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 Fraeulein 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 inspector 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.

"The best way to act," said the parson, when he had exhausted the greater part of his raptures, "will be to advertise in a newspaper of a Christian character."

"But not in my name," said Anna.

"No, no, we must be discreet—we must be very discreet. The advertisement must be drawn up with skill. I will make, simultaneously, inquiries among my colleagues in the holy office, but there must also be an advertisement. What would the gracious Miss's opinion be of the desirability of referring all applicants, in the first instance, to me?"

"Why, I think it would be an excellent plan, if you do not mind the trouble."

"Trouble! Joy fills me at the thought of taking part in this good work. Little did I think that our poor corner of the fatherland was to become a holy place, a blessed refuge for the world-worn, a nook fragrant with charity——"

"No, not charity," interposed Anna.

"Whose perfume," continued the parson, determined to finish his sentence, "whose perfume will ascend day and night to the attentive heavens. But such are the celestial surprises Providence keeps in reserve and springs upon us when we least expect it."

"Yes," said Anna. "But what shall we put in the advertisement?"

"Ach ja, the advertisement. In the contemplation of this beautiful scheme I forget the advertisement." And again the moisture of ecstasy suffused his eyes, and again he clasped his hands and gazed at her with his head on one side, almost as though the young lady herself were the beautiful scheme.

Anna got up and went to the writing-table to fetch a pencil and a sheet of paper, anxious to keep him to the point; and the parson watching the graceful white figure was more than ever struck by her resemblance to his idea of angels. He did not consider how easy it was to look like a being from another world, a creature purified of every earthly grossness, to eyes accustomed to behold the redundant exuberance of his own excellent wife.

She brought the paper, and sat down again at the table on which the lamp stood. "How does one write any sort of advertisement in German?" she said. "I could not write one for a housemaid. And this one must be done so carefully."

"Very true; for, alas, even ladies are sometimes not all that they profess to be. Sad that in a Christian country there should be impostors. Doubly sad that there should be any of the female sex."

"Very sad," said Anna, smiling. "You must tell me which are the impostors among those that answer."

"Ach, it will not be easy," said the parson, whose experience of ladies was limited, and who began to see that he was taking upon himself responsibilities that threatened to become grave. Suppose he recommended an applicant who afterwards departed with the gracious Miss's spoons in her bag? "Ach, it will not be easy," he said, shaking his head.

"Oh, well," said Anna, "we must risk the impostors. There may not be any at all. How would you begin?"

The parson threw himself back in his chair, folded his hands, cast up his eyes to the ceiling, and meditated. Anna waited, pencil in hand, ready to write at his dictation. Frau Manske at the other end of the room was straining her ears to hear what was going on, but Miss Leech, desirous both of entertaining her and of practising her German, would not cease from her spasmodic talk, even expecting her mistakes to be corrected. And there were no refreshments, no glasses of cooling beer being handed round, no liquid consolation of any sort, not even seltzer water. She regarded her evening as a failure.

"A Christian lady of noble sentiments," dictated the parson, apparently reading the words off the ceiling, "offers a home in her house——"

"Is this the advertisement?" asked Anna.

"—offers a home in her house——"

"I don't quite like the beginning," hesitated Anna. "I would rather leave out about the noble sentiments."

"As the gracious one pleases. Modesty can never be anything but an ornament. 'A Christian lady——'"

"But why a Christian lady? Why not simply a lady? Are there, then, heathen ladies about, that you insist on the Christian?"

"Worse, worse than heathen," replied the parson, sitting up straight, and fixing eyeballs suddenly grown fiery on her; and his voice fell to a hissing whisper, in strange contrast to his previous honeyed tones. "The heathen live in far-off lands, where they keep quiet till our missionaries gather them into the Church's fold—but here, here in our midst, here everywhere, taking the money from our pockets, nay, the very bread from our mouths, are the Jews."

Impossible to describe the tone of fear and hatred with which this word was pronounced.

Anna gazed at him, mystified. "The Jews?" she echoed. One of her greatest friends at home was a Jew, a delightful person, the mere recollection of whom made her smile, so witty and charming and kind was he. And of Jews in general she could not remember to have heard anything at all.

"But not only money from our pockets and bread from our mouths," continued the parson, leaning forward, his light grey eyes opened to their widest extent, and speaking in a whisper that made her flesh begin the process known as creeping, "but blood—blood from our veins."

"Blood from your veins?" she repeated faintly. It sounded horrid. It offended her ears. It had nothing to do with the advertisement. The strange light in his eyes made her think of fanaticism, cruelty, and the Middle Ages. The mildest of men in general, as she found later on, rabidness seized him at the mere mention of Jews.

"Blood," he hissed, "from the veins of Christians, for the performance of their unholy rites. Did the gracious one never hear of ritual murders?"

"No," said Anna, shrinking back, the nearer he leaned towards her, "never in my life. Don't tell me now, for it—it sounds interesting. I should like to hear about it all another time. 'A Christian lady offers her home,'" she went on quickly, scribbling that much down, and then looking at him inquiringly.

"Ach ja," he said in his natural voice, leaning back in his chair and reducing his eyes to their normal size, "I forgot again the advertisement. 'A Christian lady offers her home to others of her sex and station who are without means——'"

"And without friends, and without hope," added Anna, writing.

"Gut, gut, sehr gut."

"She has room in her house in the country," Anna went on, writing as she spoke, "for twelve such ladies, and will be glad to share with them all that she possesses of fortune and happiness."

"Gut, gut, sehr gut."

"Is the German correct?"

"Quite correct. I would add, 'Strictest inquiries will be made before acceptance of any application by Herr Pastor Manske of Lohm, to whom all letters are to be addressed. Applicants must be ladies of good family, who have fallen on evil days by the will of God.'"

Anna wrote this down as far as "days," after which she put a full stop.

"It pleases me not entirely," said Manske, musing; "the language is not sufficiently noble. Noble schemes should be alluded to in noble words."

"But not in an advertisement."

"Why not? We ought not to hide our good thoughts from our fellows, but rather open our hearts, pour out our feelings, spend freely all that we have in us of virtue and piety, for the edification and exhilaration of others."

"But not in an advertisement. I don't want to exhilarate the public."

"And why not exhilarate the public, dear Miss? Is it not composed of units of like passions to ourselves? Units on the way to heaven, units bowed down by the same sorrows, cheered by the same hopes, torn asunder by the same temptations as the gracious one and myself?" And immediately he launched forth into a flood of eloquence about units; for in Germany sermons are all extempore, and the clergy, from constant practice, acquire a fatal fluency of speech, bursting out in the week on the least provocation into preaching, and not by any known means to be stopped.

"Oh—words, words, words!" thought Anna, waiting till he should have finished. His wife, hearing the well-known rapid speech of his inspired moments, glowed with pride. "My Adolf surpasses himself," she thought; "the Miss must wonder."

The Miss did wonder. She sat and wondered, her elbows on the arms of the chair, her finger tips joined together, and her eyes fixed on her finger tips. She did not like to look at him, because, knowing how different was the effect produced on her to that which he of course imagined, she was sorry for him.

"It is so good of you to help me," she said with gentle irrelevance when the longed-for pause at length came. "There was something else that I wanted to consult you about. I must look for a companion—an elderly German lady, who will help me in the housekeeping."

"Yes, yes, I comprehend. But would not the twelve be sufficient companions, and helps in the housekeeping?"

"No, because I would not like them to think that I want anything done for me in return for their home. I want them to do exactly what makes them happiest. They will all have had sad lives, and must waste no more time in doing things they don't quite like."

"Ah—noble, noble," murmured the parson, quite as unpractical as Anna, and fascinated by the very vagueness of her plan of benevolence.

"The companion I wish to find would be another sort of person, and would help me in return for a salary."

"Certainly, I comprehend."

"I thought perhaps you would tell me how to advertise for such a person?"

"Surely, surely. My wife has a sister——"

He paused. Anna looked up quickly. She had not reckoned with the possibility of his wife's having sisters.

"Lieber Schatz," he called to his wife, "what does thy sister Helena do now?"

Frau Manske got up and came over to them with the alacrity of relief. "What dost thou say, dear Adolf?" she asked, laying her hand on his shoulder. He took it in his, stroked it, kissed it, and finally put his arm round her waist and held it there while he talked; all to the exceeding joy of Letty, to whom such proceedings had the charm of absolute freshness.

"Thy sister Helena—is she at present in the parental house?" he asked, looking up at her fondly, warmed into an affection even greater than ordinary by the circumstance of having spectators.

