“Pray, do you know anything against the other two?” she asked with some defiance. “One of them is a Baroness Elmreich, and the other is a Fräulein Kuhräuber.”
Axel looked amused. “I never heard of Fräulein Kuhräuber,” he said. “What does Princess Ludwig say to her coming?”
“Nothing at all. What should she say?”
It was Fräulein Kuhräuber’s coming that had more particularly occasioned the pursing of the princess’s lips.
“I know some Elmreichs,” said Axel. “A few of them are respectable; but one branch at least of the family is completely demoralised. A Baron Elmreich shot himself last year because he had been caught cheating at cards. And one of his sisters — oh, well, some of them are harmless, I believe.”
“Thank you.”
“You are angry with me?”
“Very.”
“And why?”
“You want to prejudice me against these poor things. They can’t help what distant relations do. They will get away from them in my house, at least, and have peace.”
“Miss Letty, is your aunt often — what is the word — so fractious?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Letty, who found it dull waiting in silence while other people talked. “It’s breakfast time, you know, and people can’t stand much just about then.”
“Oh, youthful philosopher!” exclaimed Axel. “So young, and of the female sex, and yet to have pierced to the very root of human weakness!”
“Stuff,” said Letty, offended.
“What, are you going to be angry too? Then let me get on my horse and go.”
“It’s the best thing you can do,” said Letty, always frank, but doubly so when she was hungry.
“Shall you come and see us soon?” Anna asked, gathering up her skirts in her one free hand, preparatory to crossing the muddy road.
“But you are angry with me.”
She looked up and laughed. “Not now,” she said; “I’ve finished. Do you think I’m going to be angry long this pleasant April morning?”
“I smell the coffee,” observed Letty, sniffing.
“Then I will come to-morrow if I may,” said Axel, “and make the acquaintance of Frau von Treumann and Baroness Elmreich.”
“And Fräulein Kuhräuber,” said Anna, with emphasis. She thought she saw the same tendency in him that was so manifest in the princess, a tendency to ignore the very existence of any one called Kuhräuber.
“And Fräulein Kuhräuber,” repeated Axel gravely.
“They’ve burnt the toast again,” said Letty; “I can hear them scraping off the black.”
“I wish you good luck, then,” said Axel, taking off his hat; “with all my heart I wish you good luck, and that these ladies may very soon be as happy as you are yourself.”
“That’s nice,” said Anna, approvingly; “so much, much nicer than the other things you have been saying.” And she nodded to him, all smiles, as she crossed over to the house and he rode away.
CHAPTER XIV
Long before the carriage bringing the three chosen ones from the station could possibly arrive, Anna and Letty began to wait in the hall, standing at the windows, going out on to the steps, looking into the different rooms every few minutes to make sure that everything was ready. The bedrooms were full of the hepaticas of the morning; the coffee had been set out with infinite care and an eye to effect by Anna herself on a little table in the drawing-room by the open window, through which the mild April air came in and gently fanned the curtains to and fro; and the princess had baked her best cakes for the occasion, inwardly deploring, as she did so, that such cakes should be offered to such people. When she had seen that all was as it should be, she withdrew into her own room, where she remained darning sheets, for she had asked Anna to excuse her from being present at the arrival. “It is better that you should make their acquaintance by yourself,” she said. “The presence of too many strangers at first might disconcert them under the circumstances.”
Miss Leech profited by this remark, made in her hearing, and did not appear either; so that when the carriage drove in at the gate only Anna and Letty were standing at the door in the sunshine.
Anna’s heart bumped so as the three slowly disentangled themselves and got out, that she could hardly speak. Her face flushed and grew pale by turns, and her eyes were shining with something suspiciously like tears. What she wanted to do was to put her arms right round the three poor ladies, and kiss them, and comfort them, and make up for all their griefs. What she did was to put out a very cold, shaking hand, and say in a voice that trembled, “Guten Tag.”
