“Ach — she asks you that often?”
“Yes — no, not quite like that. She says she knows why I am not married.”
“And what knows she?”
“She says that I frighten everybody away,” said Anna, digging the point of her sunshade into the ground. Then she looked at Uncle Joachim, and laughed.
“What?” he said incredulously. This pretty creature standing before him, so soft and young — for that she was twenty-four was hardly credible — could not by any possibility be anything but lovable.
“She says that I am disagreeable to people — that I look cross — that I don’t encourage them enough. Now isn’t it simply terrible to be expected to encourage any wretched man who has money? I don’t want anybody to marry me. I don’t want to buy my independence that way. Besides, it isn’t really independence.”
“For a woman it is the one life,” said Uncle Joachim with great decision. “Talk not to me of independence. Such words are not for the lips of girls. It is a woman’s pride to lean on a good husband. It is her happiness to be shielded and protected by him. Outside the narrow circle of her home, for her happiness is not. The woman who never marries has missed all things.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Anna.
“It is nevertheless true.”
“Look at Susie — is she so happy?”
“I said a good husband; not a Duselfritz.”
“And as for narrow circles, why, how happy, how gloriously happy, I could be outside them, if only I were independent!”
“Independent — independent,” repeated Uncle Joachim testily, “always this same foolish word. What hast thou in thy head, child, thy pretty woman’s head, made, if ever head was, to lean on a good man’s shoulder?”
“Oh — good men’s shoulders,” said Anna, shrugging her own, “I don’t want to lean on anybody’s shoulder. I want to hold my head up straight, all by itself. Do you then admire limp women, dear uncle, whose heads roll about all loose till a good man comes along and props them up?”
“These are English ideas. I like them not,” said Uncle Joachim, looking stony.
Anna sat down on the seat by his side, and laid her cheek for a moment against his sleeve. “This is the only good man’s shoulder it will ever lean on,” she said. “If I were a preacher, do you know what I would preach?”
“Thou art not, and never wilt be, a preacher.”
“But if I were? Do you know what I would preach? Early and late? In season and out of it?”
“Much nonsense, I doubt not.”
“I would preach independence. Only that. Always that. They would be sermons for women only; and they would be warnings against props.”
She sat up and looked at him out of the corners of her eyes, but he continued to stare stonily into space.
“I would thump the cushions, and cry out, ‘Be independent, independent, independent! Don’t talk so much, and do more. Go your own way, and let your neighbour go his. Don’t meddle with other people when you have all your own work cut out for you being good yourself. Shake off all the props — —’”
“Anna, thou art talking folly.”
“‘ — shake them off, the props tradition and authority offer you, and go alone — crawl, stumble, stagger, but go alone. You won’t learn to walk without tumbles, and knocks, and bruises, but you’ll never learn to walk at all so long as there are props.’ Oh,” she said fervently, casting up her eyes, “there is nothing, nothing like getting rid of one’s props!”
“I never yet,” observed Uncle Joachim, in his turn casting up his eyes, “saw a girl who so greatly needs the guidance of a good man. Hast thou never loved, then?” he added, turning on her suddenly.
“Yes,” replied Anna promptly. If Uncle Joachim chose to ask such direct questions she would give him straight answers.
“But —— ?”
“He went away and married somebody else. I had no money, and she had a great deal. So you see he was a very sensible young man.” And she laughed, for she had long ago ceased to be anything but amused by the remembrance of her one excursion into the rocky regions of love.
“That,” said Uncle Joachim, “was not true love.”
“Oh, but it was.”
“Nay. One does not laugh at love.”
“It was all I had, anyhow. There isn’t any more left. It was very bad while it lasted, and it took at least two years to get over it. What things I did to please that young man and appear lovely in his eyes! The hours it took to dress, and get my hair done just right. I endured tortures if I didn’t look as beautiful as I thought I could look, and was always giving my poor maid notice. And plots — the way I plotted to get taken to the places where he would be! I never was so artful before or since. Poor Susie was quite helpless. It is a mercy it all ended as it did.”