Frau Manske was not sure. She would write and inquire. Anna proposed that she should sit down, but the parson playfully held her closer. "This is my guardian angel," he explained, smiling beatifically at her, "the faithful mother of my children, now grown up and gone their several ways. Does the gracious Miss remember the immortal lines of Schiller, 'Ehret die Frauen, sie flechten und weben himmlische Rosen in's irdische Leben'? Such has been the occupation of this dear wife, only interrupted by her occasional visits to bathing resorts, since the day, more than twenty-five years ago, when she consented to tread with me the path leading heavenwards. Not a day has there been, except when she was at the seaside, without its roses."

"Oh," said Anna. She felt that the remark was not at the height of the situation, and added, "How—how interesting." This also struck her as inadequate; but all further inspiration failing her, she was reduced to the silent sympathy of smiles.

"Ten children did the Lord bless us with," continued the parson, expanding into confidences, "and six it was His will again to remove."

"The drains—" murmured Frau Manske.

"Yes, truly the drains in the town where we lived then were bad, very bad. But one must not question the wisdom of Providence."

"No, but one might mend——" Anna stopped, feeling that under some circumstances even the mending of drains might be impious. She had heard so much about piety and Providence within the last two hours that she was confused, and was no longer clear as to the exact limit of conduct beyond which a flying in the face of Providence might be said to begin.

But the parson, clasping his wife to his side, paid no heed to anything she might be saying, for he was already well on in a detailed account of the personal appearance, habits, and career of his four remaining children, and dwelt so fondly on each in turn that he forgot sister Helena and the second advertisement; and when he had explained all their numerous excellencies and harmless idiosyncrasies, including their preferences in matters of food and drink, he abruptly quitted this topic, and proceeded to expound Anna's scheme to his wife, who had listened with ill-concealed impatience to the first part of his discourse, consumed as she was with curiosity to hear what it was that Anna had confided to him.

So Anna had to listen to the raptures all over again. The eager interest of the wife disturbed her. She doubted whether Frau Manske had any real sympathy with her plan. Her inquisitiveness was unquestionable; but Anna felt that opening her heart to the parson and opening it to his wife were two different things. Though he was wordy, he was certainly enthusiastic; his wife, on the other hand, appeared to be chiefly interested in the question of cost. "The cost will be colossal," she said, surveying Anna from head to foot. "But the gracious Miss is rich," she added.

Anna began to examine her finger tips again.

On the way home through the dark fields, after having criticised each dish of the dinner and expressed the opinion that the entertainment was not worthy of such a wealthy lady, Frau Manske observed to her husband that it was true, then, what she had always heard of the English, that they were peculiarly liable to prolonged attacks of craziness.

"Craziness! Thou callest this craziness? It is my wife, the wife of a pastor, that I hear applying such a word to so beautiful, so Christian, a scheme?"

"But the good money—to give it all away. Yes, it is very Christian, but it is also crazy."

"Woman, shut thy mouth!" cried the parson, beside himself with indignation at hearing such sentiments from such lips.

Clearly Frau Manske was not at that moment engaged with her roses.



CHAPTER IX

The next morning early, Anna went over to the farm to ask Dellwig to lend her any newspapers he might have. She was anxious to advertise as soon as possible for a companion, and now that she knew of the existence of sister Helena, thought it better to write this advertisement without the parson's aid, copying any other one of the sort that she might see in the papers. Until she had secured the services of a German lady who would tell her how to set about the reforms she intended making in her house, she was perfectly helpless. She wanted to put her home in order quickly, so that the twelve unhappy ones should not be kept waiting; and there were many things to be done. Servants, furniture, everything, was necessary, and she did not know where such things were to be had. She did not even know where washerwomen were obtainable, and Frau Dellwig never seemed to be at home when she sent for her, or went to her seeking information. On Good Friday, after Susie's departure, she had sent a message to the farm desiring the attendance of the inspector's wife, whom she wished to consult about the dinner to be prepared for the Manskes, all provisions apparently passing through Frau Dellwig's hands; and she had been told that the lady was at church. On Saturday morning, disturbed by the emptiness of her larder and the imminence of her guests, she had gone herself to the farm, but was told that the lady was in the cow-sheds—in which cow-shed nobody exactly knew. Anna had been forced to ask Dellwig about the food. On Sunday she took Letty with her, abashed by the whisperings and starings she had had to endure when she went alone. Nor on this occasion did she see the inspector's wife, and she began to wonder what had become of her.

The Dellwigs' wrath and amazement when they found that the parson and his wife had been invited to dinner and they themselves left out was indescribable. Never had such an insult been offered them. They had always been the first people of their class in the place, always held their heads up and condescended to the clergy, always been helped first at table, gone first through doors, sat in the right-hand corners of sofas. If he was furious, she was still more so, filled with venom and hatred unutterable for the innocent, but it must be added overjoyed, Frau Manske; and though her own interest demanded it, she was altogether unable to bring herself to meet Anna for the purpose, as she knew, of being consulted about the menu to be offered to the wretched upstart. Indeed, Frau Dellwig's position was similar to that painful one in which Susie found herself when her influential London acquaintance left her out of the invitations to the wedding; on which occasion, as we know, Susie had been constrained to flee to Germany in order to escape the comments of her friends. Frau Dellwig could not flee anywhere. She was obliged to stay where she was and bear it as best she might, humiliated in the eyes of the whole neighbourhood, an object of derision to her very milkmaids. Philosophers smile at such trials; but to persons who are not philosophers, and at Kleinwalde these were in the majority, they are more difficult to endure than any family bereavement. There is no dignity about them, and friends, instead of sympathising, rejoice more or less openly according to the degree of their civilisation. The degree of civilisation among Frau Dellwig's friends was not great, and the rejoicings on the next Sunday when they all met would be but ill-concealed; there was no escape from them, they had to be faced, and the malicious condolences accepted with what countenance she could. Instead of making sausages, therefore, she shut herself in her bedroom and wept.

And so it came about that the unconscious Anna, whose one desire was to live at peace with her neighbours, made two enemies within two days. "All women," said Dellwig to his wife, "high and low, are alike. Unless they have a husband to keep them in their right places, they become religious and run after pastors. Manske has wormed himself in very cleverly, truly very cleverly. But we will worm him out again with equal cleverness. As for his wife, what canst thou expect from so great a fool?"

"No, indeed, from her I expect nothing," replied his wife, tossing her head, "but from the niece of our late master I expected the behaviour of a lady." And at that moment, the niece of her late master being announced, she fled into her bedroom.

Anna, friendly as ever, specially kind to Dellwig since his tears on the night of her arrival, came with Letty into the gloomy little office where he was working, with all the morning sunshine in her face. Though she was perplexed by many things, she was intensely happy. The perfect freedom, after her years of servitude, was like heaven. Here she was in her own home, from which nobody could take her, free to arrange her life as she chose. Oh, it was a beautiful world, and this the most beautiful corner of it! She was sure the sky was bluer at Kleinwalde than in other places, and that the larks sang louder. And then was she not on the very verge of realising her dreams of bringing the light of happiness into dark and hopeless lives? Oh, the beautiful, beautiful world! She came into Dellwig's room with the love of it shining in her eyes.

He was as obsequious as ever, for unfortunately his bread and butter depended on this perverse young woman; but he was also graver and less talkative, considering within himself that he could not be expected to pass over such a slight without some alteration in his manner. He ought, he felt, to show that he was pained, and he ought to show it so unmistakably that she would perhaps be led to offer some explanation of her conduct. Accordingly he assumed the subdued behaviour of one whose feelings have been hurt, and Anna thought how greatly he improved on acquaintance.

He would have given much to know why she wanted the papers, for surely it was unusual for women to read newspapers? When there was a murder, or anything of that sort, his wife liked to see them, but not at other times. "Is the gracious Miss interested in politics?" he inquired, as he put several together.

"No, not particularly," said Anna; "at least, not yet in German politics. I must live here a little while first."

"In—in literature, perhaps?"

"No, not particularly. I know so little about German books."

"There are some well-written articles occasionally on the modes in ladies' dresses."

"Really?"

"My wife tells me she often gets hints from them as to what is being worn. Ladies, we know," he added with a superior smile, checked, however, on his remembering that he was pained, "are interested in these matters."

"Yes, they are," agreed Anna, smiling, and holding out her hand for the papers.

"Ah, then, it is that that the gracious Miss wishes to read?" he said quickly.

"No, not particularly," said Anna, who began to see that he too suffered from the prevailing inquisitiveness. Besides, she was too much afraid of his having sisters, or of his wife's having sisters, eager to come and be a blessing to her, to tell him about her advertisement.

