thrown away on Germans? As though there weren’t poor people enough in England, if your ambition is to pose as a benefactress!”
“Oh, I don’t want to pose as anything — I only want to help unhappy wretches,” cried Anna, laying her cheek caressingly on Susie’s unwilling hand. “Now don’t scold me — forgive me if I’m silly, and be patient with me till I find out that I’ve made a goose of myself and come creeping back to you and Peter. But I must do it — I must try — I will do what I think is right.”
“And who are the wretches, pray, who are to be made happy?”
“Oh, those I am sorriest for — that no one else helps — the genteel ones, if I can only get at them.”
“I never heard of genteel wretches,” said Susie.
Anna laughed again. “I was thinking it all out in the forest this morning,” she said, “and it suddenly flashed across me that this big roomy house was never meant not to be used, and that instead of going to see poor people and giving them money in the ordinary way, it would be so much better to let women of the better classes, who have no money, and who are dependent and miserable, come and live with me and share mine, and have everything that I have — exactly the same, with no difference of any sort. There is room for twelve at least, and wouldn’t it be beautiful to make twelve people, who had lost all hope and all courage, happy for the rest of their days?”
“Oh, the girl’s mad!” cried Susie, springing up from the sofa, no longer able to bear herself. She began to walk about the room, not knowing what to say or do, absolutely without sympathy for beneficent impulses, at all times possessed of a fine scorn for ideals, feeling that no argument would be of any avail with an Estcourt whose mind was made up, shocked that good money, so hard to get, and so very precious when got, should be thrown away in such a manner, bewildered by the difficulties of the situation, for how could a girl of Anna’s age live alone, and direct a house full of objects of charity? Would the objects themselves be a sufficient chaperonage? Would her friends at home think so? Would they not blame her, Susie, for having allowed all this? As though she could prevent it! Or would they expect her to stay with Anna in this place till she should marry? As though anybody would ever marry such a lunatic! “Mad, mad, mad!” cried Susie, wringing her hands.
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“I was afraid that you wouldn’t like it,” said the culprit on the floor, watching her with a distressed face.
“Like it? Oh — mad, mad!” And she continued to walk and wring her hands.
“Well, you’ll stay, then,” she said, suddenly stopping in front of Anna, “I know you well enough, and shall waste no breath arguing. That infatuated old man’s money has turned your head — I didn’t know it was so weak. But look into your heart when I am gone — you’ll have time enough and quiet enough — and ask yourself honestly whether what you are going to do is a proper way of paying back all I have done for you, and all the expense you have been. You know what my wishes are about you, and you don’t care one jot. Gratitude! There isn’t a spark of it in your whole body. Never was there a more selfish creature, and I can’t believe that ingratitude and selfishness are the stuff that makes saints. Don’t dare to talk any more rot about duty to your neighbour to me. An Englishwoman to come and spend her money on German charities — —”
“It’s German money,” murmured Anna.
“And to live here — to live here — oh, mad, mad!” And Susie’s indignation threatening to choke her, she resumed her walk and her gesticulations, her high heels tapping furiously on the bare boards.
She longed to take Letty and Miss Leech away with her that very morning, and punish Anna by leaving her entirely alone; but she did not dare because of Peter. Peter was always on Anna’s side when there were differences, and would be sure to do something dreadful when he heard of it — perhaps come and live here too, and never go back to his wife any more. Oh, these half Germans! Why had she married into a family with such a taint in its blood? “You will have to have some one here,” she said, turning on Anna, who still sat on the floor by the sofa, a look on her face of apology and penitence mixed with firmness that Susie well knew. “How can you stay here alone? I shall leave Miss Leech with you till the end of the holidays, though I hate to seem to encourage you; but then you see I do my duty and always have, though I don’t talk about it. When I get home I shall look for some elderly woman who won’t mind coming here and seeing that you don’t make yourself too much of a by-word, and the day she comes you are to send me back my child.”
“It is good of you to let me keep Letty, dear Susie — —”
“Dear Susie!”
“But I don’t mean to be a by-word, as you call it,” continued Anna, the ghost of a smile lurking in her eyes, “and I don’t want an Englishwoman. What use would she be here? She wouldn’t understand if it was a German by-word that I turned into. I thought about asking the parson how I had better set about getting a German lady — a grave and sober female, advanced in years, as Uncle Joachim wrote.”
