Part 5 (1/2)
”Well, and was it?”
”Was it what, my dear?”
”Chained to heaven?”
”The city? Why, how can a city be chained to heaven, Letty?”
”Then what did he say it for?”
”He was using a metaphor.”
”Oh,” said Letty, who did not know what a metaphor was, but supposed it must be something used in sieges, and preferred not to inquire too closely.
”He was obliged to retire,” said Miss Leech, ”leaving enormous numbers of slain on the field.”
”Poor beasts. I say, Leechy,” she whispered, ”don't let's bother about history now. Go on with Mr. Jessup. You'd got to where he called you Amy for the first time.”
Mr. Jessup was the person already alluded to in these pages as the only man Miss Leech had ever loved, and his history was of absorbing interest to Letty, who never tired of hearing his first appearance on Miss Leech's horizon described, with his subsequent advances before the stage of open courting was reached, the courting itself, and its melancholy end; for Mr. Jessup, a clergyman of the Church of England, with a vicarage all ready to receive his wife, had suddenly become a prey to new convictions, and had gone over to the Church of Rome; whereupon Miss Leech's father, also a clergyman of the Church of England, had talked a great deal about the Scarlet Woman of Babylon, and had shut the door in Mr. Jessup's face when next he called to explain. This had happened when Miss Leech was twenty. Now, at thirty, an orphan resigned to the world's buffets, she found a gentle consolation in repeating the story of her ill-starred engagement to her keenly interested friend and pupil; and the oftener she repeated it the less did it grieve her, till at last she came actually to enjoy the remembrance of it, pleased to have played the princ.i.p.al part even in a drama that was hissed off her little stage, glad to find a sympathetic listener, dwelling much and fondly on every incident of that short period of importance and glory.
It is doubtful whether she would ever have extracted the same amount of pleasure from Mr. Jessup had he remained fixed in the faith of his fathers and married her in due season. By his secession he had unconsciously become a sort of providence to Letty and herself, saving them from endless hours of dulness, furnis.h.i.+ng their lonely schoolroom life with romance and mystery; and if in Miss Leech's mind he gradually took on the sweet intangibility of a pleasant dream, he was the very pith and marrow of Letty's existence. She glowed and thrilled at the thought that perhaps she too would one day have a Mr. Jessup of her own, who would have convictions, and give up everything, herself included, for what he believed to be right.
As usual, they at once became absorbed in Mr. Jessup, forgetting in the contemplation of his excellencies everything else in the world, till they were roused to realities by their arrival at Stralsund; and Susie, thrusting books and bags and umbrellas into their pa.s.sive hands, pushed them out of the carriage into the wet.
Hilton, the maid shared by Susie and Anna, had then to be found and urged to clamber down quickly on to the low platform, where she stood helplessly, the picture of injured superiority, hustled by the hurrying porters and pa.s.sengers, out of whose way she scorned to move, while Anna went to look for the luggage and have it put into the cart that had been sent for it.
This cart was an ordinary farm cart, used for bringing in the hay in June, but also used for carrying out the manure in November; and on a sack of straw lying in the bottom it was expected that Hilton should sit. The farm boy who drove it, and who helped the porter to tie the trunks to its sides lest they should too violently b.u.mp against each other and Hilton on the way, said so; the coachman of the carriage waiting for the _Herrschaften_ pointed with his whip first at Hilton and then at the cart, and said so; the porter, who seemed to think it quite natural, said so; and everybody was waiting for Hilton to get in, who, when she had at length grasped the situation, went to Susie, who was looking frightened and pretending to be absorbed by the sky, and with a voice shaken by pa.s.sion, and a face changing from white to red, announced her intention of only going in that cart as a corpse, when they might do with her as they pleased, but as a living body with breath in it, never.
Here was a difficulty. And idlers, whose curiosity was not extinguishable by wind and sleet, began to press round, and people who had come by the same train stopped on their way out to listen. The farm boy patted the sack and declared that it was clean straw, the coachman stood up on his box and swore that it was a new sack, the porter a.s.sured the Fraulein that it was as comfortable as a feather bed, and n.o.body seemed to understand that what she was being offered was an insult.
Susie was afraid of Hilton, who had been in the service of d.u.c.h.esses, and who held these d.u.c.h.esses over her mistress's head whenever her mistress wanted to do anything that was inconvenient to herself; quoting their sayings, pointing out how they would have acted in any given case, and always, it appeared, they had done exactly what Hilton desired.
Susie's admiration for d.u.c.h.esses was slavish, and Hilton was treated with an indulgent liberality that was absurd compared to the stinginess displayed towards everyone else. Hilton was not more horrified than her mistress when she saw the farm cart, and understood that it was for the luggage and the maid. It was impossible to take her with them in what the porter called the _herrschaftliche Wagen_, for it was a kind of victoria, and how to get their four selves into it was a sufficient puzzle. ”What shall we do?” said Susie, in despair, to Anna.
”Do? Why, she'll have to go in it. Hilton, don't be a foolish person, and don't keep us here in the wet. This isn't England, and n.o.body thinks anything here of driving in farm carts. It is patriarchal simplicity, that's all. People are staring at you now because you are making such a fuss. Get in like a good soul, and let us start.”
”Only as a corpse, m'm,” reiterated Hilton with chattering teeth, ”never as a living body.”
”Nonsense,” said Anna impatiently.
”What shall we do?” repeated Susie. ”Poor Hilton--what barbarians they must be here.”
”We must send her in a _Droschky_, then, if it isn't too far, and we can get one to go.”
”A _Droschky_ all that distance! It will be ruinous.”
”Well, we can't stand here amusing these people for ever.”
”Oh, I wish we had never come to this horrible place!” cried Susie, really made miserable by Hilton's rage.
But Anna did not stay to listen either to her laments or to Hilton's monotonous ”Only as a corpse, m'lady,” and was already arranging with an unwilling driver, who had no desire whatever to drive to Kleinwalde, but consented to do so on being promised twenty marks, a rest and feed of oats for his horses, and any little addition in the shape of refreshment and extra money that might suggest itself to Anna's generosity.
”You know, Anna, you can't expect _me_ to pay for the fly,” said Susie uneasily, when the appeased Hilton had been put into it and was out of earshot. ”That dreadful cart is your property, I suppose.”