The Benefactress Part 9

When Anna woke next morning she had a confused idea that something annoying had happened the evening before, but she had slept so heavily that she could not at once recollect what it was. Then, the sun on her face waking her up more thoroughly, she remembered that Susie had stayed upstairs with Hilton till supper time, had then come down, glanced with unutterable disgust at the raw ham, cold sausage, eggs, and tepid coffee of which the evening meal was composed, refused to eat, refused to speak, refused utterly to smile, and afterwards in the drawing-room had announced her fixed intention of returning to England the next day.

Anna had protested and argued in vain; nothing could shake this sudden determination. To all her expostulations and entreaties Susie replied that she had never yet dwelt among savages and she was not going to begin now; so Anna was forced to conclude that Hilton had been making a scene, and knowing the effect of Hilton's scenes she gave up attempting to persuade, but told her with outward firmness and inward quakings that she herself could not possibly go too.

Susie had been very angry at this, and still more angry at the reason Anna gave, which was that, having invited the parson and his wife to dinner on Sat.u.r.day, she could not break her engagement. Susie told her that as she would never see either of them again--for surely she would never again want to come to this place?--it was absurd to care twopence what they thought of her. What on earth did it matter if two inhabitants of the desert were offended or not offended once she was on the other side of the sea? And what did it matter at all how she treated them? She heaped such epithets as absurd, stupid, and idiotic on Anna's head, but Anna was not to be moved. She threatened to take Miss Leech and Letty away with her, and leave Anna a prey to the criticisms of Mrs. Grundy, and Anna said she could not prevent her doing so if she chose. Susie became more and more excited, more and more Dobbs, goaded by the recollection of what she had gone through with Hilton, and Anna, as usual under such circ.u.mstances, grew very silent. Letty sat listening in an agony of fright lest this cup of new experiences were about to be dashed prematurely from her eager lips; and Miss Leech discreetly left the room, though not in the least knowing where to go, finally seeking to drive away the nervous fears that a.s.sailed her in her lonely, creaking bedroom, where rats were gnawing at the woodwork, by thinking hard of Mr. Jessup, who on this occasion proved to be but a broken reed, pitted against the stern reality of rats.

The end of it, after Susie had poured out the customary reproaches of gross ingrat.i.tude and forgetfulness of all she had done for Anna for fifteen long years, was that Miss Leech and Letty were to stay on as originally intended, and come home with Anna towards the end of the holidays, and Susie would leave with Hilton the very next day.

Anna's attempt to make it up when she said good-night was repulsed with energy. Anna was for ever doing aggravating things, and then wanting to make it up; but makings up without having given in an inch seemed to Susie singularly unsatisfactory ceremonies. Oh, these Estcourts and their obstinacy! She marched off to bed in high indignation, an indignation not by any means allowed to cool by Hilton during the process of undressing; and Anna, worn out, fell asleep the moment she lay down, and woke up, as she had pictured herself doing in that odd wooden bed, with the morning sun shining full on her face.

It was a bright and lovely day, and on the side of the house where she slept she could not hear the wind, which was still blowing from the north-west. She opened one of her three big windows and let the cold air rush into her room, where the curious perfume of the baked evergreen wreaths festooned round the walls and looking-gla.s.s and dressing-table, joined to the heat from the stove, produced a heavy atmosphere that made her gasp. Somebody must already have been in her room, for the stove had been lit again, and she could see the peat blazing inside its open door.

