The Benefactress Part 48

"You said just now it is because it is hot."

"The fact is," said Anna, "that I am not clever enough to see my way through puzzles. And that depresses me."

"I well know that you must be puzzled."

"Yes, it is puzzling, isn't it? I can talk to you about it, for of course you see it all. It seems so absurd that the only result of my trying to make people happy is to make everyone, including myself, wretched. That is waste, isn't it. Waste, I mean, of happiness. For I, at least, was happy before."

"And, my dear, you will be happy again."

Anna knit her brows in painful thought. "If by being wretched I had managed to make the others happy it wouldn't have been so bad. At least it wouldn't have been so completely silly. The only thing I can think of is that I must have hit upon the wrong people."

"_I Gott bewahre!_" cried the princess with energy. "They are all alike.

Send these away, you get them back in a different shape. Faces and names would be different, never the women. They would all be Treumanns and Elmreichs, and not a single one worth anything in the whole heap."

"Well, I shall not desert them--Else and Emilie, I mean. They need help, both of them. And after all, it is simple selfishness for ever wanting to be happy oneself. I have begun to see that the chief thing in life is not to be as happy as one can, but to be very brave."

The princess sighed. "Poor Axel," she said.

Anna started, and blushed violently. "Pray what has my being brave to do with Herr von Lohm?" she inquired severely.

"Why, you are going to be brave at his expense, poor man. You must not expect anything from me, my dear, but common sense. You give up all hope of being happy because you think it your duty to go on sacrificing him and yourself to a set of thankless, worthless women, and you call it being brave. I call it being unnatural and silly."

"It has never been a question of Herr von Lohm," said Anna coldly, indeed freezingly. "What claims has he on me? My plans were all made before I knew that he existed."

"Oh, my dear, your plans are very irritating things. The only plan a sensible young woman ought to make is to get as good a husband as possible as quickly as she can."

"Why," said Anna, rising in her indignation, and preparing to leave a princess suddenly become objectionable, "why, you are as bad as Susie!"

"Susie?" said the princess, who had not heard of her by that name. "Was Susie also one who told you the truth?"

But Anna walked out of the room without answering, in a very dignified manner; went into the loneliest part of the garden; sat down behind some bushes; and cried.

She looked back on those childish tears afterwards, and on all that had gone before, as the last part of a long sleep; a sleep disturbed by troubling and foolish dreams, but still only a sleep and only dreams.

She woke up the very next day, and remained wide awake after that for the rest of her life.

CHAPTER x.x.x

Anna drove into Stralsund the next morning to her banker, accompanied by Miss Leech. When they pa.s.sed Axel's house she saw that his gate-posts were festooned with wreaths, and that garlands of flowers were strung across the gateway, swaying to and fro softly in the light breeze. "Why, how festive it looks," she exclaimed, wondering.

"Yesterday was Herr von Lohm's birthday," said Miss Leech. "I heard Princess Ludwig say so."

"Oh," said Anna. Her tone was piqued. She turned her head away, and looked at the hay-fields on the opposite side of the road. Axel must have birthdays, of course, and why should he not put things round his gate-posts if he wanted to? Yet she would not look again, and was silent the rest of the way; nor was it of any use for Miss Leech to attempt to while away the long drive with pleasant conversation. Anna would not talk; she said it was too hot to talk. What she was thinking was that men were exceedingly horrid, all of them, and that life was a snare.

Far from being festive, however, Axel's latest birthday was quite the most solitary he had yet spent. The cheerful garlands had been put up by an officious gardener on his own initiative. No one, except Axel's own dependents, had pa.s.sed beneath them to wish him luck. Trudi had telegraphed her blessings, administering them thus in their easiest form. His Stralsund friends had apparently forgotten him; in other years they had been glad of the excuse the birthday gave for driving out into the country in June, but this year the astonished Mamsell saw her birthday cake remain untouched and her baked meats waiting vainly for somebody to come and eat them.

Axel neither noticed nor cared. The haymaking season had just begun, and besides his own affairs he was preoccupied by Anna's. If she had not been shut up so long in the baroness's sick-room she would have met him often enough. She thought he never intended to come near her again, and all the time, whenever he could spare a moment and often when he could not, he was on her property, watching Dellwig's farming operations. She should not suffer, he told himself, because he loved her; she should not be punished because she was not able to love him. He would go on doing what he could for her, and was certainly, at his age, not going to sulk and leave her to face her difficulties alone.