“That,” repeated Uncle Joachim, “was not true love.”
“Yes, it was.”
“No, my child.”
“Yes, my uncle. I laugh now, but it was very dreadful at the time.”
“Thou art but a goose,” he said, shrugging his shoulders; but immediately patted her hand lest her feelings should have been hurt. And, declining further argument, he demanded to be taken to the Great Vine.
It was in this fashion, Anna talking and Uncle Joachim making brief comments, that he came to know her as thoroughly as though he had lived with her all his life.
Soon after the excursion to Hampton Court a letter came that hurried his departure, to Susie’s ill-concealed relief.
“My swines are ill,” he informed her, greatly agitated, his fragile English going altogether to pieces in his perturbation; “my inspector writes they perpetually die. God keep thee, Anna,” and he embraced her very tenderly, and bending hastily over Susie’s hand muttered some conventionalities, and then disappeared into his four-wheeler and out of their lives.
They never saw him again.
“My swines are ill,” mimicked Susie, when Anna, feeling that she had lost her one friend, came slowly back into the room, “my swines perpetually die—”
Anna was obliged to go and pray very hard at St. Paul’s before she could forgive her.
CHAPTER III
The old man died at Christmas, and in the following March, when Anna was going about more sad and listless than ever, the news came that, though his inherited estates had gone to his sons, he had bought a little place some years before with the intention of retiring to it in his extreme old age, and this little place he had left to his dear and only niece Anna.
She was alone when the letters bringing the news arrived, sitting in the drawing-room with a book in her hands at which she did not look, feeling utterly downcast, indifferent, too hopeless to want anything or mind anything, accepting her destiny of years of days like this, with herself going through them lonely, useless, and always older, and telling herself that she did not after all care. “What does it matter, so long as I have a comfortable bed, and fires when I am cold, and meals when I am hungry?” she thought. “Not to have those is the only real misery. All the rest is purest fancy. What right have I to be happier than other people? If they are contented by such things, I can be contented too. And what does a useless being like me deserve, I should like to know? It was detestably ungrateful of me to have been unhappy all this time.”
She got up aimlessly, and looked out of the window into the sunny street, where the dust was racing by on the gusty March wind, and the women selling daffodils at the corner were more battered and blown about and red-eyed than ever. She had often, in those moments when her whole body tingled with a wild longing to be up and doing and justifying her existence before it was too late, envied these poor women, because they worked. She wondered vaguely now at her folly. “It is much better to be comfortable,” she thought, going back to the fire as aimlessly as she had gone to the window, “and it is sheer idiocy quarrelling with a life that other people would think quite tolerable.”
Then the door opened, and the lett
ers were brought in — the wonderful letters that struck the whole world into radiance — lying together with bills and ordinary notes on a salver, carried by an indifferent servant, handed to her as though they were things of naught — the wonderful letters that changed her life.
At first she did not understand what it was that they meant, and pored over the cramped German writing, reading the long sentences over and over again, till something suddenly seemed to clutch at her heart. Was this possible? Was this actual truth? Was Uncle Joachim, who had so much objected to her longing for independence, giving it to her with both hands, and every blessing along with it? She read them through again, very carefully, holding them with shaking hands. Yes, it was true. She began to cry, sobbing over them for very love and tenderness, her whole being melted into gratitude and humbleness, awestruck by a sense of how little she had deserved it, dazzled by the thousand lovely colours life, in the twinkling of an eye, had taken on.
There were two letters — one from Uncle Joachim’s lawyer, and one from Uncle Joachim himself, written soon after his return from England, with directions on the envelope that it was to be sent to Anna after his death.