But outside, what a divine coldness and purity! She leaned out, drinking it in in long breaths, the warm March sun shining on her head. The garden, a mere uncared-for piece of rough gra.s.s with big trees, was radiant with rain-drops; the strip of sea was a deep blue now, with crests of foam; the island coast opposite was a shadowy streak stretched across the feet of the sun. Oh, it was beautiful to stand at that open window in the freshness, listening to the robin on the bare lilac bush a few yards away, to the quarrelling of the impudent sparrows on the path below, to the wind in the branches of the trees, to all the happy morning sounds of nature. A joyous feeling took possession of her heart, a sudden overpowering delight in what are called common things--mere earth, sky, sun, and wind. How lovely life was on such a morning, in such a clean, rain-washed, wind-scoured world. The wet smell of the garden came up to her, a whiff of marshy smell from the water, a long breath from the pines in the forest on the other side of the house. How had she ever breathed at Estcourt? How had she escaped suffocation without this life-giving smell of sea and forest? She looked down with delight at the wildness of the garden; after the trim Estcourt lawns, what a relief this was. This was all liberty, freedom from conventionality, absolute privacy; that was an everlasting clipping, and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, and raking, a perpetual stumbling upon gardeners at every step, for Susie would not be outdone by her greater neighbours in these matters. What was Hill Street looking like this fine March morning? All the blinds down, all the people in bed--how far away, how shadowy it was; a street inhabited by sleepy ghosts, with phantom milkmen rattling spectral cans beneath their windows. What a dream that life lived up to three days ago seemed in this morning light of reality. White clouds, like the clouds in Raphael's backgrounds, were floating so high overhead that they could not be hurried by the wind; a black cat sat in a patch of sunshine on the path washing itself; somebody opened a lower window, and there was a noise of sweeping, presently made indistinguishable by the chorale sung by the sweeper, no doubt Marie, in a pious, Good Friday mood. "_Lob Gott ihr Christen allzugleich_," chanted Marie, keeping time with her broom. Her voice was loud and monotonous, but Anna listened with a smile, and would have liked to join in, and so let some of her happiness find its way out.

She dressed quickly. There was no hot water, and no bell to ring for some, and she did not choose to call down from the window and interrupt the hymn, so she used cold water, a.s.suring herself that it was bracing.

Then she put on her hat and coat and stole out, afraid of disturbing Susie, who was lying a few yards away filled with smouldering wrath, anxious to have at least one quiet hour before beginning a day that she felt sure was going to be a day of worries. "There will be great peace to-night when she is gone," she thought, and immediately felt ashamed that she should look forward to being without her. "But I have never been without her since I was ten," she explained apologetically to her offended conscience, "and I want to see how I feel."

"_Guten Morgen_," said Marie, as Anna came into the drawing-room on her way out through its French windows.

"_Guten Morgen_," said Anna cheerfully.

Marie leaned on her broom and watched her go down the garden, greedily taking in every detail of her clothes, profoundly interested in a being who went out into the mud where n.o.body could see her with such a dress on, and whose shoes would not have been too big for Marie's small sister aged nine.

The evening before, indeed, Marie had beheld such a vision as she had never yet in her life seen, or so much as imagined; her new mistress had appeared at supper in what was evidently a _herrschaftliche Ballkleid_, with naked arms and shoulders, and the other ladies were attired in much the same way. The young Fraulein, it is true, showed no bare flesh, but even she was arrayed in white, and her hair magnificently tied up with ribbons. Marie had rushed out to tell the cook, and the cook, refusing to believe it, had carried in a supererogatory dish of compot as an excuse for securing the a.s.surance of her own eyes; and Bertha from the farm, coming round with a message from the Frau Oberinspector, had seen it too through the crack of the kitchen door as the ladies left the dining-room, and had gone off breathlessly to spread the news; and the post cart just leaving with the letters had carried it to Lohm, and every inhabitant of every house between Kleinwalde and Stralsund knew all about it before bedtime. "What did I tell thee, wife?" said Dellwig, who, in spite of his superiority to the s.e.x that served, listened as eagerly as any member of it to gossip; and his wife was only too ready to label Anna mad or eccentric as a slight private consolation for having pa.s.sed out of the service of a comprehensible German gentleman into that of a woman and a foreigner.