On the steps of his house, to which Dellwig accompanied the two girls, stood a man who had just got off his horse. He was pulling off his gloves as he watched it being led away by a boy. He had his back to Anna, and she looked at it interested, for it was unlike any back she had yet seen in Kleinwalde, in that it was the back of a gentleman.

"It is Herr von Lohm," said Dellwig, "who has business here this morning. Some of our people unfortunately drink too much on holidays like Good Friday, and there are quarrels. I explained to the gracious one that he is our Amtsvorsteher."

Herr von Lohm turned at the sound of Dellwig's voice, and took off his hat. "Pray present me to these ladies," he said to Dellwig, and bowed as gravely to Letty as to Anna, to her great satisfaction.

"So this is my neighbour?" thought Anna, looking down at him from the higher step on which she stood with her papers under her arm.

"So this is old Joachim's niece, of whom he was always talking?" thought Lohm, looking up at her. "Wise old man to leave the place to her instead of to those unpleasant sons." And he proceeded to make a few conventional remarks, hoping that she liked her new home and would soon be quite used to the country life. "It is very quiet and lonely for a lady not used to our kind of country, with its big estates and few neighbours," he said in English. "May I talk English to you? It gives me pleasure to do so."

"Please do," said Anna. Here was a person who might be very helpful to her if ever she reached her wits' end; and how nice he looked, how clean, and what a pleasant voice he had, falling so gratefully on ears already aching with Dellwig's shouts and the parson's emphatic oratory.

He was somewhere between thirty and forty, not young at all, she thought, having herself never got out of the habit of feeling very young; and beyond being long and wiry, with not even a tendency to fat, as she noticed with pleasure, there was nothing striking about him. His top boots and his green Norfolk jacket and green felt hat with a little feather stuck in it gave him an air of being a sportsman. It was refreshing to come across him, if only because he did not bow. Also, considering him from the top of the steps, she became suddenly conscious that Dellwig and the parson neglected their persons more than was seemly. They were both no doubt very excellent; but she did like nicely washed men.

Herr von Lohm began to talk about Uncle Joachim, with whom he had been very intimate. Anna came down the steps and he went a few yards with her, leaving Dellwig standing at the door, and followed by the eyes of Dellwig's wife, concealed behind her bedroom curtain.

"I shall be with you in one moment," called Lohm over his shoulder.

"Gut," said Dellwig; and he went in to tell his wife that these English ladies were very free with gentlemen, and to bid her mark his words that Lohm and Kleinwalde would before long be one estate.

"And us? What will become of us?" she asked, eying him anxiously.

"I too would like to know that," replied her husband. "This all comes of leaving land away from the natural heirs." And with great energy he proceeded to curse the memory of his late master.

Lohm's English was so good that it astonished Anna. It was stiff and slow, but he made no mistakes at all. His manner was grave, and looking at him more attentively she saw traces on his face of much hard work and anxiety. He told her that his mother had been a cousin of Uncle Joachim's wife. "So that there is a slight relationship by marriage existing between us," he said.

"Very slight," said Anna, smiling, "faint almost beyond recognition."

"Does your niece stay with you for an indefinite period?" he asked. "I cannot avoid knowing that this young lady is your niece," he added with a smile, "and that she is here with her governess, and that Lady Estcourt left suddenly on Good Friday, because all that concerns you is of the greatest interest to the inhabitants of this quiet place, and they talk of little else."

"How long will it take them to get used to me? I don't like being an object of interest. No, Letty is going home as soon as I have found a companion. That is why I am taking the inspector's newspapers home with me. I can't construct an advertisement out of my stores of German, and am going to see if I can find something that will serve as model."

"Oh, may I help you? What difficulties you must meet with every hour of the day!"

"I do," agreed Anna, thinking of all there was to be done before she could open her doors and her arms to the twelve.

"Any service that I can render to my oldest friend's niece will give me the greatest pleasure. Will you allow me to send the advertisement for you? You can hardly know how or where to send it."

"I don't," said Anna. "It would be very kind—I really would be grateful. It is so important that I should find somebody soon."

"It is of the first importance," said Lohm.

"Has the parson told him of my plans already?" thought Anna. But Lohm had not seen Manske that morning, and was only picturing this little thing to himself, this dainty little lady, used to such a different life, alone in the empty house, struggling with her small supply of German to make the two raw servants understand her ways. Anna was not a little thing at all, and she would have been half-amused and half-indignant if she had known that that was the impression she had made on him.

"My sister, Graefin Hasdorf," he began—"Heavens," she thought, "has he got an unattached sister?"—"sometimes stays with me with her children, and when she is here will be able to help you in many ways if you will allow her to. She too knew your uncle from her childhood. She will be greatly interested to know that you have had the courage to settle here."

"Courage?" echoed Anna. "Why, I love it. It's the most beautiful place in the world."

Lohm looked doubtfully at her for a moment; but there was no mistaking the sincerity of those eyes. "It is pleasant to hear you say so," he said. "My sister Trudi would scarcely credit her ears if she were present. To her it is a terrible place, and she pities me with all her heart because my lot is cast in it."

Anna laughed. She thought she knew very well what sister Trudis were like. "I do not pity you," she said; "I couldn't pity any being who lived in this air, and under this sky. Look how blue it is—and the geese—did you ever see such white geese?"

A flock of geese were being driven across the sunny yard, dazzling in their whiteness. Anna lifted up her face to the sun and drew in a long breath of the sharp air. She forgot Lohm for a moment—it was such a glorious Easter Sunday, and the world was so full of the abundant gifts of God.

Dellwig, who had been watching them from his wife's window, thought that the brawlers who were going to be fined had been kept waiting long enough, and came out again on to the steps.

Lohm saw him, and felt that he must go. "I must do my business," he said, "but as you have given me permission I will send an advertisement to the papers to-night. Of course you desire to have an elderly lady of good family?"

"Yes, but not too elderly—not so elderly that she won't be able to work. There will be so much to do, so very much to do."

Lohm went away wondering what work there could possibly be, except the agreeable and easy work of seeing that this young lady was properly fed, and properly petted, and in every way taken care of.



CHAPTER X

He sent the advertisement by the evening post to two or three of the best newspapers. He had seen the pastor after morning church, who had at once poured into his ears all about Anna's twelve ladies, garnishing the story with interjections warmly appreciative of the action of Providence in the matter. Lohm had been considerably astonished, but had said little; it was not his way to say much at any time to the parson, and the ecstasies about the new neighbour jarred on him. Miss Estcourt's need of advice must have been desperate for her to have confided in Manske. He appreciated his good qualities, but his family had never been intimate with the parson; perhaps because from time immemorial the Lohms had been chiefly males, and the attitude of male Germans towards parsons is, at its best, one of indulgence. This Lohm restricted his dealings with him, as his father had done before him, to the necessary deliberations on the treatment of the sick and poor, and to official meetings in the schoolhouse. He was invariably kind to him, and lent as willing an ear as his slender purse allowed to applications for assistance; but the idea of discussing spiritual experiences with him, or, in times of personal sorrow, of dwelling conversationally on his griefs, would never have occurred to him. The easy familiarity with which Manske spoke of the Deity offended his taste. These things, these sacred and awful mysteries, were the secrets between the soul and its God. No man, thought Lohm, should dare to touch with profane questioning the veil shrouding his neighbour's inner life. Manske, however, knew no fear and no compunction. He would ask the most tremendous questions between two mouthfuls of pudding, backing himself up with the whole authority of the Lutheran Church, besides the Scriptures; and if the poor people and the partly educated liked it, and were edified, and enjoyed stirring up and talking over their religious emotions almost as much as they did the latest village scandal, Lohm, who had no taste either for scandal or emotions, kept the parson at arm's length.

He thought a good deal about what Manske had told him during the afternoon. She had gone to the parson, then, for help, because there was no one else to go to. Poor little thing. He could imagine the sort of speeches Manske had made her, and the sort of advertisement he would have told her to write. Poor little thing. Well, what he could do was to put her in the way of getting a companion as quickly as possible, and a very sensible, capable woman it ought to be. No wonder she was not to be past hard work. Work there would certainly be, with twelve women in the house undergoing the process of being made happy. Lohm could not help smiling at the plan. He thought of Miss Estcourt courageously trying to demolish the crust of dejection that had formed in the course of years over the hearts of her patients, and he trusted that she would not exhaust her own youth and joyousness in the effort. Perhaps she would succeed. He did not remember having heard of any scheme quite analogous, and possibly she would override all obstacles in triumph, and the patients who entered her home with the burden of their past misery heavy upon them, would develop in the sunshine of her presence into twelve riotously jovial ladies. But would not she herself suffer? Would not her own strength and hopefulness be sapped up by those she benefited? He could not think that it would be to the advantage of the world at large to substitute twelve, nay fifty, nay any number of jolly old ladies, for one girl with such sweet and joyous eyes.