The first time he met Dellwig on these incursions into Anna's domain, he expected to be received with a scowl; but Dellwig did not scowl at all; was on the contrary quite affable, even volunteering information about the work he had in hand. Nor had he been after all offensively zealous in searching for the person who had set the stables on fire; and luckily the Stralsund police had not been very zealous either. Klutz was looked for for a little while after Axel had denounced him as the probable culprit, but the matter had been dropped, apparently, and for the last ten days nothing more had been said or done. Axel was beginning to hope that the whole thing had blown over, that there was to be no unpleasantness after all for Anna. Hearing that the baroness was nearly well, he decided to go and call at Kleinwalde as though nothing had happened. Some time or other he must meet Anna. They could not live on adjoining estates and never see each other. The day after his birthday he arranged to go round in the afternoon and take up the threads of ordinary intercourse again, however much it made him suffer.

Meanwhile Anna did her business in Stralsund, discovered on interviewing her banker that she had already spent more than two-thirds of a whole year's income, lunched pensively after that on ices with Miss Leech, walked down to the quay and watched the unloading of the fis.h.i.+ng-smacks while Fritz and the horses had their dinner, was very much stared at by the inhabitants, who seldom saw anything so pretty, and finally, about two o'clock, started again for home.

As they drew near Axel's gate, and she was preparing to turn her face away from its ostentatious gaiety, a closed _Droschke_ came through it towards them, followed at a short distance by a second.

Miss Leech said nothing, strange though this spectacle was on that quiet road, for she felt that these were the departing guests, and, like Anna, she wondered how a man who loved in vain could have the heart to give parties. Anna said nothing either, but watched the approaching _Droschkes_ curiously. Axel was sitting in the first one, on the side near her. He wore his ordinary farming clothes, the Norfolk jacket, and the soft green hat. There were three men with him, seedy-looking individuals in black coats. She bowed instinctively, for he was looking out of the window full at her, but he took no notice. She turned very white.

The second _Droschke_ contained four more queer-looking persons in black clothes. When they had pa.s.sed, Fritz pulled up his horses of his own accord, and twisting himself round stared after the receding cloud of dust.

Anna had been cut by Axel; but it was not that that made her turn so white--it was something in his face. He had looked straight at her, and he had not seen her.

"Who are those people?" she asked Fritz in a voice that faltered, she did not know why.

Fritz did not answer. He stared down the road after the _Droschkes_, shook his head, began to scratch it, jerked himself round again to his horses, drove on a few yards, pulled them up a second time, looked back, shook his head, and was silent.

"Fritz, do you know them?" Anna asked more authoritatively.

But Fritz only mumbled something soothing and drove on.

Anna had not failed to notice the old man's face as he watched the departing _Droschkes_; it wore an oddly amazed and scared expression.

Her heart seemed to sink within her like a stone, yet she could give herself no reason for it. She tried to order him to turn up the avenue to Axel's house, but her lips were dry, and the words would not come; and while she was struggling to speak the gate was pa.s.sed. Then she was relieved that it was pa.s.sed, for how could she, only because she had a presentiment of trouble, go to Axel's house? What did she think of doing there? Miss Leech glanced at her, and asked if anything was the matter.

"No," said Anna in a whisper, looking straight before her. Nor was there anything the matter; only that blind look on Axel's face, and the strange feeling in her heart.

A knot of people stood outside the post office talking eagerly. They all stopped talking to stare at Anna when the carriage came round the corner. Fritz whipped up his horses and drove past them at a gallop.

"Wait--I want to get out," cried Anna as they came to the parsonage. "Do you mind waiting?" she asked Miss Leech. "I want to speak to Herr Pastor. I will not be a moment."

She went up the little trim path to the porch. The maid-of-all-work was clearing away the coffee from the table. Frau Manske came bustling out when she heard Anna's voice asking for her husband. She looked extraordinarily excited. "He has not come back yet," she cried before Anna could speak, "he is still at the _Schloss_. _Gott Du Allmachtiger_, did one ever hear of anything so terrible?"

Anna looked at her, her face as white as her dress. "Tell me," she tried to say; but no sound pa.s.sed her lips. She made a great effort, and the words came in a whisper: "Tell me," she said.

"What, the gracious Miss has not heard? Herr von Lohm has been arrested."

It was impossible not to enjoy imparting so tremendous a piece of news, however genuinely shocked one might be. Frau Manske brought it out with a ring of pride. It would not be easy to beat, she felt, in the way of news. Then she remembered the gossip about Anna and Axel, and observed her with increased interest. Was she going to faint? It would be the only becoming course for her to take if it were true that there had been courting.

But Anna, whose voice had failed her before, when once she had heard what it was that had happened, seemed curiously cold and composed.

"What was he accused of?" was all she asked; so calmly, Frau Manske afterwards told her friends, that it was not even womanly in the face of so great a misfortune.

"He set fire to the stables," said Frau Manske.

"It is a lie," said Anna; also, as Frau Manske afterwards pointed out to her friends, an unwomanly remark.

"He did it himself to get the insurance money."

"It is a lie," repeated Anna, in that cold voice.