“He has written you a very long letter,” said Anna pleasantly; the extent to which the nose blowing was being carried made her uneasy. Was there to be crying?
“You have a cold, dear Frau von Treumann?” inquired the baroness with solicitude.
“Ach nein — doch nein,” murmured Frau von Treumann, turning the sheets over, and blowing her nose harder than ever.
“It will come off,” thought Letty, who had slipped in unnoticed, and was eating bread and butter alone at the further end of the table.
“Poor thing,” thought Anna, “she adores that Karlchen.”
There was a pause, during which the nose continued to be blown.
“His letter is beautiful, but sad — very sad,” said Frau von Treumann, shaking her head despondingly. “Poor boy — poor dear boy — he misses his mother, of course. I knew he would, but I did not dream it would be as bad as this. Oh, my dear Miss Estcourt — well, Anna then” — smiling faintly— “I could never describe to you the wrench it was, the terrible, terrible wrench, leaving him who for five years — I am a widow five years — has been my all.”
“It must have been dreadful,” murmured Anna sympathetically.
The baroness sat straight and motionless, staring fixedly at Frau von Treumann.
“‘When shall I see you again, my dearest mamma?’ were his last words. And I could give him no hope — no answer.” The handkerchief went up to her eyes.
“What is she gassing about?” wondered Letty.
“I can see him now, fading away on the platform as my train bore me off to an unknown life. An only son — the only son of a widow — is everything, everything to his mother.”
“He must be,” said Anna.
There was another silence. Then Frau von Treumann wiped her eyes and took up the letter again. “Now he writes that though I have only been away two days from Rislar, the town he is stationed at, it seems already like years. Poor boy! He is quite desperate — listen to this — poor boy — —” And she smiled a little, and read aloud, “‘I must see you, liebste, beste Mama, from time to time. I had no idea the separation would be like this, or I could never have let you go. Pray beg Miss Estcourt — —’”
“Aha,” thought the baroness.
“‘ — to allow me to visit my mother occasionally. There must be an inn in the village. If not, I could stay at Stralsund, and would in no way intrude on her. But I must see my dearest mother, the being I have watched over and cared for ever since my father’s death.’ Poor, dear, foolish boy — he is desperate — —” And she folded up the letter, shook her head, smiled, and suddenly buried her face in her handkerchief.
“Excellent Treumann,” thought the unblinking baroness.
Anna sat in some perplexity. Sons had not entered into her calculations. In the correspondence, she remembered, the son had been lightly passed over as an officer living on his pay and without a superfluous penny for the support of his parent. Not a word had been said of any unusual affection existing between them. Now it appeared that the mother and son were all in all to each other. If so, of course the separation was dreadful. A mother’s love was a sentiment that inspired Anna with profound respect. Before its unknown depths and heights she stood in awe and silence. How could she, a spinster, even faintly comprehend that sacred feeling? It was a mysterious and beautiful emotion that she could only reverence from afar. Clearly she must not come between parent and child; but yet — yet she wished she had had more time to think it over.
She looked rather helplessly at Frau von Treumann, and gave her hand a little squeeze. The hand did not return the squeeze, and the face remained buried in the handkerchief. Well, it would be absurd to want to cut off the son entirely from his mother. If he came occasionally to see her it could not matter much. She gave the hand a firmer squeeze, and said with an effort that she did her best to conceal, “But he must come then, when he can. It is rather a long way — didn’t you say you had to stay a night in Berlin?”
“Oh, my dear Miss Estcourt — my dear Anna!” cried Frau von Treumann, snatching the handkerchief from her face and seizing Anna’s hand in both hers, “what a weight from my heart — what a heavy, heavy weight! All night I was thinking how shall I bear this? I may write to him, then, and tell him what you say? A long journey? You are afraid it will tire him? Oh, it will be nothing, nothing at all to Karlchen if only he can see his mother. How can I thank you! You will say my gratitude is excessive for such a little thing, and truly only a mother could understand it — —”
In short, Karlchen’s appearance at Kleinwalde was now only a matter of days.
“Unverschämt,” was the baroness’s mental comment.
CHAPTER XIX
Anna put on her hat and went out to think it over. Fräulein Kuhräuber was apparently still asleep. Letty, accompanied by Miss Leech, had to go to Lohm parsonage for her first lesson with Herr Klutz, who had undertaken to teach her German. Frau von Treumann said she must write at once to Karlchen, and shut herself up to do it. The baroness was vague as to her intentions, and disappeared. So Anna started off by herself, crossed the road, and walked quickly away into the forest. “If it makes her so happy, then I am glad,” she said to herself. “She is here to be happy; and if she wants Karlchen so badly, why then she must have him from time to time. I wonder why I don’t like Karlchen.”
She walked quickly, with her eyes on the ground. The mood in which she sang magnificats had left her, nor did she look to see what the April morning was doing. Frau von Treumann had not been under her roof twenty-four hours, and already her son had been added — if only occasionally, still undoubtedly added — to the party. Suppose the baroness and Fräulein Kuhräuber should severally disclose an inability to live without being visited by some cherished relative? Suppose the other nine, the still Unchosen, should each turn out to have a relative waiting tragically in the background for permission to make repeated calls? And suppose these relatives should all be male?
