Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  “Do? Why, she’ll have to go in it. Hilton, don’t be a foolish person, and don’t keep us here in the wet. This isn’t England, and nobody thinks anything here of driving in farm carts. It is patriarchal simplicity, that’s all. People are staring at you now because you are making such a fuss. Get in like a good soul, and let us start.”

  “Only as a corpse, m’m,” reiterated Hilton with chattering teeth, “never as a living body.”

  “Nonsense,” said Anna impatiently.

  “What shall we do?” repeated Susie. “Poor Hilton — what barbarians they must be here.”

  “We must send her in a Droschky, then, if it isn’t too far, and we can get one to go.”

  “A Droschky all that distance! It will be ruinous.”

  “Well, we can’t stand here amusing these people for ever.”

  “Oh, I wish we had never come to this horrible place!” cried Susie, really made miserable by Hilton’s rage.

  But Anna did not stay to listen either to her laments or to Hilton’s monotonous “Only as a corpse, m’lady,” and was already arranging with an unwilling driver, who had no desire whatever to drive to Kleinwalde, but consented to do so on being promised twenty marks, a rest and feed of oats for his horses, and any little addition in the shape of refreshment and extra money that might suggest itself to Anna’s generosity.

  “You know, Anna, you can’t expect me to pay for the fly,” said Susie uneasily, when the appeased Hilton had been put into it and was out of earshot. “That dreadful cart is your property, I suppose.”

  “Of course it is,” said Anna, smiling, “and of course the fly is my affair. How magnificent I feel, disposing of carts and Droschkies. Now, will you please to get into my carriage? And do you observe the extreme respectfulness of my coachman?”

  The coachman, a strange-looking, round-shouldered being, with a long grizzled beard, a dark-blue cloth cap on his head, and a body clothed in a fawn-coloured suit and gaiters, on which a great many tarnished silver buttons adorned with Uncle Joachim’s coat of arms were fastened at short intervals, removed his cap while his new mistress and her party were entering the carriage, and did not put it on again till they were ready to start.

  “Quite as though we were royalties,” said Susie.

  “But the rest of him isn’t,” replied Anna, who was greatly amused by the turn-out. “Do you like my horses, Susie? Or do you suspect them of having been ploughing all the morning? Oh, well,” she added quickly, ashamed of laughing at any part of her dear uncle’s gift, “I suppose one has to have heavily built horses in this part of the world, where the roads are probably frightfully bad.”

  “Their tails might be a little shorter,” said Susie.

  “They might,” agreed Anna serenely.

  With the aid of the porter, who knew all about Uncle Joachim’s will and was deeply interested, they were at last somehow packed into the carriage, and away they rattled over the rough stones, threading the outskirts of the town on the mainland, the hail and wind in their faces, out into the open country, with their horses’ heads turned towards the north. The fly containing Hilton followed more leisurely behind, and the farm cart containing the unused sack of straw followed the fly.

  “We can’t see much of Stralsund,” said Anna, trying to peep round the hood at the old town across the lakes separating it from the mainland.

  “It’s a very historical town,” observed Susie, who had happened to notice, as she idly turned over the pages of her Baedeker on the way down, that there was a long description of it with dates. “As of course you know,” she added, turning sharply to her daughter.

  “Rather,” said Letty. “Wallenstein said he’d take it if it were chained to heaven, and when he found it wasn’t he was frightfully sick, and went away and left them all in the fields.”

  Miss Leech, who was on the little seat, struggling to defend herself from the fury of the elements with an umbrella, looked anxious, but Susie only said in a gratified voice, “I’m glad you remember what you’ve been taught.” To which Letty, who was in great spirits, and thought this drive in the wet huge fun, again replied heartily, “Rather,” and her mother congratulated herself on having done the right thing in bringing her to Germany, home of erudition and profundity, already evidently beginning to do its work.

  The carriage smelt of fish, which presently upset Susie, who, unfortunately for her, had a nose that smelt everything. While they were in the town she thought the smell was in the streets, and bore it; but out in the open, where there was not a house to be seen, she found that it was in the carriage.