“Guten Tag,” said the first lady to descend; evidently, from her mourning, the widowed Frau von Treumann.
Anna took her extended hand in both hers, and clasping it tight looked at its owner with all her heart in her eyes. “Es freut mich so — es freut mich so,” she murmured incoherently.
“Ach — you are Miss Estcourt?” asked the lady in German.
“Yes, yes,” said Anna, still clinging to her hand, “and so happy, so very happy to see you.”
Frau von Treumann hereupon made some remarks which Anna supposed were of a grateful nature, but she spoke so rapidly and in such subdued tones, glancing round uneasily as she did so at the coachman and at the others, and Anna herself was so much agitated, that what she said was quite incomprehensible. Again Anna longed to throw her arms round the poor woman’s neck, and interrupt her with kisses, and tell her that gratitude was not required of her, but only that she should be happy; but she felt that if she did so she would begin to cry, and tears were surely out of place on such a joyful occasion, especially as nobody else looked in the least like crying.
“You are Frau von Treumann, I know,” she said, holding her hand, and turning to the next one and beaming on her, “and this is Baroness Elmreich?”
“No, no,” said the third lady quickly, “I am Baroness Elmreich.”
Fräulein Kuhräuber, an ample person whose body, swathed in travelling cloaks, had blotted out the other little woman, looked frightened and apologetic, and made deep curtseys.
Anna shook their hands one after the other with all the warmth that was glowing in her heart. Her defective German forsook her almost completely. She did nothing but repeat disconnected ejaculations, “so reizend — so glücklich — so erfreut — —” and fill in the gaps with happy, quivering smiles at each in turn, and timid little pats on any hand within her reach.
Letty meanwhile stood in the shadow of the doorway, wishing that she were young enough to suck her thumb. It kept on going up to her mouth of its own accord, and she kept on pulling it down again. This was one of the occasions, she felt, when the sucking of thumbs is a relief and a blessing. It gives one’s superfluous hands occupation, and oneself a countenance. She shifted from one foot to the other uneasily, and held on tight to the rebellious thumb, for the tall lady who had got out first was fixing her with a stare that chilled her blood. The tall lady, who was very tall and thin, and had round unblinking dark eyes set close together like an owl’s, and strongly marked black eyebrows, said nothing, but examined her slowly from the tip of the bow of ribbon trembling on her head to the buckles of the shoes creaking on her feet. Ought she to offer to shake hands with her, or ought she to wait to be shaken hands with, Letty asked herself distractedly. Anyhow it was rather rude to stare like that. She had always been taught that it was rude to stare like that.
Anna had forgotten all about her, and only remembered her when they were in the drawing-room and she had begun to pour out the coffee. “Oh, Letty, where are you? This is my niece,” she said; and Letty was at last shaken hands with.
“Ah — she keeps you company,” said the baroness. “You found it lonely here, naturally.”
“Oh no, I am never lonely,” said Anna cheerfully, filling the cups and giving them to Letty to carry round.
“How pleasant the air is to-day,” observed Frau von Treumann, edging her chair away from the window. “Damp,
but pleasant. You like fresh air, I see.”
“Oh, I love it,” said Anna; “and it is so beautiful here — so pure, and full of the sea.”
“You are not afraid of catching cold, sitting so near an open window?”
“Oh, is it too much for you? Letty, shut the window. It is getting chilly. The days are so fine that one forgets it is only April.”
Anna talked German and poured out the coffee with a nervous haste unusual to her. The three women sitting round the little table staring at her made her feel terribly nervous. She was happy beyond words to have got them safely under her own roof at last, but she was nervous. She was determined that there should be no barriers of conventionality from the first between themselves and her; not a minute more of their lives was to be wasted; this was their home, and she was all ready to love them; she had made up her mind that however shy she felt she was going to behave as though they were her dear friends — which indeed, she assured herself, was exactly what they were. Therefore she struggled bravely against her nervousness, addressing them collectively and singly, saying whatever came first into her head in her anxiety to say something, smiling at them, pressing the princess’s cakes on them, hardly letting them drink their coffee before she wanted to give them more. But it was no good; she was and remained nervous, and her hand shook so when she lifted it that she was ashamed.