Unconscious of the interest and curiosity she was exciting for miles round, pleased by Marie's artless piety, and filled with kindly feelings towards all her neighbours, Anna stood at the end of the garden looking over the low hedge that divided it from the marsh and the sea, and thought that she had never seen a place where it would be so easy to be good. Complete freedom from the wearisome obligations of society, an ideal privacy surrounded by her woods and the water, a scanty population of simple and devoted people--did not Dellwig shed tears at the remembrance of his master?--every day spent here would be a day that made her better, that would bring her nearer to that heaven in which all good and simple souls dwelt while still on earth, the heaven of a serene and quiet mind. Always she had longed to be good, and to help and befriend those who had the same longing but in whom it had been partially crushed by want of opportunity and want of peace. The healthy goodness that goes hand in hand with happiness was what she meant; not that tragic and futile goodness that grows out of grief, that lifts its head miserably in stony places, that flourishes in sick rooms and among desperate sorrows, and goes to G.o.d only because all else is lost. She went round the house and crossed the road into the forest. The fresh wind blew in her face, and shook down the drops from the branches on her as she pa.s.sed. The pine needles of other years made a thick carpet for her feet. The sun gleamed through the straight trunks and warmed her.

The restless sighing overheard in the tree tops filled her ears with sweetest music. "I do believe the place is pleased that I have come!"

she thought, with a happy laugh. She came to a clearing in the trees, opening out towards the north, and she could see the flat fields and the wide sky and the sunshine chasing the shadows across the vivid green patches that she had learned were winter rye. A hole at her feet, where a tree had been uprooted, still had snow in it; but the larks were singing above in the blue, as though from those high places they could see Spring far away in the south, coming up slowly with the first anemones in her hands, her face turned at last towards the patient north.

The strangest feeling of being for the first time in her life at home came over Anna. This poor country, how sweet and touching it was. After the English country, with its thickly scattered villages, and gardens, and fields that looked like parks, it did seem very poor and very empty, but intensely lovable. Like the furniture of her house, it struck her as symbolic in its bareness of the st.u.r.dier virtues. The people who lived in it must of necessity be frugal and hard-working if they would live at all, wresting by sheer labour their life from the soil, braced by the long winters to endurance and self-denial, their vices and their languors frozen out of them whether they would or no. At least so thought Anna, as she stood gazing out across the clearing at the fields and sky. "Could one not be good here? Could one not be so, so good?" she kept on murmuring. Then she remembered that she had been asking herself vague questions like this ever since her arrival; and with a sudden determination to face what was in her mind and think it out honestly, she sat down on a tree stump, b.u.t.toned her coat up tight, for the wind was blowing full on her, and fell to considering what she meant to do.

Susie did not go down to breakfast, but stayed in her bedroom on the sofa drinking a gla.s.s of milk into which an egg had been beaten, and listening to Hilton's criticisms of the German nation, delivered with much venom while she packed. But Hilton, though her contempt for German ways was so great as to be almost unutterable, was reconciled to a mistress who had so quickly given in to her wish to be taken back to Hill Street, and the venom was of an abstract nature, containing no personal sting of unfavourable comparisons with d.u.c.h.esses; so that Susie was sipping her milk in a fairly placid frame of mind when there was a knock at the door, and Anna asked if she might come in.

"Oh, yes, come in. Have you looked out the trains?"

"Yes. There's only one decent one, and you'll have to leave directly after luncheon. Won't you stay, Susie? You'll be so tired, going home without resting."

"Can't we leave before luncheon?"

"Yes, of course, if you prefer to lunch at Stralsund."

"Much. Have you ordered the shandrydan?"

"Yes, for half-past one."

"Then order it for half-past twelve. Hilton can drive with me."

"So I thought."

"Has that wretch been rubbing fish oil on it again?"

"I don't think so, after what I said yesterday."

"I shouldn't think what you said yesterday could have frightened him much. You beamed at him as though he were your best friend."

"Did I?"

Anna was looking odd, Susie thought, and answering her remarks with a nervous, abstracted air. She had apparently been out, for her dress was muddy, and she was quite rosy, and her hair was not so neat as usual.

She stood about in an undecided sort of way, and glanced several times at Hilton on her knees before a trunk.

"Is that all the breakfast you are going to have?" she asked, becoming aware of the gla.s.s of milk.

"What other breakfast is there to have?" snapped Susie, who was hungry, and would have liked a great deal more.

"Well, the eggs and b.u.t.ter are very nice, anyway," said Anna, quite evidently thinking of other things.