This, of course, was the purely masculine point of view. The women to be benefited—why he thought of them as old is not clear, for you need not be old to be unhappy—would have protested, probably, with indignant cries that individually they were well worth Miss Estcourt, in any case were every bit as good as she was, and collectively—oh, absurd.

He thought of his sister Trudi. Perhaps she knew of some one who would be both kind and clever, and protect Miss Estcourt in some measure from the twelve. Trudi's friends, it is true, were not the sort among whom staid companions are found. Their husbands were chiefly lieutenants, and they spent their time at races. They lived in flats in Hanover, where the regiment was quartered, and flats are easy to manage, and none of these young women would endure, he supposed, to have an elderly companion always hanging round. Still, there was a remote possibility that some one of them might be able to recommend a suitable person. If Trudi were staying with him now she would be a great help; not so much because of what she would do, but because he could go with her to Kleinwalde, and Miss Estcourt could come to his house when she wanted anything, and need not depend solely on the parson. It was his duty, considering old Joachim's unchanging kindness towards him, and the pains the old man had taken to help him in the management of his estate, and to encourage him at a time when he greatly needed help and encouragement, to do all that lay in his power for old Joachim's niece. When he heard that she was coming he had decided that this was his plain duty: that she was so pretty, so adorably pretty and simple and friendly only made it an unusually pleasant one. "I will write to Trudi," he thought, "and ask her to come over for a week or two."

He sat down at his writing-table in the big window overlooking the farmyard, and began the letter. But he felt that it would be absurd to ask her to come on Miss Estcourt's account. Why should she do anything for Miss Estcourt, and why should he want his sister to do anything for her? That would be the first thing that would strike the astute Trudi. So he merely wrote reminding her that she had not stayed with him since the previous summer, and suggested that she should come for a few days with her children, now that the spring was coming and the snow had gone. "The woods will soon be blue with anemones," he wrote, though he well knew that Trudi's attitude towards anemones was cold. Perhaps her little boys would like to pick them; anyhow, some sort of an inducement had to be held out.

Outside his window was a duck-pond, thin sheets of ice still floating in broken pieces on its surface; behind the duck-pond was the dairy; and on either side of the yard were cow-sheds and pig-styes. The farm carts stood in a peaceful Sunday row down one side, and at the other end of the yard, shutting out the same view of the sea and island that Anna saw from her bedroom window, was a mountainous range of manure. When Trudi came, she never entered the rooms on this side of the house, because, as she explained, it was one of her peculiarities not to like manure; and she slept and ate and aired her opinions on the west side, where the garden lay between the house and the road. She never would have come to Lohm at all, not being burdened with any undue sentiment in regard to ties of blood, if it had not been necessary to go somewhere in the summer, and if the other places had not been beyond the resources of the family purse, always at its emptiest when the racing season was over and the card-playing at an end. As it was, this was a cheap and convenient haven, and her brother Axel was kind to the little boys, and not too angry when they plundered his apple-trees, damaged the knees of his ponies, and did their best to twist off the tails of his disconcerted sucking-pigs.

He was the eldest of three brothers, and she came last. She was twenty-six, and he was ten years older. When the father died, the land ought properly to have been divided between the four children, but such a proceeding would have been extremely inconvenient, and the two younger brothers, and the sister just married, agreed to accept their share in money, and to leave the estate entirely to Axel. It was the best course to take, but it threw Axel into difficulties that continued for years. His father, with four times the money, had lived very comfortably at Lohm, and the children had been brought up in prosperity. For eight years his eldest son had farmed the estate with a quarter the means, and had found it so far from simple that his hair had turned grey in the process. It needed considerable skill and vigilance to enable a man to extract a decent living from the soil of Lohm. Part of it was too boggy, and part of it too sandy, and the trees had all been cut down thirty years before by a bland grandfather, serenely indifferent to the opinion of posterity. Axel's first work had been to make plantations of young firs and pines wherever the soil was poorest, and when he rode through the beautiful Kleinwalde forest he endeavoured to extract what pleasure he could from the thought that in a hundred years Lohm too would have a forest. But the pleasure to be extracted from this thought was of a surprisingly subdued quality. All his pleasures were of a subdued quality. His days were made up of hard work, of that effort to induce both ends to meet which knocks the savour out of life with such a singular completeness. He was born with an uncomfortably exact conception of duty; and now at the end of the best half of his life, after years of struggling on that poor soil against the odds of that stern climate, this conception had shaped itself into a fixed belief that the one thing entirely beautiful, the one thing wholly worthy of a man's ambition, is the right doing of his duty. So, he thought, shall a man have peace at the last.

It is a way of thinking common to the educated dwellers in solitary places, who have not been very successful. Trudi scorned it. "Peace," she said, "at the last, is no good at all. What one wants is peace at the beginning and in the middle. But you only think stuff like that because you haven't got enough money. Poor people always talk about the beauty of duty and peace at the last. If somebody left you a fortune you'd never mention either of them again. Or if you married a girl with money, now. I wish, I do wish, that that duty would strike you as the one thing wholly worth doing."

But a man who is all day and every day in his fields, who farms not for pleasure but for his bare existence, has no time to set out in search of girls with money, and none came up his way. Besides, he had been engaged a few years before, and the girl had died, and he had not since had the least inclination towards matrimony. After that he had worked harder than ever; and the years flew by, filled with monotonous labour. Sometimes they were good years, and the ends not only met but lapped over a little; but generally the bare meeting of the ends was all that he achieved. His wish was that his brother Gustav who came after him should find the place in good order; if possible in better order than before. But the working up of an estate for a brother Gustav, with whatever determination it may be carried on, is not a labour that evokes an unflagging enthusiasm in the labourer; and Axel, however beautiful a life of duty might be to him in theory, found it, in practice, of an altogether remarkable greyness. Two-thirds of his house were shut up. In the evenings his servants stole out to court and be courted, and left the place to himself and echoes and memories. It was a house built for a large family, for troops of children, and frequent friends. Axel sat in it alone when the dusk drove him indoors, defending himself against his remembrances by prolonged interviews with his head inspector, or a zealous study of the latest work on potato diseases.

"I see that Bibi Bornstedt is staying with your Regierungspraesident," Trudi had written a little while before. "Now, then, is your chance. She is a true gold-fish. You cannot continue to howl over Hildegard's memory for ever. Bibi will have two hundred thousand marks a year when the old ones die, and is quite a decent girl. Her nose is a fiasco, but when you have been married a week you will not so much as see that she has a nose. And the two hundred thousand marks will still be there. Ach, Axel, what comfort, what consolation, in two hundred thousand marks! You could put the most glorious wreaths on Hildegard's tomb, besides keeping racehorses."

Lohm suddenly remembered this letter as he sat, having finished his own, looking out of the window at two girls in Sunday splendour kissing one of the stable boys behind a farm cart. They were all three apparently enjoying themselves very much, the girls laughing, the boy with an expression at once imbecile and beatific. They thought the master's eye could not see them there, but the master's eye saw most things. He took up his pen again and added a postscript. "If you come soon you will be able to enjoy the society of your friend Bibi. She came on Wednesday, I believe." Then, feeling slightly ashamed of using the innocent Miss Bibi as a bait to catch his sister, he wrote the advertisement for Anna, and put both letters in the post-bag.

The effect of his postscript was precisely the one he had expected. Trudi was drinking her morning coffee in her bedroom at twelve o'clock, when the letter came. Her hair was being done by a Friseur, an artist in hairdressing, who rode about Hanover every day on a bicycle, his pockets bulging out with curling-tongs, and for three marks decorated the heads of Trudi and her friends with innumerable waves. Trudi was devoted to him, with the devotion naturally felt for the person on whom one's beauty depends, for he was a true artist, and really did work amazing transformations. "What! You have never had Herr Jungbluth?" Trudi cried, on the last occasion on which she met Bibi, the daughter of a Hanover banker, and quite outside her set but for the riches that ensured her an enthusiastic welcome wherever she went, "aber Bibi!" There was so much genuine surprise and compassion in this "aber Bibi" that the young person addressed felt as though she had been for years missing a possibility of happiness. Trudi added, as a special recommendation, that Jungbluth smelt of soap. He had carefully studied the nature of women, and if he had to do with a pretty one would find an early opportunity of going into respectful raptures over what he described as her klassisches Profil; and if it was a woman whose face was not all she could have wished, he would tell her, in a tone of subdued enthusiasm, that her profile, as to which she had long been in doubt, was hoechst interessant. The popularity of this young man in Trudi's set was enormous; and as all the less aristocratic Hanoverian ladies hastened to imitate, Jungbluth lived in great contentment and prosperity with a young wife whose hair was reposefully straight, and a baby whose godmother was Trudi.