These were grave questions; so grave that she was quite at a loss how to answer them. And then she felt that somebody was looking at her; and raising her eyes, she saw Axel on the mossy path quite close to her.
“So deep in thought?” he asked, smiling at her start.
Anna wondered how it was that he so often went through the forest. Was it a short cut from Lohm to anywhere? She had met him three or four times lately, in quite out of the way parts. He seemed to ride through it and walk through it at all hours of the day.
“How is your potato-planting getting on?” she asked involuntarily. She knew what a rush there was just then putting the potatoes in, for she did not drive every day about her fields in a cart without springs with Dellwig for nothing. Axel must have potatoes to plant too; why didn’t he stay at home, then, and do it?
“What a truly proper question for a country lady to ask,” he said, looking amused. “You waste no time in conventional good mornings or asking how I do, but begin at once with potatoes. Well, I do not believe that you are really interested in mine, so I shall tell you nothing about them. You only want to remind me that I ought to be seeing them planted instead of walking about your woods.”
Anna smiled. “I believe I did mean something like that,” she said.
“Well, I am not so aimless as you suppose,” he returned, walking by her side. “I have been looking at that place.”
“What place?”
“Where Dellwig wants to build the brick-kiln.”
“Oh! What do you think of it?”
“What I knew I would think of it. It is a fool’s plan. The clay is the most wretched stuff. It has puzzled me, seeing how very poor it is, that he should be so eager to have the thing. I should have credited him with more sense.”
“He is quite absurdly keen on it. Last night I thought he would never stop persuading.”
“But you did not give in?”
“Not an inch. I said I would ask you to look at it, and then he was simply rude. I do believe he will have to go
. I don’t really think we shall ever get on together. Certainly, as you say the clay is bad, I shall refuse to build a brick-kiln.”
Axel smiled at her energy. In the morning she was always determined about Dellwig. “You are very brave to-day,” he said. “Last night you seemed afraid of him.”
“He comes when I am tired. I am not going to see him in the evening any more. It is too dreadful as a finish to a happy day.”
“It was a happy day, then, yesterday?” he asked quickly.
“Yes — that is, it ought to have been, and probably would have been if — if I hadn’t been tired.”
“But the others — the new arrivals — they must have been happy?”
“Yes — oh yes—” said Anna, hesitating, “I think so. Fräulein Kuhräuber was, I am sure, at intervals. I think the other two would have been if they hadn’t had a journey.”
“By the way, do you remember what I said yesterday about the Elmreichs?”
“Yes, I do. You said horrid things.” Her voice changed.
“About a Baron Elmreich. But he had a sister who made a hash of her life. I saw her once or twice in Berlin. She was dancing at the Wintergarten, and under her own name.”
“Poor thing. But it doesn’t interest me.”
“Don’t get angry yet.”
“But it doesn’t interest me. And why shouldn’t she dance? I knew several people who ended by dancing at London Wintergartens.”
“You admit, then, that it is an end?”
“It is hardly a beginning,” conceded Anna.
“She was so amazingly like your baroness would be if she painted and wore a wig — —”
“That you are convinced they must be sisters. Thank you. Now what do you suppose is the good of telling me that?” And she stood still and faced him, her eyes flashing.
Do what he would, Axel could not help smiling at her wrath. It was the wrath of a mother whose child has been hurt by someone on purpose, “I wish,” he said, “that you would not be so angry when I tell you things that might be important for you to know. If your baroness is really the sister of the dancing baroness — —”
“But she is not. She told me last night that she has no brothers and sisters. And she wrote it in the letters before she came. Do you think it is a praiseworthy occupation for a man, doing his best to find out disgraceful things about a very poor and very helpless woman?”
“No, I do not,” said Axel decidedly. “Under any other circumstances I would leave the poor lady to take her chance. But do consider,” he said, following her, for she had begun to walk on quickly again, “do consider your unusual position. You are so young to be living away from your friends, and so young and inexperienced to be at the head of a home for homeless women — you ought to be quite extraordinarily particular about the antecedents of the people you take in. It would be most unpleasant if it got about that they were not respectable.”
“But they are respectable,” said Anna, looking straight before her.
“A sister who dances at the Wintergarten — —”
“Did I not tell you that she has no sister?”
Axel shrugged his shoulders. “The resemblance is so striking that they might be twins,” he said.
“Then you think she says what is not true?”
“How can I tell?”
Anna stopped again and faced him. “Well, suppose it were true — suppose it is her sister, and she has tried to hide it — do you know how I should feel about it?”
“Properly scandalised, I hope.”
“I should love her all the more. Oh, I should love her twice as much! Why, think of the misery and the shame — poor, poor little woman — trying to hide it all, bearing it all by herself — she must have loved her sister, she must have loved her brother. It isn’t true, of course, but supposing it were, could you tell me any reason why I should turn my back on her?”