“Oh, Uncle Joachim — —” Susie could hardly endure to hear the name. It was that odious old man who had filled Anna’s head with these ideas. To leave her money was admirable, but to influence a weak girl’s mind with his wishy-washy German philosophy about the better life and such rubbish, as he evidently had done during those excursions with her, was conduct so shameful that she found no words strong enough to express her opinion of it. Everyone would blame her for what had happened, everyone would jeer at her, and say that the moment an opportunity of escape had presented itself Anna had seized it, preferring an existence of loneliness and hardship — any sort of existence — to all the pleasures of civilised life in Susie’s company. Peter would certainly be very angry with her, and reproach her with not having made Anna happy enough. Happy enough! The girl had cost her at least three hundred a year, what with her expensive education and all her clothes since she came out; and if three hundred good pounds spent on a girl could not make her happy, she’d like to know what could. And no one — not one of those odious people in London whom she secretly hated — would have a single word of censure for Anna. No one ever had. All her vagaries and absurdities during the last few years when she had been so provoking had been smiled at, had been, Susie knew, put down to her treatment of her. Treatment of her, indeed! The thought of these things made Susie writhe. She had been looking forward to the next season, to having her pretty sister-in-law with her in the happy mood she had been in since she heard of her good fortune, and had foreseen nothing but advantages to herself from Anna’s presence in her house — an Anna spending and not being spent upon, and no doubt to be persuaded to share the expenses of housekeeping. And now she must go home by herself to blame, scoldings, and derision. The prospect was almost more than she could bear. She went to the door, opened it, and turning to Anna fired a parting shot. “Let no one,” she said, her voice shaken by deepest disgust, “who wants to be happy, ever spend a penny on her husband’s relations.”
And then she called Hilton; nor did she leave off calling till Hilton appeared, and so prevented Anna from saying another word.
CHAPTER VIII
But if Susie’s rage was such that she refused to say good-bye, and terrified Miss Leech while she was waiting in the hall for the carriage by dark allusions to strait-waistcoats, when the parson was taken into Anna’s confidence after dinner on the following night his raptures knew no bounds. “Liebes, edeldenkendes Fräulein!” he burst out, clasping his hands and gazing with a moist, ecstatic eye at this young sprig of piety. He was a good man, not very learned, not very refined, sentimental exceedingly, and much inclined to become tearfully eloquent on such subjects as die liebe kleine Kinder, die herrliche Natur, die Frau als Schutzengel, and the sacredness of das Familienleben.
Anna felt that he was the only person at hand who could perhaps help her to find twelve dejected ladies willing to be made happy, and had unfolded her plan to him as tersely as possible in her stumbling German, with none of those accompanying digressions into the question of feelings that Susie stigmatised as drivel; and she sat uncomfortable enough while he burst forth into praises that would not end of her goodness and nobleness. It is hard to look anything but fatuous when somebody is extolling your virtues to your face, and she could not help both looking and feeling foolish during his extravagant glorification. She did not doubt his sincerity, and indeed he was absolutely sincere, but she wished that he would be less flowery and less long, and would skip the raptures and get on to the main subject, which was practical advice.
She wore the simple white dress that had caused such a sensation in the neighbourhood, a garment that hung in long, soft folds, accentuating her slender length of limb. Her bright hair was parted and tucked behind her ears. Everything about her breathed an absolute want of self-consciousness and vanity, a perfect freedom from the least thought of the impression she might be making; yet she was beautiful, and the good man observing her beauty, and supposing from what she had just told him an equal beauty of character, for ever afterwards when he thought of angels on quiet Sunday evenings in his garden, clothed them as Anna was clothed that night, not even shrinking from the pretty, bare shoulders and scantily sleeved arms, but facing them with a courage worthy of a man, however doubtfully it might become a pastor.
His wife, in her best dress, which was also her tightest, sat on the edge of a chair some way off, marvelling greatly at many things. She could not hear what it was Anna had said to set her husband off exclaiming, because the governess persisted in trying to talk German to her, and would not be satisfied with vague replies. She was disappointed by the sudden disappearance of the sister-in-law, gone before she had shown herself to a single soul; astonished that she had not been requested to sit on the sofa, in which place of honour the young Fräulein sprawled in a way that would certainly ruin her clothes; disgusted that she had not been pressed at table, nay, not even asked, to partake of every dish a second time; indeed, no one had seemed to notice or care whether she ate anything at all. These were strange ways. And where were the Dellwigs, those great people accustomed to patronise her because she was the parson’s wife? Was it possible that they had not been invited? Were there then quarrels already? She could not of course dream that Anna would never have thought of asking her insp
ector and his wife to dinner, and that in her ignorance she regarded the parson as a person on an altogether higher social level than the inspector. These things, joined to conjectures as to the probable price by the yard of Anna’s, Letty’s, and Miss Leech’s clothes, gave Frau Manske more food for reflection than she had had for years; and she sat turning them over slowly in her mind in the intervals between Miss Leech’s sentences, while her dress, which was of silk, creaked ominously with every painful breath she drew.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 35