"Blue woods! Anemones!" read Trudi with immense contempt. "Is the boy in his senses? The idea of expecting me to go to that dreary place now. Ah, now I understand," she added, turning the page, "it is Bibi—he is really after her, and of course can get along quicker if I am there to help. Excellent Axel! And why did he go to the pains of trotting out the anemones? What is the use of not being frank with me? I can see through him, whatever he does. He is so good-natured that I am sure he will lend us heaps of Bibi's money once he has got it. So, lieber Jungbluth," she said aloud, "that will do to-day. Beautiful—beautiful—better than ever. I am in a hurry. I travel to Berlin this very afternoon."

And the next day she arrived at Stralsund, and was met by her brother at the station.

She greeted him with enthusiasm. "As we are here," she said, when they were driving through the town, "let us pay our respects to the Regierungspraesidentin. It will save our coming in again to-morrow."

"No, I cannot to-day. I must get back as quickly as possible. The hands had their Easter ball yesterday, and when I left Lohm this morning half of them were still in bed."

"Well, then, the horses will have to do the journey again to-morrow, for no time should be lost."

"Yes, you can come in to-morrow, if you long so much to see your friend."

"And you?" asked Trudi, in a tone of astonishment.

"And I? I am up to my ears now in work. Last week was the first week for four months that we could plough. Now we have lost these three days at Easter. I cannot spare a single hour."

"But, my dear Axel, Bibi is of far greater importance for the future of Lohm than any amount of ploughing."

"I confess I do not see how."

"I don't understand you."

"Why didn't you bring the little boys?"

"What have you asked me to come here for?"

"Come, Trudi, you've not been near me for eight months. Isn't it natural that you should pay me a little visit?"

"No, it isn't natural at all to come to such a place in winter, and leave all the fun at home. I came because of Bibi."

"What! You'll come for Bibi, but not for your own brother?"

"Now, Axel, you know very well that I have come for you both."

"For us both? What would Miss Bibi say if she heard you talking of herself and of me as 'you both'?"

"I wish you would not bother to go on like this. It's a great waste of time."

"So it is, my dear. Any talk about Bibi Bornstedt, as far as I am concerned, is a hopeless waste of time."

"Axel!"

"Trudi?"

"You don't mean to say that you are not thinking of her?"

"Thinking of her? I never let my thoughts linger round strange young ladies."

"Then what in heaven's name have you got me here for?"

"The anemones are coming out——"

"Ach——"

"They really are."

"Suppose instead of teasing me as though I were still ten and you a great bully, you talked sensibly. The Hohensteins give a bal masque to-night, and I gave it up to come to you."

"Oh, my dear, that was really kind," said Lohm, touched by the tremendousness of this sacrifice.

"Then be a good boy," said Trudi caressingly, edging herself closer to him, "and tell me you are going to be wise about Bibi. Don't throw such a chance away—it's positively wicked."

"My dear Trudi, you'll have us in the ditch. It is very nice when you lean against me, but I can't drive. By the way, you remember my old Kleinwalde neighbour? The old man who spoilt you so atrociously?"

"Bibi will make a most excellent wife," said Trudi, ungratefully indifferent to the memory of old Joachim. "Oh, what a cold wind there is to-day. Do drive faster, Axel. What a taste, to live here and to like it into the bargain!"

"You know that I must live here."

"But you needn't like it."

"You've heard that old Joachim left Kleinwalde to his English niece?"

"You have only seen Bibi once, and she grows on one tremendously."

"I want to talk about old Joachim."

"And I want to talk about Bibi."

"Well, Bibi can wait. She is the younger. You know about the old man's will?"

"I should think I did. One of his unfortunate sons has just joined our regiment. You should hear him on the subject."

"A most disagreeable, grasping lot," said Lohm decidedly. "They received every bit of their dues, and are all well off. Surely the old man could do as he liked with the one place that was not entailed?"

"It isn't the usual thing to leave one's land to a foreigner. Is she coming to live in it?"

"She came last week."

"Oh?" This in a tone of sudden interest.

There was a pause. Then Trudi said, "Is she young?"

"Quite young."

"Pretty?"

"Exceedingly pretty."

Trudi looked up at him and smiled.

"Well?" said Axel, smiling back at her.

"Well?" said Trudi, continuing to smile.

Axel laughed outright. "My dear Trudi, your astuteness terrifies me. You not only know already why I wrote to you, but you know more reasons for the letter than I myself dream of. I want to be able to help this extremely helpless young lady, and I can hardly be of any use to her because I have no woman in the house. If I had a wife I could be of the greatest assistance."

"Only then you wouldn't want to be."

"Certainly I should."

"Pray, why?"

"Because I have a greater debt of obligations to her uncle than I can ever repay to his niece."

"Oh, nonsense—nobody pays their debts of obligations. The natural thing to do is to hate the person who has forced you to be grateful, and to get out of his way."

"My dear Trudi, this shrewdness——" murmured her brother. Then he added, "I know perfectly well that your thoughts have already flown to a wedding. Mine don't reach farther than an elderly companion."

"Who for? For you?"

"Miss Estcourt is looking for an elderly companion, and I would be grateful to you if you would help her."

"But the elderly companion does not exclude the wedding."

"When you see Miss Estcourt you will understand how completely such a possibility is outside her calculations. You won't of course believe that it is outside mine. Why should you want to marry me to every girl within reach? Five minutes ago it was Bibi, and now it is Miss Estcourt. You do not in the least consider what views the girls themselves might have. Miss Estcourt is absorbed at this moment in a search for twelve old ladies."

"Twelve——?"

"Her ambition is to spend herself and her money on twelve old ladies. She thinks happiness and money are as good for them as for herself, and wants to share her own with persons who have neither."

"My dear Axel—is she mad?"

"She did not give me that impression."

"And you say she is young?"

"Yes."

"And really pretty?"

"Yes."

"And could be so well off in that flourishing place!"

"Of course she could."

"I'll go and call on her to-morrow," said Trudi decidedly.

"It will be kind of you," said Lohm.

"Kind! It isn't kindness, it's curiosity," said Trudi with a laugh. "Let us be frank, and call things by their right names."

Anna was in the garden, admiring the first crocus, when Trudi appeared. She drove Axel's cobs up to the door in what she felt was excellent style, and hoped Miss Estcourt was watching her from a window and would see that Englishwomen were not the only sportswomen in the world. But Anna saw nothing but the crocus.

The wilderness down to the marsh that did duty as a garden was so sheltered and sunny that spring stopped there first each year before going on into the forest; and Anna loved to walk straight out of the drawing-room window into it, bare-headed and coatless, whenever she had time. Trudi saw her coming towards the house upon the servant's telling her that a lady had called. "Nothing on, on a cold day like this!" she thought. She herself wore a particularly sporting driving-coat, with an immense collar turned up over her ears. "I wonder," mused Trudi, watching the approaching figure, "how it is that English girls, so tidy in the clothes, so trim in the shoes, so neat in the tie and collar, never apparently brush their hair. A German Miss Estcourt vegetating in this quiet place would probably wear grotesque and disconnected garments, doubtful boots and striking stockings, her figure would rapidly give way before the insidiousness of Schweinebraten, but her hair would always be beautifully done, each plait smooth and in its proper place, each little curl exactly where it ought to be, the parting a model of straightness, and the whole well deserving to be dignified by the name Frisur. English girls have hair, but they do not have Frisurs."

Anna came in through the open window, and Trudi's face expanded into the most genial smiles. "How glad I am to make your acquaintance!" she cried enthusiastically. She spoke English quite as correctly as her brother, and much more glibly. "I hope you will let me help you if I can be of any use. My brother says your uncle was so good to him. When I lived here he was very kind to me too. How brave of you to stay here! And what wonderful plans you have made! My brother has told me about your twelve ladies. What courage to undertake to make twelve women happy. I find it hard enough work making one person happy."

"One person? Oh, Graf Hasdorf."

"Oh no, myself. You see, if each person devoted his energies to making himself happy, everybody would be happy."

"No, they wouldn't," said Anna, "because they do, but they're not."