  She fidgeted, and looked about, feeling with her foot under the opposite seat, expecting to find a basket somewhere, and determined if she found one to push it out quietly and say nothing; for that she should drive for two hours with her handkerchief up to her nose was more than anybody could expect of her. Already she had done more than anybody ought to expect of her, she reflected, in going to the expense of the journey and the inconvenience of the absence from home for Anna’s sake, and she hoped that Anna felt grateful. She had never yet shrunk from her duty towards Anna, or indeed from her duty towards anyone, and she was sure she never would; but her duty certainly did not include the passive endurance of offensive smells.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Anna.

  “Why, the fish.”

  “Oh, do you smell it too?”

  “Smell it? I should think I did. It’s killing me.”

  “Oh, poor Susie!” laughed Anna, who was possessed by an uncontrollable desire to laugh at everything. The conveyance (it could hardly be called a carriage) in which they were seated, and which she supposed was the one destined for her use if she lived at Kleinwalde, was unlike anything she had yet seen. It was very old, with enormous wheels, and bumped dreadfully, and the seat was so constructed that she was continually slipping forward and having to push herself back again. It was lined throughout, including the hood, with a white and black shepherd’s plaid in large squares, the white squares mellowed by the stains of use and time to varying shades of brown and yellow; when Miss Leech’s umbrella was blown aside by a gust of wind Anna could see her coachman’s drab coat, with a little end of white tape that he had forgotten to tie, and whose uses she was unable to guess, fluttering gaily between its tails in the wind; on the left side of the box was a very big and gorgeous coat of arms in green and white, Uncle Joachim’s colours; and whichever way she turned her head, there was the overpowering smell of fish. “We must be taking our dinner home with us,” she said, “but I don’t see it anywhere.”

  “There isn’t anything under the seats. Perhaps the man has got it on the box. Ask him, Anna; I really can’t stand it.”

  Anna did not quite know how to attract his attention. It seemed undignified to poke him, but she did not know his name, and the wind blew her voice back in the direction of Stralsund when she had cleared it, and coughed, and called out rather shyly, “Oh, Kutscher! Kutscher!”

  Then she remembered that oh was not German, and that Uncle Joachim had used sonorous achs in its place, and she began again, “Ach, Kutscher! Kutscher!”

  Letty giggled. “Go it, Aunt Anna,” she said encouragingly, “dig him in the ribs with your umbrella — or I will, if you like.”

  Her mother, with her handkerchief to her nose, exhorted her not to be vulgar. Letty explained at some length that she was only being nice, and offering assistance.

  “I really shall have to poke him,” said Anna, her faint cries of Kutscher quite lost in the rattling of the carriage and the howling of the wind. “Or perhaps you would touch his arm, Miss Leech.”

  Miss Leech turned, and very gingerly touched his sleeve. He at once whistled to his horses, who stopped dead, snatched off his cap, and looking down at Anna inquired her commands.

  It was done so quickly that Anna, whose conversational German was exceedingly rusty, was quite unable to remember the word for fish, and sat looking up at him helplessly, while she vainly searched h
er brains.

  “What is fish in German?” she said, appealing to Susie, distressed that the man should be waiting capless in the rain.

  “Letty, what’s the word for fish?” inquired Susie sternly.

  “Fish?” repeated Letty, looking stupid.

  “Fish?” echoed Miss Leech, trying to help.

  “Fisch?” said the coachman himself, catching at the word.

  “Oh, yes; how utterly silly I am,” cried Anna blushing and showing her dimples, “it’s Fisch, of course. Kutscher, wo ist Fisch?”

  The man looked blank; then his face brightened, and pointing with his whip to the rolling sea on their right, visible across the flat intervening fields, he said that there was much fish in it, especially herrings.

  “What does he say?” asked Susie from behind her handkerchief.

  “He says there are herrings in the sea.”

  “Is the man a fool?”

  Letty laughed uproariously. The coachman, seeing Letty and Anna laugh, thought he must have said the right thing after all, and looked very pleasant.