Uncle Joachim was not a man to express sentiment otherwise than by patting those he loved affectionately on the back, and the letter over which Anna hung with such tender gratitude, and such an extravagance of humility, was a mere bald statement of facts. Since Anna, with a perversity that he entirely disapproved, refused to marry, and appeared to be possessed of the obstinacy that had always been a peculiarity of her German forefathers, and which was well enough in a man, but undesirable in a woman, whose calling it was to be gentle and yielding (sanft und nachgiebig), and convinced from what he had seen during his visit to London that she could never by any possibility be happy with her brother and sister-in-law, and moreover considering that it was beneath the dignity of his sister’s daughter, a young lady of good family, for ever to roll herself in the feathers with which the middle-class goose-born Dobbs had furnished Peter’s otherwise defective nest, he had decided to make her independent altogether of them, numerous though his own sons were, and angry as they no doubt would be, by bestowing on her absolutely after his death the only property he could leave to whomsoever he chose, a small estate near Stralsund, where he hoped to pass his last years. It was in a flourishing condition, easy to manage, bringing in a yearly average of forty thousand marks, and with an experienced inspector whom he earnestly recommended her to keep. He trusted his dear Anna would go and live there, and keep it up to its present state of excellence, and would finally marry a good German gentleman, of whom there were many, and return in this way altogether to the country of her forefathers. The estate was not so far from Stralsund as to make it impossible for her to drive there when she wished to indulge any feminine desire she might have to trim herself (sich putzen), and he recommended her to begin a new life, settling there with some grave and sober female advanced in years as companion and protectress, until such time as she should, by marriage, pass into the care of that natural protector, her husband.
Then followed a short exposition of his views on women, especially those women who go to parties all their lives and talk Klatsch; a spirited comparing of such women with those whose interests keep them busy in their own homes; and a final exhortation to Anna to seize this opportunity of choosing the better life, which was always, he said, a life of simplicity, frugality, and hard work.
Anna wept and laughed together over this letter — the tenderest laughter and the happiest tears. It seemed by turns the wildest improbability that she should be well off, and the most natural thing in the world. Susie was out. Never had her absence been terrible before. Anna could hardly bear the waiting. She walked up and down the room, for sitting still was impossible, holding the precious letters tight in her little cold hands, her cheeks burning, her eyes sparkling, in an agony of impatience and anxiety lest something should have happened to delay Susie at this supreme moment. At the window end of the room she stopped each time she reached it and looked eagerly up and down the street, the flower-women and the blessedness of selling daffodils having within an hour become profoundly indifferent to her. At the other end of the room, where a bureau stood, she came to a standstill too, and snatching up a pen began a letter to Peter in Devonshire; but, hearing wheels, threw it down and flew to the window again. It was not Susie’s carriage, and she went back to the letter and wrote another line; then again to the window; then again to the letter; and it was the letter’s turn as Susie, fagged from a round of calls, came in.
Susie’s afternoon had not been a success. She had made advances to a woman of enviably high position with the intrepidity that characterised all her social movements, and she had been snubbed for her pains with more than usual rudeness. She had had, besides, several minor annoyances. And to come in worn out, and have your sister-in-law, who would hardly speak to you at luncheon, fall on your neck and begin violently to kiss you, is really a little hard on a woman who is already cross.
“Now what in the name of fortune is the matter now?” gasped Susie, breathlessly disengaging herself.
“Oh, Susie! oh, Susie!” cried Anna incoherently, “what ages you have been away — and the letters came directly you had gone — and I’ve been watching for you ever since, and was so dreadfully afraid something had happened — —”
“But what are you talking about, Anna?” interrupted Susie irritably. It was late, and she wanted to rest for a few minutes before dressing to go out again, and here was Anna in a new mood of a violent nature, and she was weary beyond measure of all Anna’s moods.
“Oh, such a wonderful thing has happened!” cried Anna; “such a wonderful thing! What will Peter say? And how glad you will be — —” And she thrust the letters with trembling fingers into Susie’s unresponsive hand.