They looked at each other and laughed. "She only needs Jungbluth to be perfect," thought Trudi; and with her usual impulsiveness began immediately to love her.

Anna was delighted to meet someone of her own class and age after the severe though short course she had had of Dellwigs and Manskes; and Trudi was so much interested in her plans, and so pressing in her offers of help, that she very soon found herself telling her all her difficulties about servants, sheets, wall-papers, and whitewash. "Look at this paper," she said, "could you live in the same room with it? No one will ever be able to feel cheerful as long as it is here. And the one in the dining-room is worse."

"It isn't beautiful," said Trudi, examining it, "but it is what we call praktisch."

"Then I don't like what you call praktisch."

"Neither do I. All the hideous things are praktisch—oil-cloth, black wall-papers, handkerchiefs a yard square, thick boots, ugly women—if ever you hear a woman praised as a praktische Frau, be sure she's frightful in every way—ugly and dull. The uglier she is the praktischer she is. Oh," said Trudi, casting up her eyes, "how terrible, how tragic, to be an ugly woman!" Then, bringing her gaze down again to Anna's face, she added, "My flat in Hanover is all pinks and blues—the most becoming rooms you can imagine. I look so nice in them."

"Pinks and blues? That is just what I want here. Can't I get any in Stralsund?"

Trudi was doubtful. She could not think it possible that anybody should ever get anything in Stralsund.

"But I must do my shopping there. I am in such a hurry. It would be dreadful to have to keep anyone waiting only because my house isn't ready."

"Well, we can try," said Trudi. "You will let me go with you, won't you?"

"I shall be more than grateful if you will come."

"What do you think if we went now?" suggested Trudi, always for prompt action, and quickly tired of sitting still. "My brother said I might drive into Stralsund to-day if I liked, and I have the cobs here now. Don't you think it would be a good thing, as you are in such a hurry?"

"Oh, a very good thing," exclaimed Anna. "How kind you are! You are sure it won't bore you frightfully?"

"Oh, not a bit. It will be rather amusing to go into those shops for once, and I shall like to feel that I have helped the good work on a little."

Anna thought Trudi delightful. Trudi's new friends always did think her delightful; and she never had any old ones.

She drove recklessly, and they lurched and heaved through the sand between Kleinwalde and Lohm at an alarming rate. They passed Letty and Miss Leech, going for their afternoon walk, who stood on one side and stared.

"Who's that?" asked Trudi.

"My brother's little girl and her governess."

"Oh yes, I heard about them. They are to stay and take care of you till you have a companion. Your sister-in-law didn't like Kleinwalde?"

"No."

Trudi laughed.

They passed Dellwig, riding, who swept off his hat with his customary deference, and stared.

"Do you like him?" asked Trudi.

"Who?"

"Dellwig. I know him from the days before I married."

"I don't know him very well yet," said Anna, "but he seems to be very—very polite."

Trudi laughed again, and cracked her whip.

"My uncle had great faith in him," said Anna, slightly aggrieved by the laugh.

"Your uncle was one of the best farmers in Germany, I have always heard. He was so experienced, and so clever, that he could have led a hundred Dellwigs round by the nose. Dellwig was naturally quite small, as we say, in the presence of your uncle. He knew very well it would be useless to be anything but immaculate under such a master. Perhaps your uncle thought he would go on being immaculate from sheer habit, with nobody to look after him."

"I suppose he did," said Anna doubtfully. "He told me to keep him. It's quite certain that I can't look after him."

They passed Axel Lohm, also riding. He was on Trudi's side of the road. He looked pleased when he saw Anna with his sister. Trudi whipped up the cobs, regardless of his feelings, and tore past him, scattering the sand right and left. When she was abreast of him, she winked her eye at him with perfect solemnity.

Axel looked stony.



CHAPTER XI

Neither Trudi nor Anna had ever worked so hard as they did during the few days that ended March and began April. Everything seemed to happen at once. The house was in a sudden uproar. There were people whitewashing, people painting, people putting up papers, people bringing things in carts from Stralsund, people trimming up the garden, people coming out to offer themselves as servants, Dellwig coming in and shouting, Manske coming round and glorifying—Anna would have been completely bewildered if it had not been for Trudi, who was with her all day long, going about with a square of lace and muslin tucked under her waist-ribbon which she felt was becoming and said was an apron.

Trudi was enjoying herself hugely. She saw Jungbluth's waves slowly straightening themselves out of her hair, and for the first time in her life remained calm as she watched them go. She even began to have aspirations towards Uncle Joachim's better life herself, and more than once entered into a serious consideration of the advantages that might result from getting rid at one stroke of Bill her husband, and Billy and Tommy her two sons, and from making a fresh start as one of Anna's twelve.

Frau Manske and Frau Dellwig could not face her infinite superciliousness more than once, and kept out of the way in spite of their burning curiosity. When Dellwig's shouts became intolerable, she did not hesitate to wince conspicuously and to put up her hand to her head. When Manske forgot that it was not Sunday, and began to preach, she would interrupt him with a brisk "Ja, ja, sehr schoen, sehr schoen, aber lieber Herr Pastor, you must tell us all this next Sunday in church when we have time to listen—my friend has not a minute now in which to appreciate the opinions of the Apostel Paulus."

"I believe you are being unkind to my parson," said Anna, who could not always understand Trudi's rapid German, but saw that Manske went away dejected.

"My dear, he must be kept in his place if he tries to come out of it. You don't know what a set these pastors are. They are not like your clergymen. If you are too kind to that man you'll have no peace. I remember in my father's time he came to dinner every Sunday, sat at the bottom of the table, and when the pudding appeared made a bow and went away."

"He didn't like pudding?"

"I don't know if he liked it or not, but he never got any. It was a good old custom that the pastor should withdraw before the pudding, and Axel has not kept it up. My father never had any bother with him."

"But what has the pudding that he didn't get ten years ago to do with your being unkind to him now?"

"I wanted to explain the proper footing for him to be on."

"And the proper footing is a puddingless one? Well, in my house neither pudding nor kindness in suitable quantities shall be withheld from him, so don't ill-use him more than you feel is absolutely necessary for his good."

"Oh, you are a dear little thing!" said Trudi, putting her hands on Anna's shoulders and looking into her eyes—they were both tall young women, and their eyes were on a level—"I wonder what the end of you will be. When you know all these people better you'll see that my way of treating them, which you think unkind, is the only way. You must turn up your nose as high as it will go at them, and they will burst with respect. Don't be too friendly and confiding—they won't understand it, and will be sure to think that something must be wrong about you, and will begin to backbite you, and invent all sorts of horrid stories about you. And as for the pastor, why should he be allowed to treat your rooms as though they were so many pulpits, and you as though you had never heard of the Apostel Paulus?"

Anna admitted that she was not always in the proper frame of mind for these unprovoked sermons, but refused to believe in the necessity for turning up her nose. She ostentatiously pressed Manske, the very next time he came, to stay to the evening meal, which was rather of the nature of a picnic in those unsettled days, but at which, for Letty's sake, there was always a pudding; and she invited him to eat pudding three times running, and each time he accepted the offer; and each time, when she had helped him, she fixed her eyes with a defiant gravity on Trudi's face.

Axel came in sometimes when he had business at the farm, and was shown what progress had been made. Trudi was as interested as though it had been her own house, and took him about, demanding his approval and admiration with an enthusiasm that spread to Anna, and she and Axel soon became good friends. The Stralsund wall-papers were so dreadful that Anna had declared she would have most of the rooms whitewashed; the hall had been done, exchanging its pea-green coat for one of virgin purity, and she had thought it so fresh and clean, and so appropriate to the simplicity of the better life, that to the amazement of the workmen she insisted on the substitution of whitewash in both dining and drawing-room for the handsome chocolate-coloured papers already in those rooms.

"The twelve will think it frightful," said Trudi.

"But why?" asked Anna, who had fallen in love with whitewash. "It is purity itself. It will be symbolical of the innocence and cleanliness that will be in our hearts when we have got used to each other, and are happy."

Trudi looked again at the hall, into which the afternoon sun was streaming. It did look very clean, certainly, and exceedingly cheerful; she was sure, however, that it would never be symbolical of any heart that came into it. But then Trudi was sceptical about hearts.