  “Aber im Wagen,” persisted Anna, “wo ist Fisch im Wagen?”

  The coachman stared. Then he said vaguely, in a soothing voice, not in the least knowing what she meant, “Nein, nein, gnädiges Fräulein,” and evidently hoped she would be satisfied.

  “Aber es riecht, es riecht!” cried Anna, not satisfied at all, and lifting up her nose in unmistakeable displeasure.

  His face brightened again. “Ach so — jawohl, jawohl,” he exclaimed cheerfully; and hastened to explain that there were no fish nearer than the sea, but that the grease he had used that morning to make the leather of the hood and apron shine certainly had a fishy smell, as he himself had noticed. “The gracious Miss loves not the smell?” he inquired anxiously; for he had seven children, and was very desirous that his new mistress should be pleased.

  Anna laughed and shook her head, and though she said with great emphasis that she did not love it at all, she looked so friendly that he felt reassured.

  “What does he say?” asked Susie.

  “Why, I’m afraid we shall have it all the way. It’s the grease he’s been rubbing the leather with.”

  “Barbarian!” cried Susie angrily, feeling sick already, and certain that she would be quite ill by the end of the drive. “And you laugh at him and encourage him, instead of taking up your position at once and showing him that you won’t stand any nonsense. He ought to be — to be unboxed!” she added in great wrath; for she had heard of delinquent clergymen being unfrocked, and why should not delinquent coachmen be unboxed?

  Anna laughed again. She tried not to, but she could not help it; and Susie, made still more angry by this childish behaviour, sulked during the rest of the drive.

  “Go on — avanti!” said Anna, who knew hardly any Italian, and when she was in Italy and wanted her words never could find them, but had been troubled the last two days by the way in which these words came to her lips every time she opened them to speak German.

  The coachman understood her, however, and they went on again along the straight high-road, that stretched away before them to a distant bend. The high-road, or chaussée, was planted on either side with maples, and between the maples big whitewashed stones had been set to mark the way at night, and behind the rows of trees and stones, ditches had been dug parallel with the road as a protection to the crops in summer from the possible wanderings of erring carts. If a cart erred, it tumbled into the ditch. The arrangement was simple and efficacious. On the right, across some marshy land, they could see the sea for a little while, with the flat coast of Rügen opposite; and then some rising ground, bare of trees and brilliantly green with winter corn, hid it from view. On the left was the dreary plain, dotted at long intervals with farms and their little groups of trees, and here and there with windmills working furiously in the gale. The wind was icy, and the December snow still lay in drifts in the ditches. In that leaden landscape, made up of grey and brown and black, the patches of winter rye were quite startling in their greenness.

  Susie thought it the most God-forsaken country she had ever seen, and expressed this opinion plainly on her face and in her attitudes without any need for opening her lips, shuddering back ostentatiously into her corner, wrapping herself with elaborate care in her furs, and behaving as slaves to duty sometimes do when the paths they have to tread are rough.

  After driving along the chaussée for about an hour, they passed a big house standing among trees back from the road on the right, and a little farther on came to a small village. The carriage, pulled up with a jerk, and looking eagerly round the hood Anna found they had come to a standstill in front of a new red-brick building, whose steps were crowded with children. Two or three men and some women were with the children. Two of the men appeared to be clergymen, and the elder, a middle-aged, mild-faced man, came down the steps, and bowing profoundly proceeded to welcome Anna solemnly, on behalf of those children from Kleinwalde who attended this school, to her new home. He concluded that Anna was the person to be welcomed because he could see nothing of the lady in the other corner but her eyes, and they looked anything but friendly; whereas the young lady on the left was leaning forward and smiling and holding out her hand.

  He took it, and shook it slowly up and down, while he begged her to allow the hood of the carriage to be put back, so that the children from her village, who had walked three miles to welcome her, might be able to see her; and on Anna’s readily agreeing to this, himself helped the coachman with his own white-gloved hands to put it down. Susie was therefore exposed to the full fury of the blast, and shrank still farther into her corner — an interesting and tantalising object to the school-children, a dark, mysterious combination of fur, cocks’ feathers, and black eyebrows.

