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Benefactress

<h2>CHAPTER XXIX</h2> What Anna most longed for in the days that followed was a mother. "If I had a mother," she thought, not once, but again and again, and her eyes had a wistful, starved look when she thought it, "if I only had a mother, a sweet mother all to myself, of my very own, I'd put my head on her dear shoulder and cry myself happy again. First I'd tell her everything, and she wouldn't mind however silly it was, and she wouldn't be tired however long it was, and she'd say 'Little darling child, you are only a baby after all,' and would scold me a little, and kiss me a great deal, and then I'd listen so comfortably, all the time with my face against her nice soft dress, and I would feel so safe and sure and wrapped round while she told me what to do next. It is lonely and cold and difficult without a mother." The house was in confusion. The baroness had come out of her unconsciousness to delirium, and the doctors, knowing that she was not related to anyone there, talked openly of death. There were two doctors, now, and two nurses; and Anna insisted on nursing too, wearing herself out with all the more passion because she felt that it was of so little importance really to anyone whether the baroness lived or died. They were all strangers, the people watching this frail fighter for life, and they watched with the indifference natural to strangers. Here was a middle-aged person who would probably die; if she died no one lost anything, and if she lived it did not matter either. The doctors and nurses, accustomed to these things, could not be expected to be interested in so profoundly uninteresting a case; Frau von Treumann observed once at least every day that it was schrecklich, and went on with her embroidery; Fräulein Kuhräuber cried a little when, on her way to her bedroom, she heard the baroness raving, but she cried easily, and the raving frightened her; the princess felt that death in this case would be a blessing; and Letty and Miss Leech avoided the house, and spent the burning days rambling in woods that teemed with prodigal, joyous life. As for Anna, to see her in the sick-room was to suppose her the nearest and tenderest relative of the baroness; and yet the passion that possessed her was not love, but only an endless, unfathomable pity. "If she gets well, she shall never be unhappy again," vowed Anna in those days when she thought she could hear Death's footsteps on the stairs. "Here or somewhere else—anywhere she likes—she shall live and be happy. She will see that her poor sister has made no difference, except that there will be no shadow between us now." But what is the use of vowing? When June was in its second week the baroness slowly and hesitatingly turned the corner of her illness; and immediately the corner was turned and the exhaustion of turning it got over, she became fractious. "You will have a difficult time," Axel had said on the day he spoilt their friendship; and it was true. The difficult time began after that corner was turned, and the farther the baroness drew away from it, the nearer she got to complete convalescence, the more difficult did life for Anna become. For it resumed the old course, and they all resumed their old selves, the same old selves, even to the shadow of an unmentioned Lolli between them, that Axel had said they would by no means get away from; but with this difference, that the peculiarities of both Frau von Treumann and the baroness were more pronounced than before, and that not one of the trio would speak to either of the other two. Frau von Treumann was still firmly fixed in the house, without the least intention apparently of leaving it, and she spent her time lying in wait for Anna, watching for an opportunity of beginning again about Karlchen. Anna had avoided the inevitable day when she would be caught, but it came at last, and she was caught in the garden, whither she had retired to consider how best to approach the baroness, hitherto quite unapproachable, on the burning question of Lolli. Frau von Treumann appeared suddenly, coming softly across the grass, so that there was no time to run away. "Anna," she called out reproachfully, seeing Anna make a movement as though she wanted to run, which was exactly what she did want to do, "Anna, have I the plague?" "I hope not," said Anna. "You treat me as if I had it." Anna said nothing. "Why does she stay here? How can she stay here, after what has happened?" she had wondered often. Perhaps she had come now to announce her departure. She prepared herself therefore to listen with a willing ear. She was sitting in the shade of a copper beech facing the oily sea and the coast of Rügen quivering opposite in the heat-haze. She was not doing anything; she never did seem to do anything, as these ladies of the busy fingers often noticed. "Blue and white," said Anna, looking up at the gulls and the sky to give Frau von Treumann time, "the Pomeranian colours. I see now where they come from." But Frau von Treumann had not come out to talk about the Pomeranian colours. "My Karlchen has been ill," she said, her eyes on Anna's face. Anna watched the gulls overhead in the deep blue. "So has Else," she remarked. "Dear me," thought Frau von Treumann, "what rancour." She laid her hand on Anna's knee, and it was taken no notice of. "You cannot forgive him?" she said gently. "You cannot pardon a momentary indiscretion?" "I have nothing to forgive," said Anna, watching the gulls; one dropped down suddenly, and rose again with a fish in its beak, the sun for an instant catching the silver of the scales. "It is no affair of mine. It is for Else to forgive him." Frau von Treumann began to weep; this way of looking at it was so hopelessly unreasonable. She pulled out her handkerchief. "What a heap she must use," thought Anna; never had she met people who cried so much and so easily as the Chosen; she was quite used now to red eyes; one or other of her sisters had them almost daily, for the farther their old bodily discomforts and real anxieties lay behind them the more tender and easily lacerated did their feelings become. "He could not bear to see you being imposed upon," said Frau von Treumann. "As soon as he knew about this terrible sister he felt he must hasten down to save you. 