The Benefactress Part 18

"I have never seen Hilton so upset as she was after that German trip. She cried if anyone looked at her. Poor thing, no wonder. The doctor says she is all nerves."

The evening meal was in progress at Kleinwalde when this letter came.

The dining-room was finished, and it was the first meal served there since its transformation. No one who had seen it on that dark day of Anna's arrival would have recognised it, so cheerful did it look with its whitewashed walls. There were no dark corners now where china shepherds smiled in vain; the western light filled it, and to a person lately come from Susie's Hill Street house, it was a refreshment to sit in any place so simple and so clean. Reforms, too, had been made in the food, and the bread was no longer disfigured by caraway seeds. A great bowl of blue hepaticas, fresh from the forest, stood on the table; and the hepaticas were the exact colour of Anna's eyes. When Letty saw her mother's handwriting she turned cold. It was the warrant that was to banish her from Eden, casting her back into the outer darkness of the Popular Concerts and the literature lectures. She was in the act of raising a spoonful of pudding to her already opened mouth, when she caught sight of the well-known writing. She hesitated, her hand shook, and finally she laid her spoon down again and pushed her plate back. At the great crises of life who can go on eating pudding? What then was her relief and joy to see her aunt get up, come round to where she was sitting braced to hear the worst, put her arms round her neck, and to feel herself being kissed. "You are going to stay with me after all!"

cried Anna delightedly. "Dear little Letty--I should have missed you horribly. Aren't you glad? Your mother says I'm to keep you for ever so long."

"Oh, I say--how ripping!" exclaimed Letty; and being a practical person at once resumed and finished her pudding.

Miss Leech, too, looked exceedingly pleased. How could she be anything but pleased at the prospect of staying with a person who was always so kind and thoughtful as Anna? Her feelings, somehow, were never hurt by Anna; Lady Estcourt seemed to have a special knack of jumping on them every time she spoke to her. She knew she ought not to have such sensitive feelings, and felt that it was more her fault than anyone else's if they were hurt; yet there they were, and being hurt was painful, and living with someone so even tempered as Anna was very peaceful and pleasant. Mr. Jessup would have liked Anna. She wished he could have known her. A higher compliment it was not in Miss Leech's power to pay.

And when Anna saw the pleasure on Miss Leech's face, and saw that she thought she was to stay too, she felt that for no sister-in-law in the world would she wipe it out with that month's notice. She decided to say nothing, but simply to keep her as well as Letty. Her two thousand a year was in her eyes of infinite elasticity. Never having had any money, she had no notion of how far it would go; and she did not hesitate to come to a decision which would probably ultimately oblige her to reduce the number of those persons Susie described as victims.

The next day the companion arrived. Anna went out into the hall to meet her when she heard the approaching wheels of the shepherd-plaid chariot.

She felt rather nervous as she watched her emerging from beneath the hood, for she knew how much of the comfort and peace of the twelve would depend on this lady. She felt exceedingly nervous when the lady, immediately upon shaking hands, asked if she could speak to her alone.

"_Naturlich,_" said Anna, a vague fear lest Fritz, the coachman, should have insulted her on the way coming over her, though she only knew Fritz as the mildest of men.

She led the way into the drawing-room. "Now what is she going to tell me dreadful?" she thought, as she invited her to sit on the sofa, having been instructed by Trudi that that was the place where strangers expected to sit. "Suppose she isn't going to stay, and I shall have to look for someone all over again? Perhaps the lining of the carriage has been too much for her. _Bitte_" she said aloud, with an uneasy smile, motioning Frau von Penheim towards the sofa.

The new companion was a big, elderly lady with a sensible face. Her boots were thick, and she wore a mackintosh. She sat down, and looking more attentively at Anna, smiled. Most people who saw her for the first time did that. It was such a change and a pleasure after seeing plain faces, and dull faces, and vain, pretty faces for an indefinite period, to rest one's eyes on a person so charming yet manifestly preoccupied by other matters than her charms.

"I feel it my duty," said the lady in German, "before we go any further to tell you the truth."

This was alarming. The lady's manner was solemn. Anna inclined her head, and felt scared. She wished that Axel Lohm were somewhere near.

"I see you are young," continued the lady, "and I presume that you are inexperienced."

"Not so young," murmured Anna, who felt particularly young and uncomfortable at that moment, and very unlike the mistress of a house interviewing a companion. "Not so young--twenty-five."

"Twenty-five? You do not look it. But what is twenty-five?"

Anna did not know, so said nothing.

