The Benefactress Part 11

She longed to take Letty and Miss Leech away with her that very morning, and punish Anna by leaving her entirely alone; but she did not dare because of Peter. Peter was always on Anna's side when there were differences, and would be sure to do something dreadful when he heard of it--perhaps come and live here too, and never go back to his wife any more. Oh, these half Germans! Why had she married into a family with such a taint in its blood? "You will have to have some one here," she said, turning on Anna, who still sat on the floor by the sofa, a look on her face of apology and penitence mixed with firmness that Susie well knew. "How can you stay here alone? I shall leave Miss Leech with you till the end of the holidays, though I hate to seem to encourage you; but then you see I do my duty and always have, though I don't talk about it. When I get home I shall look for some elderly woman who won't mind coming here and seeing that you don't make yourself too much of a by-word, and the day she comes you are to send me back my child."

"It is good of you to let me keep Letty, dear Susie----"

"Dear Susie!"

"But I don't mean to be a by-word, as you call it," continued Anna, the ghost of a smile lurking in her eyes, "and I don't want an Englishwoman.

What use would she be here? She wouldn't understand if it was a German by-word that I turned into. I thought about asking the parson how I had better set about getting a German lady--a grave and sober female, advanced in years, as Uncle Joachim wrote."

"Oh, Uncle Joachim----" Susie could hardly endure to hear the name. It was that odious old man who had filled Anna's head with these ideas. To leave her money was admirable, but to influence a weak girl's mind with his wishy-washy German philosophy about the better life and such rubbish, as he evidently had done during those excursions with her, was conduct so shameful that she found no words strong enough to express her opinion of it. Everyone would blame her for what had happened, everyone would jeer at her, and say that the moment an opportunity of escape had presented itself Anna had seized it, preferring an existence of loneliness and hards.h.i.+p--any sort of existence--to all the pleasures of civilised life in Susie's company. Peter would certainly be very angry with her, and reproach her with not having made Anna happy enough. Happy enough! The girl had cost her at least three hundred a year, what with her expensive education and all her clothes since she came out; and if three hundred good pounds spent on a girl could not make her happy, she'd like to know what could. And no one--not one of those odious people in London whom she secretly hated--would have a single word of censure for Anna. No one ever had. All her vagaries and absurdities during the last few years when she had been so provoking had been smiled at, had been, Susie knew, put down to her treatment of her. Treatment of her, indeed! The thought of these things made Susie writhe. She had been looking forward to the next season, to having her pretty sister-in-law with her in the happy mood she had been in since she heard of her good fortune, and had foreseen nothing but advantages to herself from Anna's presence in her house--an Anna spending and not being spent upon, and no doubt to be persuaded to share the expenses of housekeeping. And now she must go home by herself to blame, scoldings, and derision. The prospect was almost more than she could bear. She went to the door, opened it, and turning to Anna fired a parting shot. "Let no one," she said, her voice shaken by deepest disgust, "who wants to be happy, ever spend a penny on her husband's relations."

And then she called Hilton; nor did she leave off calling till Hilton appeared, and so prevented Anna from saying another word.

CHAPTER VIII

But if Susie's rage was such that she refused to say good-bye, and terrified Miss Leech while she was waiting in the hall for the carriage by dark allusions to strait-waistcoats, when the parson was taken into Anna's confidence after dinner on the following night his raptures knew no bounds. "_Liebes, edeldenkendes Fraulein!_" he burst out, clasping his hands and gazing with a moist, ecstatic eye at this young sprig of piety. He was a good man, not very learned, not very refined, sentimental exceedingly, and much inclined to become tearfully eloquent on such subjects as _die liebe kleine Kinder, die herrliche Natur, die Frau als Schutzengel_, and the sacredness of _das Familienleben_.

Anna felt that he was the only person at hand who could perhaps help her to find twelve dejected ladies willing to be made happy, and had unfolded her plan to him as tersely as possible in her stumbling German, with none of those accompanying digressions into the question of feelings that Susie stigmatised as drivel; and she sat uncomfortable enough while he burst forth into praises that would not end of her goodness and n.o.bleness. It is hard to look anything but fatuous when somebody is extolling your virtues to your face, and she could not help both looking and feeling foolish during his extravagant glorification.

