The Benefactress Part 32

"It _is_ damp," said Anna, turning up the sole of her shoe. "Shall we go on to the path?"

On the path it was obvious that they must walk in couples. Arrived at its edge, the princess stopped and looked round with an urbane smile.

"My dear child," she said to Anna, taking her arm, "we have been keeping Herr von Treumann from his mother regardless of his feelings. I beg you to pardon my thoughtlessness," she added, turning to him, "but my interest in hearing of my old friends' sons has made me quite forget that you took this long journey to be with your dear mother. We will not interrupt you further. Come, my dear, I wanted to ask you----" And she led Anna away, dropping her voice to a confidential questioning concerning the engaging of a new cook.

There was nothing to be done. The only crumb of comfort Karlchen obtained--but it was a big one--was a reluctantly given invitation, on his mother's vividly describing at the hour of parting the place where he was to spend the night, to remove his luggage from the inn to Anna's house, and to sleep there.

"You are too good, _meine Gnadigste_," he said, consoled by this for the _tete-a-tete_ he had just had with his mother; "but if it in any way inconveniences you--we soldiers are used to roughing it----"

"But not like that, not like that, _lieber Junge_," interrupted his mother anxiously. "It is not fit for a dog, that inn, and I heard this very evening from the housemaid that one of the children there has the measles."

That quite settled it. Anna could not expose Karlchen to measles. Why did he not stay, as he had written he would, at Stralsund? As he was here, however, she could not let him fall a prey to measles, and she asked the princess to order a room to be got ready.

It is a proof of her solemnity on that first evening with Karlchen that when his mother, praising her beauty, mentioned her dimples as specially bewitching, he should have said, surprised, "What dimples?"

It is a proof, too, of the duplicity of mothers, that the very next day in church the princess, sitting opposite the innkeeper's rosy family, and counting its members between the verses of the hymn, should have found that not one was missing.

Karlchen left on Sunday evening after a not very successful visit. He had been to church, believing that it was expected of him, and had found to his disgust that Anna had gone for a walk. So there he sat, between his mother and Princess Ludwig, and extracted what consolation he could from a studied neglect of the outer forms of worship and an elaborate slumber during the sermon.

The morning, then, was wasted. At luncheon Anna was unapproachable.

Karlchen was invited to sit next to his mother, and Anna was protected by Letty on the one hand and Fraulein Kuhrauber on the other, and she talked the whole time to Fraulein Kuhrauber.

"Who _is_ Fraulein Kuhrauber?" he inquired irritably of his mother, when they found themselves alone together again in the afternoon.

"Well, you can see who she is, I should think," replied his mother equally irritably. "She is just Fraulein Kuhrauber, and nothing more."

"Anna talks to her more than to anyone," he said; she was already "Anna"

to him, _tout court_.

"Yes. It is disgusting."

"It is very disgusting. It is not right that Treumanns should be forced to a.s.sociate on equal terms with such a person."

"It is scandalous. But you will change all that."

Karlchen twisted up the ends of his moustache and looked down his nose.

He often looked down his nose because of his eyelashes. He began to hum a tune, and felt happy again. Axel Lohm was right when he doubted whether there had ever been a permanently crushed Treumann.

"She has a strange a.s.sortment of _alte Schachteln_ here," he said, after a pause during which his thoughts were rosy. "That Elmreich, now. What relation does she say she is to Arthur Elmreich?"

"The man who shot himself? Oh, she is no relation at all. At most a distant cousin."

"_Na, na_," was Karlchen's reply; a reply whose English equivalent would be a profoundly sceptical wink.

His mother looked at him, waiting for more.

"What do you really think----?" she began, and then stopped.

He stood before the gla.s.s readjusting his moustache into the regulation truculent upward twist. "Think?" he said. "You know Arthur's sister Lolli was engaged at the Wintergarten this winter. She was not much of a success. Too old. But she was down on the bills as Baroness Elmreich, and people went to see her because of that, and because of her brother."

"Oh--terrible," murmured Frau von Treumann.

"Well, I know her; and I shall ask her next time I see her if she has a sister."

"But this one has no relations living at all," said his mother, horrified at the bare suggestion that Lolli was the sister of a person with whom she ate her dinner every day.

