The Benefactress Part 35

There was a sound of hurried footsteps on the path behind him, and turning his head, his hand still knocking, he saw Dellwig running towards him.

"_Nanu!_" cried Dellwig breathlessly, staring in blankest astonishment.

"What in the devil's name are you making this noise for? Is the parson on fire?"

Klutz stared back in a dazed sort of way, his fury dying out at once in the presence of the stronger nature; then, because he was twenty, and because he was half-starved, and because he felt he was being cruelly used, there on Anna's doorstep, in the full light of the evening sun, with Dellwig's eyes upon him, he burst into a torrent of tears.

"Well of all--what's wrong at Lohm, you great sheep?" asked Dellwig, seizing his arm and giving him a shake.

Klutz signified by a movement of his head that nothing was wrong at Lohm. He was crying like a baby, into a red pocket-handkerchief, and could not speak.

Dellwig, still gripping his arm, stared at him a moment in silence; then he turned him round, pushed him down the steps, and walked him off.

"Come along, young man," he said, "I want some explanation of this. If you are mad you'll be locked up. We don't fancy madmen about our place.

And if you're not mad you'll be fined by the Amtsvorsteher for disorderly conduct. Knocking like that at a lady's door! I wonder you didn't kick it in, while you were about it. It's a good thing the _Herrschaften_ are out."

Klutz really felt ill. He leaned on Dellwig's arm and let himself be helped along, the energy gone out of him with the fury. "You have never loved," was all he said, wiping his eyes.

"Oh that's it, is it? It is love that made you want to break the knocker? Why didn't you go round to the back? Which of them is it? The cook, of course. You look hungry. A Kandidat crying after a cook!" And Dellwig laughed loud and long.

"The cook!" cried Klutz, galvanised by the word into life. "The cook!"

He thrust a shaking hand into his breast-pocket and dragged it out, the precious paper, unfolding it with trembling fingers, and holding it before Dellwig's eyes. "So much for your cooks," he said, tremulously triumphant. They were in the road, out of sight of the house. Dellwig took the paper and held it close to his eyes. "What's this?" he asked, scrutinising it. "It is not German."

"It is English," said Klutz.

"What, the governess----?"

Klutz merely pointed to the name at the end. Oh, the sweetness of that moment!

"Anna?" read out Dellwig, "Anna? That is Miss Estcourt's name."

"It is," said Klutz, his tears all dried up.

"It seems to be poetry," said Dellwig slowly.

"It is," said Klutz.

"Why have you got it?"

"Why indeed! It's mine. She sent it to me. She wrote it for me. These flowers----"

"Miss Estcourt? Sent it to you? Poetry? To _you_?" Dellwig looked up from the paper at Klutz, and examined him slowly from head to foot as if he had never seen him before. His expression while he did it was not flattering, but Klutz rarely noticed expressions. "What's it all about?"

he asked, when he had reached Klutz's boots, by which he seemed struck, for he looked at them twice.

"Love," said Klutz proudly.

"Love?"

"Let me come home with you," said Klutz eagerly, "I'll translate it there. I can't here where we might be disturbed."

"Come on, then," said Dellwig, walking off at a great pace with the paper in his hand.

Just as they were turning into the farmyard the rattle of a carriage was heard coming down the road. "Stop," said Dellwig, laying his hand on Klutz's arm, "the _Herrschaften_ have been drinking coffee in the woods--here they are, coming home. You can get a greeting if you wait."

They both stood on the edge of the road, and the carriage with Anna and a selection from her house-party drove by. Dellwig and Klutz swept off their hats. When Anna saw Klutz she turned scarlet--undeniably, unmistakably scarlet--and looked away quickly. Dellwig's lips shaped themselves into a whistle. "Come in, then," he said, glancing at Klutz, "come in and translate your poem."

Seldom had Klutz pa.s.sed more delicious moments than those in which he rendered Letty's verses into German, with both the Dellwigs drinking in his words. The proud and exclusive Dellwigs! A month ago such a thing would have been too wild a flight of fancy for the most ambitious dream.

In the very room in which he had been thrust aside at parties, forgotten in corners, left behind when the others went in to supper, he was now sitting the centre of interest, with his former supercilious hosts hanging on his words. When he had done, had all too soon come to the end of his delightful task, he looked round at them triumphantly; and his triumph was immediately dashed out of him by Dellwig, who said with his harshest laugh, "Put aside all your hopes, young man--Miss Estcourt is engaged to Herr von Lohm."

"Engaged? To Herr von Lohm?" Klutz echoed stupidly, his mouth open and the hand holding the verses dropping limply to his side.

"Engaged, engaged, engaged," Dellwig repeated in a loud sing-song, "not openly, but all the same engaged."

