The Benefactress
Copyright© 2024 by Elizabeth Von Arnim
Chapter 19
Anna put on her hat and went out to think it over. Fräulein Kuhräuber was apparently still asleep. Letty, accompanied by Miss Leech, had to go to Lohm parsonage for her first lesson with Herr Klutz, who had undertaken to teach her German. Frau von Treumann said she must write at once to Karlchen, and shut herself up to do it. The baroness was vague as to her intentions, and disappeared. So Anna started off by herself, crossed the road, and walked quickly away into the forest. “If it makes her so happy, then I am glad,” she said to herself. “She is here to be happy; and if she wants Karlchen so badly, why then she must have him from time to time. I wonder why I don’t like Karlchen.”
She walked quickly, with her eyes on the ground. The mood in which she sang magnificats had left her, nor did she look to see what the April morning was doing. Frau von Treumann had not been under her roof twenty-four hours, and already her son had been added—if only occasionally, still undoubtedly added—to the party. Suppose the baroness and Fräulein Kuhräuber should severally disclose an inability to live without being visited by some cherished relative? Suppose the other nine, the still Unchosen, should each turn out to have a relative waiting tragically in the background for permission to make repeated calls? And suppose these relatives should all be male?
These were grave questions; so grave that she was quite at a loss how to answer them. And then she felt that somebody was looking at her; and raising her eyes, she saw Axel on the mossy path quite close to her.
“So deep in thought?” he asked, smiling at her start.
Anna wondered how it was that he so often went through the forest. Was it a short cut from Lohm to anywhere? She had met him three or four times lately, in quite out of the way parts. He seemed to ride through it and walk through it at all hours of the day.
“How is your potato-planting getting on?” she asked involuntarily. She knew what a rush there was just then putting the potatoes in, for she did not drive every day about her fields in a cart without springs with Dellwig for nothing. Axel must have potatoes to plant too; why didn’t he stay at home, then, and do it?
“What a truly proper question for a country lady to ask,” he said, looking amused. “You waste no time in conventional good mornings or asking how I do, but begin at once with potatoes. Well, I do not believe that you are really interested in mine, so I shall tell you nothing about them. You only want to remind me that I ought to be seeing them planted instead of walking about your woods.”
Anna smiled. “I believe I did mean something like that,” she said.
“Well, I am not so aimless as you suppose,” he returned, walking by her side. “I have been looking at that place.”
“What place?”
“Where Dellwig wants to build the brick-kiln.”
“Oh! What do you think of it?”
“What I knew I would think of it. It is a fool’s plan. The clay is the most wretched stuff. It has puzzled me, seeing how very poor it is, that he should be so eager to have the thing. I should have credited him with more sense.”
“He is quite absurdly keen on it. Last night I thought he would never stop persuading.”
“But you did not give in?”
“Not an inch. I said I would ask you to look at it, and then he was simply rude. I do believe he will have to go. I don’t really think we shall ever get on together. Certainly, as you say the clay is bad, I shall refuse to build a brick-kiln.”
Axel smiled at her energy. In the morning she was always determined about Dellwig. “You are very brave to-day,” he said. “Last night you seemed afraid of him.”
“He comes when I am tired. I am not going to see him in the evening any more. It is too dreadful as a finish to a happy day.”
“It was a happy day, then, yesterday?” he asked quickly.
“Yes—that is, it ought to have been, and probably would have been if—if I hadn’t been tired.”
“But the others—the new arrivals—they must have been happy?”
“Yes—oh yes—” said Anna, hesitating, “I think so. Fräulein Kuhräuber was, I am sure, at intervals. I think the other two would have been if they hadn’t had a journey.”
“By the way, do you remember what I said yesterday about the Elmreichs?”
“Yes, I do. You said horrid things.” Her voice changed.
“About a Baron Elmreich. But he had a sister who made a hash of her life. I saw her once or twice in Berlin. She was dancing at the Wintergarten, and under her own name.”
“Poor thing. But it doesn’t interest me.”
“Don’t get angry yet.”
“But it doesn’t interest me. And why shouldn’t she dance? I knew several people who ended by dancing at London Wintergartens.”
“You admit, then, that it is an end?”
“It is hardly a beginning,” conceded Anna.
“She was so amazingly like your baroness would be if she painted and wore a wig——”
“That you are convinced they must be sisters. Thank you. Now what do you suppose is the good of telling me that?” And she stood still and faced him, her eyes flashing.
Do what he would, Axel could not help smiling at her wrath. It was the wrath of a mother whose child has been hurt by someone on purpose, “I wish,” he said, “that you would not be so angry when I tell you things that might be important for you to know. If your baroness is really the sister of the dancing baroness——”
“But she is not. She told me last night that she has no brothers and sisters. And she wrote it in the letters before she came. Do you think it is a praiseworthy occupation for a man, doing his best to find out disgraceful things about a very poor and very helpless woman?”
“No, I do not,” said Axel decidedly. “Under any other circumstances I would leave the poor lady to take her chance. But do consider,” he said, following her, for she had begun to walk on quickly again, “do consider your unusual position. You are so young to be living away from your friends, and so young and inexperienced to be at the head of a home for homeless women—you ought to be quite extraordinarily particular about the antecedents of the people you take in. It would be most unpleasant if it got about that they were not respectable.”
“But they are respectable,” said Anna, looking straight before her.
“A sister who dances at the Wintergarten——”
“Did I not tell you that she has no sister?”
Axel shrugged his shoulders. “The resemblance is so striking that they might be twins,” he said.
“Then you think she says what is not true?”
“How can I tell?”
Anna stopped again and faced him. “Well, suppose it were true—suppose it is her sister, and she has tried to hide it—do you know how I should feel about it?”
“Properly scandalised, I hope.”
“I should love her all the more. Oh, I should love her twice as much! Why, think of the misery and the shame—poor, poor little woman—trying to hide it all, bearing it all by herself—she must have loved her sister, she must have loved her brother. It isn’t true, of course, but supposing it were, could you tell me any reason why I should turn my back on her?”
She stood looking at him, her eyes full of angry tears.
He did not answer. If that was the way she felt, what could he do?
“I never understood,” she went on passionately, “why the innocent should be punished. Do you suppose a woman would like her brother to cheat and then shoot himself? Or like her sister to go and dance? But if they do do these things, besides her own grief and horror, she is to be shunned by everybody as though she were infectious. Is that fair? Is that right? Is it in the least Christian?”
“No, of course it is not. It is very hard and very ugly, but it is quite natural. An old woman in a strong position might take such a person up, perhaps, and comfort her and love her as you propose to do, but a young girl ought not to do anything of the sort.”
Anna turned away with a quick movement of impatience and walked on. “If you argue on the young girl basis,” she said, “we shall never be able to talk about a single thing. When will you leave off about my young girlishness? In five years I shall be thirty—will you go on till I have reached that blessed age?”
“I have no right to go on to you about anything,” said Axel.
“Precisely,” said Anna.
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