"My position here would be a responsible one," continued the lady, scrutinising Anna's face, and smiling again at what she saw there.

"Taking charge of a motherless girl always is. And the circ.u.mstances in this case are peculiar."

"Yes," said Anna, "they are even more peculiar than you imagine----" And she was about to explain the approaching advent of the victims, when the lady held up her hand in a masterful way, as though enjoining silence, and said, "First hear me. Through a series of misfortunes I have been reduced to poverty since my husband's death. But I do not choose to live on the charity of relatives, which is the most unbearable form of charity calling itself by that holy name, and I am determined to work for my bread."

She paused. Anna could find nothing better to say than "Oh."

"Out of consideration for my relatives, who are enraged at my resolution, and think I ought to starve quietly on what they choose to give me sooner than make myself conspicuous by working, I have called myself Frau von Penheim. I will not come here under false pretences, and to you, privately, I will confess that my proper t.i.tle is the Princess Ludwig, of that house."

She stopped to observe the effect of this announcement. Anna was confounded. A princess was not at all what she wanted. She felt that she had no use whatever for princesses. How could she ever expect one to get up early and see that the twelve received their meat in due season?

"Oh," she said again, and then was silent.

The princess watched her closely. She was very poor, and very anxious to have the place. "'Oh' is so English," she said, smiling to hide her anxiety. "We say '_ach_!"

Anna laughed.

"And do not think that all German princesses are like your English ones," she went on eagerly. "My father-in-law was raised to the rank of Furst for services rendered to the state. He had a large family, and my husband was a younger son."

Still Anna was silent. Then she said "I--I wish----" and then stopped.

"What do you wish, my dear child?"

"I wish--that I--that you----"

"That you had known it beforehand? Then you would never have taken me, even on trial," was the prompt reply.

Anna's eyes said plainly, "No, I would not."

"And it is so important that I should find something to do. At first I answered advertis.e.m.e.nts in my real name, and received my photograph back by the next post. This, and the anger of my family, decided me to drop the t.i.tle altogether. But I had always resolved that if I did find a place I would confess to my employer. It is a terrible thing to be very poor," she added, staring straight before her with eyes growing dim at her remembrances.

"Yes," said Anna, under her breath.

"To have nothing, nothing at all, and to be burdened at the same time by one's birth."

"Oh," murmured Anna, with a little catch in her voice.

"And to be dependent on people who only wish that you were safely out of the way--dead."

"Married," whispered Anna.

"Why, what do you know about it?" said the princess, turning quickly to her; for she had been thinking aloud rather than addressing anyone.

"I know everything about it," said Anna; and in a rush of bad but eager German she told her of those old days when even the sweeping of crossings had seemed better than living on relations, and how since then all her heart had been filled with pity for the type of poverty called genteel, and how now that she was well off she was going to help women who were in the same sad situation in which she had been. Her eyes were wet when she finished. She had spoken with extraordinary enthusiasm, a fresh wave of pa.s.sionate sympathy with such lives pa.s.sing over her; and not until she had done did she remember that she had never before seen this lady, and that she was saying things to her that she had not as yet said to the most intimate of her friends.

She felt suddenly uncomfortable; her eyelashes quivered and drooped, and she blushed.

The princess contemplated her curiously. "I congratulate you," she said, laying her hand lightly for a moment on Anna's. "The idea and the good intentions will have been yours, whatever the result may be."

This was not very encouraging as a response to an outburst. "I have told you more than I tell most people," Anna said, looking up shamefacedly, "because you have had much the same experiences that I have."

"Except the uncle at the end. He makes such a difference. May I ask if many of the ladies answered _both_ advertis.e.m.e.nts?"

"No, they did not."

"Not one?"

"Not one."

The princess thought that working for one's bread was distinctly preferable to taking Anna's charity; but then she was of an unusually st.u.r.dy and independent nature. "I can a.s.sure you," she said after a short silence, "that I would do my best to look after your house and your--your friends and yourself."

"But I want someone who will do _everything_--order the meals, train the servants--everything. And get up early besides," said Anna, her voice full of doubt. The princess really belonged, she felt, to the category of sad, sick, and sorry; and if she had asked for a place among the twelve there would have been little difficulty in giving her one. But the companion she had imagined was to be a real help, someone she could order about as she chose, certainly not a person unused to being ordered about. Even the parson's sister-in-law Helena would have been better than this.

"I would do all that, naturally. Do you think if I am not too proud to take wages that I shall be too proud to do the work for which they are paid?"

"Would you not prefer----" began Anna, and hesitated.