She stood looking at him, her eyes full of angry tears.
He did not answer. If that was the way she felt, what could he do?
“I never understood,” she went on passionately, “why the innocent should be punished. Do you suppose a woman would like her brother to cheat and then shoot himself? Or like her sister to go and dance? But if they do do these things, besides her own grief and horror, she is to be shunned by everybody as though she were infectious. Is that fair? Is that right? Is it in the least Christian?”
“No, of course it is not. It is very hard and very ugly, but it is quite natural. An old woman in a strong position might take such a person up, perhaps, and comfort her and love her as you propose to do, but a young girl ought not to do anything of the sort.”
Anna turned away with a quick movement of impatience and walked on. “If you argue on the young girl basis,” she said, “we shall never be able to talk about a single thing. When will you leave off about my young girlishness? In five years I shall be thirty — will you go on till I have reached that blessed age?”
“I have no right to go on to you about anything,” said Axel.
“Precisely,” said Anna.
“But please remember that I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to your uncle, and make allowances for me if I am over-zealous in my anxiety to shield his niece from possible unpleasantness.”
“Then don’t keep telling me I am too young to do good. It is ludicrous, considering my age, besides being dreadful. You will say that, I believe, till I am thirty or forty, and then when you can’t decently say it any more, and I still want to do things, you’ll say I’m old enough to know better.”
Axel laughed. Anna’s dimples appeared for an instant, but vanished again.
“Now,” she said, “I am not going to talk about poor little Else any more. Let her distant relations dance till they are tired — it concerns nobody here at all.”
“Little Else?”
“The baroness. Of course we shall call each other by our Christian names. We are sisters.”
“I see.”
“You don’t see at all,” she said, with a swift sideward glance at him.
“My dear Miss Estcourt — —”
“If my plan succeeds it will certainly not be because I have been encouraged.”
“I think,” he said with sudden warmth, “that the plan is beautiful, and could only have been made by a beautiful nature.”
“Oh?” ejaculated Anna, surprised. A flush of gratification came into her face. The heartiness of the tone surprised her even more than the words. She stood still to look at him. “It is a pity,” she said softly, “that nearly always when we are together we get angry, for you can be so kind when you choose. Say nice things to me. Let us be happy. I love being happy.”
She held out her hand, smiling. He took it and gave it a hearty, matter of fact shake, and dropped it. It was very awkward, but he was struggling with an overpowering desire to take her in his arms and kiss her, and not let her go again till she had said she would marry him. It was exceedingly awkward, for he knew quite well that if he did so it would be the end of all things.
He turned rather white, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “Yes, the plan is beautiful,” he said cheerfully, “but very unpractical. And the nature that made it is, I am sure, beautiful, but of course quite as unpractical as the plan.” And he smiled down at her, a broad, genial smile.
“I know I don’t set about things the right way,” she said. “If only you wouldn’t worry about the pasts of my poor friends and what their relations may have done in pre-historic times, you could help me so much.”
To his relief she began to walk on again. “Princess Ludwig is a sensible and experienced woman,” he said, “and can help you in many ways that I cannot.”
“But she only looks at the praktische side of a question, and that is really only one side. I am too unpractical, I know, but she isn’t unpractical enough. But I don’t want to talk about her. What I wanted to say was, that once these poor ladies have been chosen and are here, the time for making inquiries is over
, isn’t it? As far as I am concerned, anyhow, it is. I shall never forsake them, never, never. So please don’t try to tell me things about them — it doesn’t change my feelings towards them, and only makes me angry with you. Which is a pity. I want to live at peace with my neighbour.”
“Well?” he said, as she paused. “That, I take it, is a prelude to something else.”
“Yes, it is. It’s a prelude to Karlchen.”
“To Karlchen?”
She looked at him, and laughed rather nervously. “I am afraid,” she said, “that Karlchen is coming to stay with me.”
“And who, pray, is Karlchen?”
“The only son of his mother, and she is a widow.”
He came to a standstill again. “What,” he said, “Frau von Treumann has asked you to invite her son to Kleinwalde?”
“She didn’t actually ask, but she got a sad letter from him, and seemed to feel the separation so much, and cried about it, and so — and so I did.”
Axel was silent.
“I don’t yearn to see Karlchen,” said Anna in rather a small voice. She could not help feeling that the invitation had been wrung from her.
Axel bored a hole in the moss with his stick, and did not answer.
“But naturally his poor mother clings to him, and he to her.”
Axel was intent on his hole and did not answer.
“They are all the world to each other.”
Axel filled up his hole again, and pressed the moss carefully over it with his foot. Then he said, “I never yet heard of two Treumanns being all the world to each other.”
“You appear to have a down on the Treumanns.”
“Not in the least. I do not think they interest me enough. It is an East Prussian Junker family that has spread beyond its natural limits, and one meets them everywhere, and knows their characteristics. What is this young man? I do not remember having heard of him.”
“He is an officer at Rislar.”
“At Rislar? Those are the red hussars. Do you wish me to make inquiries about him?”
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 47