  Then the clergyman, hat in hand, made a speech. He spoke distinctly, as one accustomed to speaking often and long, and Anna understood every word. She was wholly taken aback by these ceremonies, and had no idea of what she should say in reply, but sat smiling vaguely at him, looking very pretty and very shy. She soon found that her smiles were inappropriate, and they died away; for, warming as he proceeded, the parson, it appeared, was taking it for granted that she intended to live on her property, and was eloquently descanting on the comfort she was going to be to the poor, assuring those present that she would be a mother to the sick, nursing them with her tender woman’s hands, an angel of mercy to the hungry, feeding them in the hour of their distress, a friend and sister to the little children, succouring them, caring for them, pitiful of their weakness and their sins. His face lit up with enthusiasm as he went on, and Anna was thankful that Susie could not understand. This crowd of children, the women, the young parson, her coachman, were all hearing promises made on her behalf that she had no thought of fulfilling. She looked down, and twisted her fingers about nervously, and felt uncomfortable.

  At the end of his speech, the parson, his eyes full of the tears drawn forth by his own eloquence, held up his hand and solemnly blessed her, rounding off his blessing with a loud Amen, after which there was an awkward pause. Susie heard the Amen, and guessed that something in the nature of a blessing was being invoked, and made a movement of impatience. The parson was odious in her eyes, first because he looked like the ministers of the Baptist chapels of her unmarried youth, but principally because he was keeping her there in the gale and prolonging the tortures she was enduring from the smell of fish. Anna did not know what to say after the Amen, and looked up more shyly than ever, and stammered in her confusion Danke sehr, hoping that it was a proper remark to make; whereupon the parson bowed again, as one who should say Pray don’t mention it. Then another man, evidently the schoolmaster, took out a tuning-fork, gave out a note, and the children sang a chorale, following it up with other more cheerful songs, in which the words Frühling and Willkommen were repeated a great many times, while the wind howled flattest contradiction.

  When this was over, the parson begged leave to introduce t
he other clerical-looking person, a tall narrow youth, also in white kid gloves, buttoned up tightly in a long coat of broadcloth, with a pallid face and thick, upright flaxen hair.

  “Herr Vicar Klutz,” said the elder parson, with a wave of the hand; and the Herr Vicar, making his bow, and having his limp hand heartily grasped by that other little hand, and his furtive eyes smiled into by those other friendly eyes, became on the spot desperately enamoured; which was very natural, seeing that he had not spoken to a woman under forty for six months, and was himself twenty and a poet. He spent the rest of the afternoon shut up in his bedroom, where, refusing all nourishment, he composed a poem in which berauschten Sinn was made to rhyme with Engländerin, while the elder parson, in whose house he lived, thought he was writing his Good Friday sermon.

  Then the schoolmaster was introduced, and then came the two women — the schoolmaster’s wife and the parson’s wife; and when Anna had smiled and murmured polite and incoherent little speeches to each in turn, and had nodded and bowed at least a dozen times to each of these ladies, who could by no means have done with their curtseys, and had introduced them to the dumb figure in the corner, during which ceremonies Letty stared round-eyed and open-mouthed at the school-children, and the school-children stared round-eyed and open-mouthed at Letty, and Miss Leech looked demure, and Susie’s brows were contracted by suffering, she wondered whether she might not now with propriety continue her journey, and if so whether it were expected that she should give the signal.

  Everybody was smiling at everybody else by way of filling up this pause of hesitation, except Susie, who shut her eyes with great dignity, and shivered in so marked a manner that the parson himself came to the rescue, and bade the coachman help him put up the hood again, explaining to Anna as he did so that her Frau Schwester was not used to the climate.

  Evidently the moment had come for going on, and the bows that had but just left off began again with renewed vigour. Anna was anxious to say something pleasant at the finish, so she asked the parson’s wife, as she bade her good-bye, whether she and her husband would come to Kleinwalde the next day to dinner.