"It is truly scandalous!" cried his wife, greatly excited, and firmly believing that the verses were indeed Anna's. Was she not herself of the race of _Weiber_, and did she not therefore well know what they were capable of?

"Silence, Frau!" commanded Dellwig.

"And she takes my flowers--my daily offerings, floral and poetical, and she sends me these verses--and all the time she is betrothed to someone else?"

"She is," said Dellwig with another burst of laughter, for Klutz's face amused him intensely. He got up and slapped him on the shoulder. "This is your first experience of _Weiber_, eh? Don't waste your heartaches over her. She is a young lady who likes to have her little joke and means no harm----"

"She is a person without shame!" cried his wife.

"Silence, Frau!" snapped Dellwig. "Look here, young man--why, what does he look like, sitting there with all the wind knocked out of him? Get him a gla.s.s of brandy, Frau, or we shall have him crying again. Sit up, and be a man. Miss Estcourt is not for you, and never will be. Only a vicar could ever have dreamed she was, and have been imposed upon by this poetry stuff. But though you're a vicar you're a man, eh? Here, drink this, and tell us if you are not a man."

Klutz feebly tried to push the gla.s.s away, but Dellwig insisted. Klutz was pale to ghastliness, and his eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g again with tears.

"Oh, this person! Oh, this Englishwoman! Oh, the shameful treatment of an estimable young man!" cried Frau Dellwig, staring at the havoc Anna had wrought.

"Silence, Frau!" shouted Dellwig, stamping his foot. "You can't be treated like this," he went on to Klutz, who, used to drinking much milk at the abstemious parsonage, already felt the brandy running along his veins like liquid fire, "you can't be made ridiculous and do nothing. A vicar can't fight, but you must have some revenge."

Klutz started. "Revenge! Yes, but what revenge?" he asked.

"Nothing to do with Miss Estcourt, of course. Leave her alone----"

"Leave her alone?" cried his wife, "what, when she it is----"

"Silence, Frau!" roared Dellwig. "Leave her alone, I say. You won't gain anything there, young man. But go to her _Brautigam_ Lohm and tell him about it, and show him the stuff. He'll be interested."

Dellwig laughed boisterously, and took two or three rapid turns up and down the room. He had not lived with old Joachim and seen much of old Lohm and the surrounding landowners without having learned something of their views on questions of honour. Axel Lohm he knew to be specially strict and strait-laced, to possess in quite an unusual degree the ideals that Dellwig thought so absurd and so unpractical, the ideals, that is, of a Christian gentleman. Had he not known him since he was a child? And he had always been a prig. How would he like Miss Estcourt to be talked about, as of course she would be talked about? Klutz's mouth could not be stopped, and the whole district would know what had been going on. Axel Lohm could not and would not marry a young lady who wrote verses to vicars; and if all relations between Lohm and Kleinwalde ceased, why then life would resume its former pleasant course, he, Dellwig, staying on at his post, becoming, as was natural, his mistress's sole adviser, and certainly after due persuasion achieving all he wanted, including the brick-kiln. The plainness and clearness of the future was beautiful. He walked up and down the room making odd sounds of satisfaction, and silencing his wife with vigour every time she opened her lips. Even his wife, so quick as a rule of comprehension, had not grasped how this poem had changed their situation, and how it behoved them now not to abuse their mistress before a mischief-making young man. She was blinded, he knew, by her hatred of Miss Estcourt.

Women were always the slaves, in defiance of their own interests, to some emotion or other; if it was not love, then it was hatred. Never could they wait for anything whatever. The pa.s.sing pa.s.sion must out and be indulged, however fatal the consequences might be. What a set they were! And the best of them, what fools. He glanced angrily at his wife as he pa.s.sed her, but his glance, travelling from her to Klutz, who sat quite still with head sunk on his chest, legs straight out before him, the hand with the paper loosely held in it hanging down out of the cuffless sleeve nearly to the floor, and vacant eyes staring into s.p.a.ce, his good humour returned, and he gave another harsh laugh. "Well?" he said, standing in front of this dejected figure. "How long will you sit there? If I were you I'd lose no time. You don't want those two to be making love and enjoying themselves an hour longer than is necessary, do you? With you out in the cold? With you so cruelly deceived? And made to look so ridiculous? I'd spoil that if I were you, at once."

"Yes, you are right. I'll go to Herr von Lohm and see if I can have an interview."

Klutz got up with a great show of determination, put the paper in his pocket, and b.u.t.toned his coat over it for greater security. Then he hesitated.

"It _is_ a shameful thing, isn't it?" he said, his eyes on Dellwig's face.

"Shameful? It's downright cruel."

"Shameful?" began his wife.