She did not doubt his sincerity, and indeed he was absolutely sincere, but she wished that he would be less flowery and less long, and would skip the raptures and get on to the main subject, which was practical advice.

She wore the simple white dress that had caused such a sensation in the neighbourhood, a garment that hung in long, soft folds, accentuating her slender length of limb. Her bright hair was parted and tucked behind her ears. Everything about her breathed an absolute want of self-consciousness and vanity, a perfect freedom from the least thought of the impression she might be making; yet she was beautiful, and the good man observing her beauty, and supposing from what she had just told him an equal beauty of character, for ever afterwards when he thought of angels on quiet Sunday evenings in his garden, clothed them as Anna was clothed that night, not even shrinking from the pretty, bare shoulders and scantily sleeved arms, but facing them with a courage worthy of a man, however doubtfully it might become a pastor.

His wife, in her best dress, which was also her tightest, sat on the edge of a chair some way off, marvelling greatly at many things. She could not hear what it was Anna had said to set her husband off exclaiming, because the governess persisted in trying to talk German to her, and would not be satisfied with vague replies. She was disappointed by the sudden disappearance of the sister-in-law, gone before she had shown herself to a single soul; astonished that she had not been requested to sit on the sofa, in which place of honour the young Fraulein sprawled in a way that would certainly ruin her clothes; disgusted that she had not been pressed at table, nay, not even asked, to partake of every dish a second time; indeed, no one had seemed to notice or care whether she ate anything at all. These were strange ways.

And where were the Dellwigs, those great people accustomed to patronise her because she was the parson's wife? Was it possible that they had not been invited? Were there then quarrels already? She could not of course dream that Anna would never have thought of asking her inspector and his wife to dinner, and that in her ignorance she regarded the parson as a person on an altogether higher social level than the inspector. These things, joined to conjectures as to the probable price by the yard of Anna's, Letty's, and Miss Leech's clothes, gave Frau Manske more food for reflection than she had had for years; and she sat turning them over slowly in her mind in the intervals between Miss Leech's sentences, while her dress, which was of silk, creaked ominously with every painful breath she drew.

"The best way to act," said the parson, when he had exhausted the greater part of his raptures, "will be to advertise in a newspaper of a Christian character."

"But not in my name," said Anna.

"No, no, we must be discreet--we must be very discreet. The advertis.e.m.e.nt must be drawn up with skill. I will make, simultaneously, inquiries among my colleagues in the holy office, but there must also be an advertis.e.m.e.nt. What would the gracious Miss's opinion be of the desirability of referring all applicants, in the first instance, to me?"

"Why, I think it would be an excellent plan, if you do not mind the trouble."

"Trouble! Joy fills me at the thought of taking part in this good work.

Little did I think that our poor corner of the fatherland was to become a holy place, a blessed refuge for the world-worn, a nook fragrant with charity----"

"No, not charity," interposed Anna.

"Whose perfume," continued the parson, determined to finish his sentence, "whose perfume will ascend day and night to the attentive heavens. But such are the celestial surprises Providence keeps in reserve and springs upon us when we least expect it."

"Yes," said Anna. "But what shall we put in the advertis.e.m.e.nt?"

"_Ach ja_, the advertis.e.m.e.nt. In the contemplation of this beautiful scheme I forget the advertis.e.m.e.nt." And again the moisture of ecstasy suffused his eyes, and again he clasped his hands and gazed at her with his head on one side, almost as though the young lady herself were the beautiful scheme.

Anna got up and went to the writing-table to fetch a pencil and a sheet of paper, anxious to keep him to the point; and the parson watching the graceful white figure was more than ever struck by her resemblance to his idea of angels. He did not consider how easy it was to look like a being from another world, a creature purified of every earthly grossness, to eyes accustomed to behold the redundant exuberance of his own excellent wife.