At the end of Easter week, when Trudi was beginning to feel slightly tired of whitewash and scrambled meals, and to have doubts as to the permanent becomingness of aprons, and misgivings as to the effect on her complexion of running about a cold house all day long, answers to the advertisements began to arrive, and soon arrived in shoals. These letters acted as bellows on the flickering flame of her zeal. She found them extraordinarily entertaining, and would meet Manske in the hall when he brought them round, and take them out of his hands, and run with them to Anna, leaving him standing there uncertain whether he ought to stay and be consulted, or whether it was expected of him that he should go home again without having unburdened himself of all the advice he felt that he contained. He deplored what he called das impulsive Temperament of the Graefin. Always had she been so, since the days she climbed his cherry-trees and helped the birds to strip them; and when, with every imaginable precaution, he had approached her father on the subject, and carefully excluding the word cherry hinted that the climbing of trees was a perilous pastime for young ladies, old Lohm had burst into a loud laugh, and had sworn that neither he nor anyone else could do anything with Trudi. He actually had seemed proud that she should steal cherries, for he knew very well why she climbed the trees, and predicted a brilliant future for his only daughter; to which Manske had listened respectfully as in duty bound, and had gone home unconvinced.

But Anna did not let him stand long in the hall, and came to fetch him and beg him to help her read the letters and tell her what he thought of them. In spite of Trudi's advice and example she continued to treat the pastor with the deference due to a good and simple man. What did it matter if he talked twice as much as he need have done, and wearied her with his habit of puffing Christianity as though it were a quack medicine of which he was the special patron? He was sincere, he really believed something, and really felt something, and after five days with Trudi Anna turned to Manske's elementary convictions with relief. In five days she had come to be very glad that Trudi stood in no need of a place among the twelve.

Most of the women who wrote in answer to the advertisement sent photographs, and their letters were pitiful enough, either because of what they said or because of what they tried to hide; and Anna's appreciation of Trudi received a great shock when she found that the letters amused her, and that the photographs, especially those of the old ones or the ugly ones, moved her to a mirth little short of unseemly. After all, Trudi was taking a great deal upon herself, Anna thought, reading the letters unasked, helping her to open them unasked, hurrying down to fetch them unasked, and deluging her with advice about them unasked. She saw she had made a mistake in allowing her to see them at all. She had no right to expose the petitions of these unhappy creatures to Trudi's inquisitive and diverted eyes. This fact was made very patent to her when one of the letters that Trudi opened turned out to be from a person she had known. "Why," cried Trudi, her face twinkling with excitement, "here's one from a girl who was at school with me. And her photo, too—what a shocking scarecrow she has grown into! She is only two years older than I am, but might be forty. Just look at her—and she used to think none of us were good enough for her. Don't have her, whatever you do—she married one of the officers in Bill's first regiment, and treated him so shamefully that he shot himself. Imagine her boldness in writing like this!" And she began eagerly to read the letter.

Anna got up and took it out of her hands. It was an unexpected action, or Trudi would have held on tighter. "She never dreamed you would see what she wrote," said Anna, "and it would be dishonourable of me to let you. And the other letters too—I have been thinking it over—they are only meant for me; and no one else, except perhaps the parson, ought to see them."

"Except perhaps the parson!" cried Trudi, greatly offended. "And why except perhaps the parson?"

"I can't always read the German writing," explained Anna.

"But surely a woman of your own age, who isn't such a simpleton as the parson, is the best adviser you can have."

"But you laugh at the letters, and they are all so unhappy."

Trudi went back to Lohm early that day. "She has taken it into her head that I am not to read the letters," she said to her brother with no little indignation.

"It would be a great breach of confidence if she allowed you to," he replied; which was so unsatisfactory that she drove into Stralsund that very afternoon, and consoled herself with the pliable Bibi.

Bibi's nose seemed more unsuccessful than ever after having had Anna's before her for nearly a week; but then the richness of the girl! And such a good-natured, generous girl, who would adore her sister-in-law and make her presents. Contemplating the good Bibi in her afternoon splendour from Paris, Trudi's heart stirred within her at the thought of all that was within Axel's reach if only he could be induced to put out his hand and take it. Anna would never marry him, Trudi was certain—would never marry anyone, being completely engrossed by her philanthropic follies; but if she did, what was her probable income compared to Bibi's? And Axel would never look at Bibi so long as that other girl lived next door to him; nobody could expect him to. Anna was too pretty; it was not fair. And Bibi was so very plain; which was not fair either.

The Regierungspraesidentin, a cousin by marriage of Bibi's, but a member of an ancient family of the Mark, was delighted to see Trudi and to question her about the new and eccentric arrival. Trudi had offered to take Anna to call on this lady, and had explained that it was her duty to call; but Anna had said there was no hurry, and had talked of some day, and had been manifestly bored by the prospect of making new acquaintances.

"Is she quite—quite in her right senses?" asked the Regierungspraesidentin, when Trudi had described all they had been doing in Anna's house, and all Anna meant to do with her money, and had made her description so smart and diverting that the Regierungspraesidentin, an alert little lady, with ears perpetually pricked up in the hope of catching gossip, felt that she had not enjoyed an afternoon so much for years.

Bibi sat listening with her mouth wide open. It was an artless way of hers when she was much interested in a conversation, and was deplored by those who wished her well.

"Oh, yes, she is quite in her senses. Rather too sure she knows best, always, but quite in her senses."

"Then she is very religious?"

"Not in the ordinary way, I should think. She goes in for nature. Gott in der Natur, and that sort of thing. If the sun shines more than usual she goes and stands in it, and turns up her eyes and gushes. There's a crocus in the garden, and when we came to it yesterday she stopped in front of it and rhapsodised for ten minutes about things that have nothing to do with crocuses—chiefly about the lieben Gott. And all in English, of course, and it sounds worse in English."

"But then, my dear, she is religious?"

"Oh, well, the pastor would not call it religion. It's a sort of huddle-muddle pantheism as far as it is anything at all." From which it will be seen that Trudi was even more frank about her friends behind their backs than she was to their faces.

She drove back to Lohm in a discontented frame of mind. "What's the good of anything?" was the mood she was in. She had over-tired herself helping Anna, and she was afraid that being so much in cold rooms and passages, and washing in hard water, had made her skin coarse. She had caught sight of herself in a glass as she was leaving the Regierungspraesidentin, and had been disconcerted by finding that she did not look as pretty as she felt. Nor was she consoled for this by the consciousness that she had been unusually amusing at Anna's expense; for she was only too certain that the Regierungspraesidentin, when repeating all she had told her to her friends, would add that Trudi Hasdorf had terribly eingepackt—dreadful word, descriptive of the faded state immediately preceding wrinkles, and held in just abhorrence by every self-respecting woman. Of what earthly use was it to be cleverer and more amusing than other people if at the same time you had eingepackt?

"What a stupid world it is," thought Trudi, driving along the chaussee in the early April twilight. A mist lay over the sea, and the pale sickle of the young moon rose ghost-like above the white shroud. Inland the stars were faintly shining, and all the earth beneath was damp and fragrant. It was Saturday evening, and the two bells of Lohm church were plaintively ringing their reminder to the countryside that the week's work was ended and God's day came next. "Oh, the stupid world," thought Trudi. "If I stay here I shall be bored to death—that Estcourt child and her governess have got on to my nerves—horrid fat child with turned-in toes, and flabby, boneless woman, only held together by her hairpins. I am sick of governesses and children—wherever one goes, there they are. If I go home, there are those noisy little boys and Fraeulein Schultz worrying all day, and then there's that tiresome Bill coming in to meals. Anna and Bibi are just in the position I would like to be in—no husbands and children, and lots of money." And staring straight before her, with eyes dark with envy, she fell into gloomy musings on the beauty of Bibi's dress, and the blindness of fate, throwing away a dress like that on a Bibi, when it was so eminently suited to tall, slim women like herself; and it was fortunate for Axel's peace that when she reached Lohm the first thing she saw was a letter from the objectionable Bill telling her to come home, because the foreign prince who was honorary colonel of the regiment was expected immediately in Hanover, and there were to be great doings in his honour.

She left, all smiles, the next morning by the first train.

"Miss Estcourt will miss you," said Axel, "and will wonder why you did not say good-bye. I am afraid your journey will be unpleasant, too, to-day. I wish you had stayed till to-morrow."

"Oh, I don't mind the Sunday people once in a way," said Trudi gaily. "And please tell Anna how it was I had to go so suddenly. I have started her, at least, with the workmen and people she wants. I shall see her in a few weeks again, you know, when Bill is at the man[oe]uvres."

"A few weeks! Six months."

"Well, six months. You must both try to exist without me for that time."

"You seem very pleased to be off," he said, smiling, as she climbed briskly into the dog-cart and took the reins, while her maid, with her arms full of bags, was hoisted up behind.