"Now what has she got into her head?" Susie asked herself, watching her sister-in-law with misgiving. Anna's new moods were never by any chance of a sort to give Susie pleasure. Aloud she said tartly, "I can't eat eggs and b.u.t.ter by themselves. I shouldn't have had anything at all if it hadn't been for Hilton, who went into the kitchen and made me this herself."

"Excellent Hilton," said Anna absently. "Haven't you done packing yet, Hilton?"

"No, m'm."

Anna sat down on the end of the sofa and began to twist the frills of Susie's dressing-gown round her fingers.

"I haven't closed my eyes all night," said Susie, putting on her martyr look, "nor has Hilton."

"Haven't you? Why not? I slept the sleep of the just--better, indeed, than any just that I ever heard of."

"What, didn't that man go into your room?"

"What man? Oh, yes, Miss Leech was telling me about it. He lit the stoves, didn't he? I never heard a sound."

"You must have slept like a log then. Any one in the least sensitive would have been frightened out of their senses. I was, and so was Hilton. I wouldn't spend another night in this house for anything you could give me."

It appeared that Susie really had just cause for complaint. She had been nervous the night before after Hilton had left her, unable to sleep, and scared by the thought of their defencelessness--six women alone in that wild place. She wished then with all her heart that Dellwig did live in the house. Rats scampering about in the attic above added to her terrors. The wind shook the windows of her room and howled disconsolately up and down. She bore it as long as she could, which was longer than most women would have borne it, and then knocked on the wall dividing her room from Hilton's. But Hilton, with the bedclothes over her head and all the candles she had been able to collect alight, would not have stirred out of her room to save her mistress from dying; and Susie, desperate at the prospect of the awful hours round midnight, made one great effort of courage and sallied out to fetch her. Poor Susie, standing shivering before her maid's bolted door, scantily clothed, anxiously watching the flame of her candle that threatened each second to be blown out, alone on the wide, draughty landing, frightened at the sound of her own calls mingling weirdly with the creakings and hangings of the tempest-shaken house, was an object deserving of pity. It took some minutes to induce Hilton to open the door, and such minutes Susie had not, in the course of an ordered and normal existence, yet pa.s.sed.

They both went into Susie's room, locked themselves in, and Hilton lay down on the sofa; and after a long time they fell into an uneasy sleep.

At half-past three Susie started up in bed; some one was trying to open the door and knocking. The candles had burnt themselves out, and she could not tell what time it was, but thought it must be early morning and that the servant wanted to bring her hot water; and she woke Hilton and bade her open the door. Hilton did so, gave a faint scream, and flung herself back on the sofa, where she lay as one dead, her face buried in the pillow. A man with a lantern and no shoes on was at the door, and came in noiselessly. Susie was never nearer fainting in her life. She sat in her bed, her cold hands clasped tightly round her knees, her eyes fixed on this dreadful apparition, unable to speak or move, paralysed by terror. This was the end, then, of all her hopes and ambitions--to come to Pomerania and die like a dog. Then the sickening feeling of fear gave way to one of overwhelming wrath when she found that all the man wanted was to light her stove. On the same principle that a child is shaken who has not after all been lost or run over, she was speechless with rage now that she found that she was not, after all, to be murdered. He was a very old man, and the light from the lantern cast strange reflections on his face and figure as he crouched before the stove. He mumbled as he worked, talking to the fire he was making as though it were a person. "_Du willst nicht, brennen, Lump? Was? Na, warte mal!_" And when he had finished, crept out again without glancing at the occupants of the room, still mumbling.

"It's the custom of the country, I suppose," said Anna.

"Is it? Well the sooner we get out of such a country the better. You are determined to stay in spite of everything? I can tell you I don't at all like my child being here, but you force me to leave her because you know very well that I can't let you stay here alone."

Anna glanced at Hilton, folding a dress with immense deliberation.

"Oh, Hilton knows what I think," said Susie, with a shrug.

"But she doesn't know what _I_ think," said Anna. "I must talk to you before you leave, so please let her finish packing afterwards. Go and have your breakfast, Hilton."