Fräulein Kuhräuber was the one who stared least. If she caught Anna’s eye her own drooped, whereas the eyes of the other two never wavered. She sat on the edge of her chair in a way made familiar to Anna by intercourse with Frau Manske, and whatever anybody said she nodded her head and murmured “Ja, eben.” She was obviously ill at ease, and dropped the sugar-tongs when she was offered sugar with a loud clatter on to the varnished floor, nearly sweeping the cups off the table in her effort to pick them up again.
“Oh, do not mind,” said Anna, “Letty will pick them up. They are stupid things — much too big for the sugar-basin.”
“Ja, eben,” said Fräulein Kuhräuber, sitting up and looking perturbed. The other two removed their eyes from Anna’s face for a moment to stare at the Fräulein. The baroness, a small, fair person with hair arranged in those little flat curls called kiss-me-quicks on each cheek, and wide-open pale blue eyes, and a little mouth with no lips, or lips so thin that they were hardly visible, sat very still and straight, and had a way of moving her eyes round from one face to the other without at the same time moving her head. She was unmarried, and was probably about thirty-five, Anna thought, but she had always evaded questions in the correspondence about her age. Fräulein Kuhräuber was also thirty-five, and as large and blooming as the baroness was small and pale. Frau von Treumann was over fifty, and had had more sorrows, judging from her letters, than the other two. She sat nearest Anna, who every now and then laid her hand gently on hers and let it rest there a moment, in her determination to thaw all frost from the very beginning. “Oh, I quite forgot,” she said cheerfully — the amount of cheerfulness she put into her voice made her laugh at herself— “I quite forgot to introduce you to each other.”
“We did it at the station,” said Frau von Treumann, “when we found ourselves all entering your carriage.”
“The Elmreichs are connected with the Treumanns,” observed the baroness.
“We are such a large family,” said Frau von Treumann quickly, “that we are connected with nearly everybody.”
The tone was cold, and there was a silence. Neither of them, apparently, was connected with Fräulein Kuhräuber, who buried her face in her cup, in which the tea-spoon remained while she drank, and heartily longed for connections.
But she had none. She was absolutely without relations except deceased ones. She had been an orphan since she was two, cared for by her one aunt till she was ten. The aunt died, and she found a refuge in an orphanage till she was sixteen, when she was told that she must earn her bread. She was a lazy girl even in those days, who liked eating her bread better than earning it. No more, however, being forthcoming in the orphanage, she went into a pastor’s family as Stütze der Hausfrau. These Stütze, or supports, are common in middle-class German families, where they support the mistress of the house in all her manifold duties, cooking, baking, mending, ironing, teaching or amusing the children — being in short a comfort and blessing to harassed mothers. But Fräulein Kuhräuber had no talent whatever for comforting mothers, and she was quickly requested to leave the busy and populous parsonage; whereupon she entered upon the series of driftings lasting twenty years, which landed her, by a wonderful stroke of fortune, in Anna’s arms.
When she saw the advertisement, her future was looking very black. She was, as usual, under notice to quit, and had no other place in view, and had saved nothing. It is true the advertisement only offered a home to women of good family; but she got over that difficulty by reflecting that her family was all in heaven, and that there could be no relations more respectable than angels. She wrote therefore in glowing terms of the paternal Kuhräuber, “gegenwärtig mit Gott,” as she put it, expatiating on his intellect and gifts (he was a man of letters, she said), while he yet dwelt upon earth. Manske, with all his inquiries, could find out nothing about her except that she was, as she said, an orphan, poor, friendless, and struggling; and Anna, just then impatient of the objections the princess made to every applicant, quickly decided to accept this one, against whom not a word had been said. So Fräulein Kuhräuber, who had spent her life in shirking work, who was quite thriftless and improvident, who had never felt particularly unhappy, and whose father had been a postman, found herself being welcomed with an enthusiasm that astonished her to Anna’s home, being smiled upon and patted, having beautiful things said to her, things the very opposite to those to which she had been used, things to the effect that she was now to rest herself for ever and to be sure and not do anything except just that which made her happiest.