"Oh, so pleased!" said Trudi, looking down at him with sparkling eyes. "Princes and parties are jollier any day than whitewash and the better life."

"And brothers."

"Oh—brothers. By the way, I never saw Bibi look better than she did yesterday. She has improved so much nobody would know——"

"You will miss your train," said Axel, pulling out his watch.

"Well, good-bye then, alter Junge. Work hard, do your duty, and don't let your thoughts linger too much round strange young ladies. They never do, I think you said? Well, so much the better, for it's no good, no good, no good!" And Trudi, who was in tremendous spirits, put her whip to the brim of her hat by way of a parting salute, touched up the cobs, and rattled off down the drive on the road to Jungbluth and glory. She turned her head before she finally disappeared, to call back her oracular "No good!" once again to Axel, who stood watching her from the steps of his solitary house.



CHAPTER XII

So Anna was left to herself again. She was astonished at the rapidity of Trudi's movements. Within one week she had heard of her, met her, liked her, begun to like her less, and lost her. She had flashed across the Kleinwalde horizon, and left a trail of workmen and new servants behind, with whom Anna was now occupied, unaided, from morning till night. Miss Leech and Letty did all they could, but their German being restricted to quotations from the Erl-Koenig and the Lied von der Glocke, it could not be brought to bear with any profitable results on the workmen. The servants, too, were a perplexity to Anna. Their cheapness was extraordinary, but their quality curious. Her new parlourmaid—for she felt unequal to coping with German men-servants—wore her arms naked all day long. Anna thought she had tucked up her sleeves in her zeal for thoroughness, but when she appeared with the afternoon coffee—the local tea was undrinkable—she still had bare arms; and, examining her more closely, Anna saw that it was her usual state, for her dress was sleeveless. Nor was her want of sleeves her only peculiarity. Anna began to wonder whether her house would ever be ready for the twelve.

The answers to the philanthropic advertisement were in a proportion of fifty to one answer to the advertisement for a companion. There were fifty ladies without means willing to be idle, to one lady without means willing to work. It worried Anna terribly, being obliged by want of room and money to limit the number to twelve. She could hardly bear to read the letters, knowing that nearly all had to be rejected. "See how many sad lives are being dragged through while we are so comfortable," she said to Manske, when he brought round fresh piles of letters to add to those already heaped on her table.

He shook his head in perplexity. He was bewildered by the masses of answers, by the apparent universality of impoverishment and hopelessness among Christian ladies of good family.

He could not come himself more than once a day, and the letters arrived by every post; so in the afternoon he sent Herr Klutz, the young cleric of poetic promptings, who had celebrated Anna on her arrival in a poem which for freshness and spontaneousness equalled, he considered, the best sonnets that had ever been written. What a joy it was to a youth of imagination, to a poet who thought his features not unlike Goethe's, and who regarded it as by no means an improbability that his brain should turn out to be stamped with the same resemblance, to walk daily through the gleaming, whispering forest, swinging his stick and composing snatches not unworthy of her of whom they treated, his face towards the magic Schloss and its enchanted princess, and his pockets full of her letters! Herr Klutz's coat was clerical, but his brown felt hat and the flower in his buttonhole were typical of the worldliness within. "A poet," he assured himself often, "is a citizen of the world, and is not to be narrowed down to any one circle or creed." But he did not expound this view to the good man who was helping him to prepare for the examination that would make him a full-fledged pastor, and received his frequent blessings, and assisted at prayers and intercessions of which he was the subject, with outward decorum.

The first time he brought the letters, Anna received him with her usual kindness; but there was something in his manner that displeased her, whether it was self-assurance, or conceit, or a way he had of looking at her, she could not tell, nor did she waste many seconds trying to decide; but the next day when he came he was not admitted to her presence, nor the next after that, nor for some time to come. This surprised Herr Klutz, who was of Dellwig's opinion that the most superior woman was not equal to the average man; and take away any advantage of birth or position or wealth that she might possess, why, there she was, only a woman, a creature made to be conquered and brought into obedience to man. Being young and poetic he differed from Dellwig on one point: to Dellwig, woman was a servant; to Klutz, an admirable toy. Clearly such a creature could only be gratified by opportunities of seeing and conversing with members of the opposite sex. The Miss's conduct, therefore, in allowing her servant to take the letters from him at the door, puzzled him.

He often met Miss Leech and Letty on his way to or from Kleinwalde, and always stopped to speak to them and to teach them a few German sentences and practise his own small stock of English; and from them he easily discovered all that the young woman he favoured with his admiration was doing. Lohm, riding over to Kleinwalde to settle differences between Dellwig and the labourers, or to try offenders, met these three several times, and supposed that Klutz must be courting the governess.

The day Trudi left, Lohm had gone round to Anna and delivered his sister's message in a slightly embellished form. "You will have everything to do now unassisted," he said. "I do trust that in any difficulty you will let me help you. If the workmen are insolent, for instance, or if your new servants are dishonest or in any way give you trouble. You know it is my duty as Amtsvorsteher to interfere when such things happen."

"You are very kind," said Anna gratefully, looking up at the grave, good face, "but no one is insolent. And look—here is some one who wants to come as companion. It is the first of the answers to that advertisement that pleases me."

Lohm took the letter and photograph and examined them. "She is a Penheim, I see," he said. "It is a very good family, but some of its branches have been reduced to poverty, as so many of our old families have been."

"Don't you think she would do very well?"

"Yes, if she is and does all she says in her letter. You might propose that she should come at first for a few weeks on trial. You may not like her, and she may not appreciate philanthropic housekeeping."

Anna laughed. "I am doubly anxious to get someone soon," she said, "because my sister-in-law wants Letty and Miss Leech."

Letty and Miss Leech heaved tragic sighs at this; they had no desire whatever to go home.

"Will you not feel rather forlorn when they are gone, and you are quite alone among strangers?"

"I shall miss them, but I don't mean to be forlorn," said Anna, smiling.

"The courage of the little thing!" thought Lohm. "Ready to brave anything in pursuit of her ideals. It makes one ashamed of one's own grumblings and discouragements."

Anna arranged with Frau von Penheim that she should come at once on a three months' trial; and immediately this was settled she wrote to Susie to ask what day Letty was to be sent home. She had had no communication with Susie since that angry lady's departure. To Peter she had written, explaining her plans and her reasons, and her hopes and yearnings, and had received a hasty scrawl in reply dated from Estcourt, conveying his blessing on herself and her scheme. "Susie came straight down here," he wrote, "because of the Alderton wedding to which she was not asked, and went to bed. You know, my dear little sister, anything that makes you happy contents me. I wish you could have seen your way to benefiting reduced English ladies, for you are a long way off; but of course you have the house free over there. Don't let Miss Leech leave you till you are perfectly satisfied with your companion. Yesterday I landed the biggest——" etc. In a word, Peter, in accordance with his invariable custom, was on her side.

The day before Frau von Penheim was to arrive, Susie's answer to Anna's letter came. Here it is:—

"DEAR ANNA,—Your letter surprised me, though I might have known by now what to expect of you.—Still, I was surprised that you should not even offer to make the one return in your power for all I have done for you. As I feel I have a right to some return I don't hesitate to tell you that I think you ought to keep Letty for a year or two, or even longer. Even if you kept her till she is eighteen, and dressed her and fed her (don't feed her too much), it would only be four years; and what are four years I should like to know, compared to the fifteen I had you on my hands? I was talking to Herr Schumpf about her the other day—his bills were so absurd that I made him take something off—and he said by all means let her stay in Germany. Everybody speaks German nowadays, and Letty will pick it up at once in that awful place of yours. I was so ill when I got back that I went to Estcourt, and had to stay in bed for days, the doctor coming every day, and sometimes twice. He said he didn't wonder, when I told him all I had gone through. Peter was quite sorry for me. Send Miss Leech back. Give her a month's notice for me the day you get this, and see if you can't find some German who will go to your place—I can't remember its wretched name without looking in my address book—and give Letty lessons every day. The rest of the time she can talk German to your twelve victims. I believe masters in Germany only charge about 6d. an hour, so it won't ruin you. Make her take lots of exercise, and let her ride. She has outgrown her old habit, but German tailors are so cheap that a new one will cost next to nothing, and any horse that shakes her up well will do. I shall be quite happy about her diet, because I know you don't have anything to eat. I was at the Ennistons' last night. They seemed very sorry for me being so nearly related to somebody cracked; but after all, as I tell people, I'm not responsible for my husband's relations.—Your affectionate, SUSIE ESTCOURT.

"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.

"Natuerlich," 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 circumstances 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 title 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.