'Mother,' he said to me when first he suspected it, 'if it is true, she must not be contaminated.'" "Who mustn't?" "Oh, Anna, you know he thinks only of you!" "Well, you see," said Anna, "I don't mind being contaminated." "Oh, dear child, a young pretty girl ought to mind very much." "Well, I don't. But what about yourself? Are you not afraid of—of contamination?" She was frightened by her own daring when she had said it, and would not have looked at Frau von Treumann for worlds. "No, dear child," replied that lady in tones of tearful sweetness, "I am too old to suffer in any way from associating with queer people." "But I thought a Treumann——" murmured Anna, more and more frightened at herself, but impelled to go on. "Dear Anna, a Treumann has never yet flinched before duty." Anna was silenced. After that she could only continue to watch the gulls. "You are going to keep the baroness?" "If she cares to stay, yes." "I thought you would. It is for you to decide who you will have in your house. But what would you do if this—this Lolli came down to see her sister?" "I really cannot tell." "Well, be sure of one thing," burst out Frau von Treumann enthusiastically, "I will not forsake you, dear Anna. Your position now is exceedingly delicate, and I will not forsake you." So she was not going. Anna got up with a faint sigh. "It is frightfully hot here," she said; "I think I will go to Else." "Ah—and I wanted to tell you about my poor Karlchen—and you avoid me—you do not want to hear. If I am in the house, the house is too hot. If I come into the garden, the garden is too hot. You no longer like being with me." Anna did not contradict her. She was wondering painfully what she ought to do. Ought she meekly to allow Frau von Treumann to stay on at Kleinwalde, to the exclusion, perhaps, of someone really deserving? Or ought she to brace herself to the terrible task of asking her to go? She thought, "I will ask Axel"—and then remembered that there was no Axel to ask. He never came near her. He had dropped out of her life as completely as though he had left Lohm. Since that unhappy day, she had neither seen him nor heard of him. Many times did she say to herself, "I will ask Axel," and always the remembrance that she could not came with a shock of loneliness; and then she would drop into the train of thought that ended with "if I had a mother," and her eyes growing wistful. "Perhaps it is the hot weather," she said suddenly, an evening or two later, after a long silence, to the princess. They had been speaking of servants before that. "You think it is the hot weather that makes Johanna break the cups?" "That makes me think so much of mothers." The princess turned her head quickly, and examined Anna's face. It was Sunday evening, and the others were at church. The baroness, whose recovery was slow, was up in her room. "What mothers?" naturally inquired the princess. "I think this everlasting heat is dreadful," said Anna plaintively. "I have no backbone left. I am all limp, and soft, and silly. In cold weather I believe I wouldn't want a mother half so badly." "So you want a mother?" said the princess, taking Anna's hand in hers and patting it kindly. She thought she knew why. Everyone in the house saw that something must have been said to Axel Lohm to make him keep away so long. Perhaps Anna was repenting, and wanted a mother's help to set things right again. "I always thought it would be so glorious to be independent," said Anna, "and now somehow it isn't. It is tiring. I want someone to tell me what I ought to do, and to see that I do it. Besides petting me. I long and long sometimes to be petted." The princess looked wise. "My dear," she said, shaking her head, "it is not a mother that you want. Do you know the couplet:— <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Man bedarf der Leitung Und der männlichen Begleitung? </div> </div> A truly excellent couplet." Anna smiled. "That is the German idea of female bliss—always to be led round by the nose by some husband." "Not some husband, my dear—one's own husband. You may call it leading by the nose if you like. I can only say that I enjoyed being led by mine, and have missed it grievously ever since." "But you had found the right man." "It is not very difficult to find the right man." "Yes it is—very difficult indeed." "I think not," said the princess. "He is never far off. Sometimes, even, he is next door." And she gazed over Anna's head at the ceiling with elaborate unconsciousness. "And besides," said Anna, "why does a woman everlastingly want to be led and propped? Why can't she go about the business of life on her own feet? Why must she always lean on someone?" "You said just now it is because it is hot." "The fact is," said Anna, "that I am not clever enough to see my way through puzzles. And that depresses me." "I well know that you must be puzzled." "Yes, it is puzzling, isn't it? I can talk to you about it, for of course you see it all. It seems so absurd that the only result of my trying to make people happy is to make everyone, including myself, wretched. That is waste, isn't it. Waste, I mean, of happiness. For I, at least, was happy before." "And, my dear, you will be happy again." Anna knit her brows in painful thought. "If by being wretched I had managed to make the others happy it wouldn't have been so bad. At least it wouldn't have been so completely silly. The only thing I can think of is that I must have hit upon the wrong people." "I Gott bewahre!" cried the princess with energy. "They are all alike. Send these away, you get them back in a different shape. Faces and names would be different, never the women. They would all be Treumanns and Elmreichs, and not a single one worth anything in the whole heap." "Well, I shall not desert them—Else and Emilie, I mean. They need help, both of them. And after all, it is simple selfishness for ever wanting to be happy oneself. I have begun to see that the chief thing in life is not to be as happy as one can, but to be very brave." The princess sighed. "Poor Axel," she said. Anna started, and blushed violently. "Pray what has my being brave to do with Herr von Lohm?" she inquired severely. "Why, you are going to be brave at his expense, poor man. You must not expect anything from me, my dear, but common sense. You give up all hope of being happy because you think it your duty to go on sacrificing him and yourself to a set of thankless, worthless women, and you call it being brave. I call it being unnatural and silly." "It has never been a question of Herr von Lohm," said Anna coldly, indeed freezingly. "What claims has he on me? My plans were all made before I knew that he existed." "Oh, my dear, your plans are very irritating things. The only plan a sensible young woman ought to make is to get as good a husband as possible as quickly as she can." "Why," said Anna, rising in her indignation, and preparing to leave a princess suddenly become objectionable, "why, you are as bad as Susie!" "Susie?" said the princess, who had not heard of her by that name. "Was Susie also one who told you the truth?" But Anna walked out of the room without answering, in a very dignified manner; went into the loneliest part of the garden; sat down behind some bushes; and cried. She looked back on those childish tears afterwards, and on all that had gone before, as the last part of a long sleep; a sleep disturbed by troubling and foolish dreams, but still only a sleep and only dreams. She woke up the very next day, and remained wide awake after that for the rest of her life. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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