"_Na, na_," said Karlchen.

"But my dear Karlchen, it is so unlikely--the baroness is the veriest pattern of primness. She has such very strict views about all such things--quite absurdly strict. She even had doubts, she told me, when first she came here, as to whether Anna were a fit companion for her."

Karlchen stopped twisting his moustache, and stared at his mother. Then he threw back his head and shrieked with laughter. He laughed so much that for some moments he could not speak. His mother's face, as she watched him without a smile, made him laugh still more. "_Liebste Mama_," he said at last, wiping his eyes, "it may of course not be true.

It is just possible that it is not. But I feel sure it _is_ true, for this Elmreich and the little Lolli are as alike as two peas. Anna not a fit companion for Lolli's sister! _Ach Gott, ach Gott!_" And he shrieked again.

"If it is true," said Frau von Treumann, drawing herself up to her full height, "it is my duty to tell Anna. I cannot stay under the same roof with such a woman. She must go."

"Take care," said her son, illumined by an unaccustomed ray of sapience, "take care, _Mutti_. It is not certain that Anna would send her away."

"What! if she knew about this--this Lolli, as you call her?"

Karlchen shook his head. "It is better not to begin with ultimatums," he said sagely. "If you say you cannot stay under the same roof with the Elmreich, and she does not after that go, why then you must. And that,"

he added, looking alarmed, "would be disastrous. No, no, leave it alone.

In any case leave it alone till I have seen Lolli. I shall come down soon again, you may be sure. I wish we could get rid of the Penheim. Now that really would be a good thing. Think it over."

But Frau von Treumann felt that by no amount of thinking it over would they ever get rid of the Penheim.

"You do not like my Karlchen?" she said plaintively to Anna that evening, coming out into the dusky garden where she stood looking at the stars. Karlchen was well on his way to Berlin by that time.

"I am sure I should like him very much if I knew him," replied Anna, putting all the heartiness she could muster into her voice.

Frau von Treumann shook her head sadly. "But now? I see you do not like him now. You hardly spoke to him. He was hurt. A mother"--"Oh," thought Anna, "I am tired of mothers,"--"a mother always knows."

Her handkerchief came out. She had put one hand through Anna's arm, and with the other began to wipe her eyes. Anna watched her in silence.

"What? What? Tears? Do I see tears? Are we then missing our son so much?" exclaimed a cheery voice behind them. And there was the princess again.

"Serpent," thought Frau von Treumann; but what is the use of thinking serpent? She had to submit to being consoled all the same, while Anna walked away.

CHAPTER XXI

Anna seemed always to be walking away during the days that separated Karlchen's first visit from his second. Frau von Treumann noticed it with some uneasiness, and hoped that it was only her fancy. The girl had shown herself possessed of such an abnormally large and warm heart at first, had been so eager in her offers of affection, so enthusiastic, so sympathetic, so--well, absurd; was it possible that there was no warmth and no affection left over from those vast stores for such a good-looking, agreeable man as Karlchen? But she set such thoughts aside as ridiculous. Her son's simple doctrine from his fourteenth year on had been that all girls like all men. It had often been laid down by him in their talks together, and her own experience of girls had sufficiently proved its soundness. "The Penheim must have poisoned her mind against him," she decided at last, unable otherwise to explain the apathy with which Anna received any news of Karlchen. Was there ever such sheer spite? For what could it matter to a woman with no son of her own, who married Anna? Somebody would marry her, for certain, and the Penheim would lose her place; then why should it not be Karlchen?

The princess, however, most innocent of excellent women, had never spoken privately to Anna of Karlchen except once, when she inquired whether he were to have the best sheets on his bed, or the second best sheets; and Anna had replied, "The worst."

But if Frau von Treumann was uneasy about Anna, Anna was still more uneasy about Frau von Treumann. Whenever she could, she went away into the forest and tried to think things out. She objected very much to the feeling that life seemed somehow to be thickening round her--yet, after Karlchen's visit there it was. Each day there were fewer and fewer quiet pauses in the trivial bustle of existence; clear moments, like windows through which she caught glimpses of the serene tranquillity with which the real day, nature's day, the day she ought to have had, was pa.s.sing.

Frau von Treumann followed her about and talked to her of Karlchen.