She brought the paper, and sat down again at the table on which the lamp stood. "How does one write any sort of advertis.e.m.e.nt in German?" she said. "I could not write one for a housemaid. And this one must be done so carefully."

"Very true; for, alas, even ladies are sometimes not all that they profess to be. Sad that in a Christian country there should be impostors. Doubly sad that there should be any of the female s.e.x."

"Very sad," said Anna, smiling. "You must tell me which are the impostors among those that answer."

"_Ach_, it will not be easy," said the parson, whose experience of ladies was limited, and who began to see that he was taking upon himself responsibilities that threatened to become grave. Suppose he recommended an applicant who afterwards departed with the gracious Miss's spoons in her bag? "_Ach_, it will not be easy," he said, shaking his head.

"Oh, well," said Anna, "we must risk the impostors. There may not be any at all. How would you begin?"

The parson threw himself back in his chair, folded his hands, cast up his eyes to the ceiling, and meditated. Anna waited, pencil in hand, ready to write at his dictation. Frau Manske at the other end of the room was straining her ears to hear what was going on, but Miss Leech, desirous both of entertaining her and of practising her German, would not cease from her spasmodic talk, even expecting her mistakes to be corrected. And there were no refreshments, no gla.s.ses of cooling beer being handed round, no liquid consolation of any sort, not even seltzer water. She regarded her evening as a failure.

"A Christian lady of n.o.ble sentiments," dictated the parson, apparently reading the words off the ceiling, "offers a home in her house----"

"Is this the advertis.e.m.e.nt?" asked Anna.

"--offers a home in her house----"

"I don't quite like the beginning," hesitated Anna. "I would rather leave out about the n.o.ble sentiments."

"As the gracious one pleases. Modesty can never be anything but an ornament. 'A Christian lady----'"

"But why a _Christian_ lady? Why not simply a lady? Are there, then, heathen ladies about, that you insist on the Christian?"

"Worse, worse than heathen," replied the parson, sitting up straight, and fixing eyeb.a.l.l.s suddenly grown fiery on her; and his voice fell to a hissing whisper, in strange contrast to his previous honeyed tones. "The heathen live in far-off lands, where they keep quiet till our missionaries gather them into the Church's fold--but here, here in our midst, here everywhere, taking the money from our pockets, nay, the very bread from our mouths, are the _Jews_."

Impossible to describe the tone of fear and hatred with which this word was p.r.o.nounced.

Anna gazed at him, mystified. "The Jews?" she echoed. One of her greatest friends at home was a Jew, a delightful person, the mere recollection of whom made her smile, so witty and charming and kind was he. And of Jews in general she could not remember to have heard anything at all.

"But not only money from our pockets and bread from our mouths,"

continued the parson, leaning forward, his light grey eyes opened to their widest extent, and speaking in a whisper that made her flesh begin the process known as creeping, "but blood--blood from our veins."

"Blood from your veins?" she repeated faintly. It sounded horrid. It offended her ears. It had nothing to do with the advertis.e.m.e.nt. The strange light in his eyes made her think of fanaticism, cruelty, and the Middle Ages. The mildest of men in general, as she found later on, rabidness seized him at the mere mention of Jews.

"Blood," he hissed, "from the veins of Christians, for the performance of their unholy rites. Did the gracious one never hear of ritual murders?"

"No," said Anna, shrinking back, the nearer he leaned towards her, "never in my life. Don't tell me now, for it--it sounds interesting. I should like to hear about it all another time. 'A Christian lady offers her home,'" she went on quickly, scribbling that much down, and then looking at him inquiringly.

"_Ach ja_," he said in his natural voice, leaning back in his chair and reducing his eyes to their normal size, "I forgot again the advertis.e.m.e.nt. 'A Christian lady offers her home to others of her s.e.x and station who are without means----'"

"And without friends, and without hope," added Anna, writing.

"_Gut, gut, sehr gut._"

"She has room in her house in the country," Anna went on, writing as she spoke, "for twelve such ladies, and will be glad to share with them all that she possesses of fortune and happiness."

"_Gut, gut, sehr gut._"

"Is the German correct?"