The Benefactress Part 19

"Would I not prefer what, my child?"

"Prefer to--would it not be more agreeable for you to come and live here without working? I could find another companion, and I would be happy if you will stay here as--as one of the others."

The princess laughed; a hearty, big laugh in keeping with her big person.

"No," she said. "I would not like that at all. But thank you, dear child, for making the offer. Let me stay here and do what work you want done, and then you pay me for it, and we are quits. I a.s.sure you there is a solid satisfaction in being quits. I shall certainly not expect any more consideration than you would give to a Frau Schultz. And I will be able to take care of you; and I think, if you will not be angry with me for saying so, that you greatly need taking care of."

"Well, then," said Anna, with an effort, "let us try it for three months."

An immense load was lifted off the princess's heart by these words. "You will not regret it," she said emphatically.

But Anna was not so sure. Though she did her best to put a cheerful face on her new bargain, she could not help fearing that her enterprise had begun badly. She was unusually pensive throughout the evening.

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 dest.i.tute 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_, _burgerliche_, and _Hausmannskost_, in all which forms she was preeminent 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: Furst] 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 st.u.r.dy 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 t.i.tle, 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 _burgerliche_ or middle cla.s.ses 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 _Burgerlichen_, those belonging to the cla.s.s 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 a.s.sist 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 _burgerlich_.

"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 suns.h.i.+ne. 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 fis.h.i.+ng-smacks pa.s.sing 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 fis.h.i.+ng-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 d.i.c.kens translated into German would be a safe choice; also Schlegel's Shakespeare for loftier moments. The German cla.s.sics 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 _Burgerliche_?

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 pa.s.sions 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 Fraulein Kuhrauber."

Axel looked amused. "I never heard of Fraulein Kuhrauber," he said.

"What does Princess Ludwig say to her coming?"

"Nothing at all. What should she say?"