It was very wonderful. It seemed much, much too good to be true. And the delight that filled her as she sat eating excellent cakes, and the discomfort she endured because of the stares of the other two women, and the consciousness that she had never learned how to behave in the society of persons with von before their names, produced such mingled feelings of ecstasy and fright in her bosom that it was quite natural she should drop the sugar-tongs, and upset the cream-jug, and choke over her coffee — all of which things she did, to Anna’s distress, who suffered with her in her agitation, while the eyes of the other two watched each successive catastrophe with profoundest attention.
It was an uncomfortable half hour. “I am shy, and they are shy,” Anna said to herself, apologising as it were for the undoubted flatness that prevailed. How could it be otherwise, she thought? Did she expect them to gush? Heaven forbid. Yet it was an important crisis in their lives, this passing for ever from neglect and loneliness to love, and she wondered vaguely that the obviously paramount feeling should be interest in the awkwardness of Fräulein Kuhräuber.
Her German faltered, and threatened to give out entirely. The inevitable pause came, and they could hear the sparrows quarrelling in the golden garden, and the creaking of a distant pump.
“How still it is,” observed the baroness with a slight shiver.
“You have no farmyard near the house to make it more cheerful,” said Frau von Treumann. “My father’s house had the garden at the back, and the farmyard in the front, and one did not feel so cut off from everything. There was always something going on in the yard — always life and noises.”
“Really?” said Anna; and again the pump and the sparrows became audible.
“The stillness is truly remarkable,” observed the baroness again.
“Ja, eben,” said Fräulein Kuhräuber.
“But it is beautiful, isn’t it,” said Anna, gazing out at the light on the water. “It is so restful, so soothing. Look what a lovely sunset there must be this evening. We can’t see it from this side of the house, but look at the colour of the grass and the water.”
/> “Ach — you are a friend of nature,” said Frau von Treumann, turning her head for a brief moment towards the window, and then examining Anna’s face. “I am also. There is nothing I like more than nature. Do you paint?”
“I wish I could.”
“Ah, then you sing — or play?”
“I can do neither.”
“So? But what have you here, then, in the way of distractions, of pastimes?”
“I don’t think I have any,” said Anna, smiling. “I have been very busy till now making things ready for you, and after this I shall just enjoy being alive.”
Frau von Treumann looked puzzled for a moment. Then she said “Ach so.”
There was another silence.
“Have some more coffee,” said Anna, laying hold of the pot persuasively. She was feeling foolish, and had blushed stupidly after that Ach so.
“No, no,” said Frau von Treumann, putting up a protesting hand, “you are very kind. Two cups are a limit beyond which voracity itself could not go. What do you say? You have had three? Oh, well, you are young, and young people can play tricks with their digestions with less danger than old ones.”
At this speech Fräulein Kuhräuber’s four cups became plainly written on her guilty face. The thought that she had been voracious at the very first meal was appalling to her. She hastily pushed away her half-empty cup — too hastily, for it upset, and in her effort to save it it fell on to the floor and was broken. “Ach, Herr Je!” she cried in her distress.
The other two looked at each other; the expression is an unusual one on the lips of gentle-women.
“Oh, it does not matter — really it does not,” Anna hastened to assure her. “Don’t pick it up — Letty will. The table is too small really. There is no room on it for anything.”
“Ja, eben,” said Fräulein Kuhräuber, greatly discomfited.
“You would like to go upstairs, I am sure,” said Anna hurriedly, turning to the others. “You must be very tired,” she added, looking at Frau von Treumann.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 42
