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 Regierungspräsident,” 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 höchst 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 Regierungspräsidentin. 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 masqué 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?”
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 38