“What is it?” said Susie, looking at them bewildered.
“Oh, no — I forgot,” said Anna, wildly as it seemed to Susie, pulling them out of her hand again. “You can’t read German — see here — —” And she began to unfold them and smooth out the creases she had made, her hands shaking visibly.
Susie stared. Clearly something extraordinary had happened, for the frosty Anna of the last few months had melted into a radiance of emotion that would only not be ridiculous if it turned out to be justified.
“Two German letters,” said Anna, sitting down on the nearest chair, spreading them out on her lap, and talking as though she could hardly get the words out fast enough, “one from Uncle Joachim — —”
“Uncle Joachim?” repeated Susie, a disagreeable and creepy doubt as to Anna’s sanity coming over her. “You know very well he’s dead and can’t write letters,” she said severely.
“ — and one from his lawyer,” Anna went on, regardless of everything but what she had to tell. “The lawyer’s letter is full of technical words, difficult to understand, but it is only to confirm what Uncle Joachim says, and his is quite plain. He wrote it some time before he died, and left it with his lawyer to send on to me.”
Susie was listening now with all her ears. Lawyers, deceased uncles, and Anna’s sparkling face could only have one meaning.
“Uncle Joachim was our mother’s only brother — —”
“I know, I know,” interrupted Susie impatiently.
“ — and was the dearest and kindest of uncles to me — —”
“Never mind what he was,” interrupted Susie still more impatiently. “What has he done for you? Tell me that. You always pretended, both of you — Peter too — that he had miles of sandy places somewhere in the desert, and dozens of boys. What could he do for you?”
“Do for me?” Anna rose up with a solemnity worthy of the great news about to be imparted, put both her hands on Susie’s little shoulders, and looking down at her with shining eyes, said slowly, “He has left me an estate bringing in forty thousand marks a year.”
“Forty thousand!” echoed Susie, completely awestruck.
“Marks
,” said Anna.
“Oh, marks,” said Susie, chilled. “That’s francs, isn’t it? I really thought for a moment — —”
“They’re more than francs. It brings in, on an average, two thousand pounds a year. Two — thousand — pounds — a — year,” repeated Anna, nodding her head at each word. “Now, Susie, what do you think of that?”
“What do I think of it? Why, that it isn’t much. Where would you all have been, I wonder, if I had only had two thousand a year?”
“Oh, congratulate me!” cried Anna, opening her arms. “Kiss me, and tell me you are glad! Don’t you see that I am off your hands at last? That we need never think about husbands again? That you will never have to buy me any more clothes, and never tire your poor little self out any more trotting me round? I don’t know which of us is to be congratulated most,” she added laughing, looking at Susie with her eyes full of tears. Then she insisted on kissing her again, and murmured foolish things in her ear about being so sorry for all her horrid ways, and so grateful to her, and so determined now to be good for ever and ever.
“My dear Anna,” remonstrated Susie, who disliked sentiment and never knew how to respond to exhibitions of feeling. “Of course I congratulate you. It almost seems as if throwing away one’s chances in the way you have done was the right thing to do, and is being rewarded. Don’t let us waste time. You know we go out to dinner. What has he left Peter?”
“Peter?” said Anna wonderingly.
“Yes, Peter. He was his nephew, I suppose, just as much as you were his niece.”
“Well, but Susie, Peter is different. He — he doesn’t need money as I do; and of course Uncle Joachim knew that.”
“Nonsense. He hasn’t got a penny. Let me look at the letters.”
“They’re in German. You won’t be able to read them.”
“Give them to me. I learned German at school, and got a prize. You’re not the only person in the world who can do things.”
She took them out of Anna’s hand, and began slowly and painfully to read the one from Uncle Joachim, determined to see whether there really was no mention of Peter. Anna looked on, hot and cold by turns with fright lest by some chance her early studies should not after all have been quite forgotten.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 28
