Part 39 (2/2)

Anna thought this a practical way of helping Axel, since the throwing of water on the flames was not required of her. She turned to call Letty, and found that no Letty was to be seen. ”Why, where is Letty?” she asked, looking round.

”I thought she was behind us,” said the princess.

”So did I,” said Anna anxiously.

They went back a few steps, looking for her among the bystanders. They saw her at last a long way off, her handkerchief still round her head and her long thick hair blowing round her shoulders, rapt in contemplation of the fiery furnace. Then a shout went up from the people in the road, and they all ran back into the potato field. Anna and the princess stood rooted to the spot, clutching each other's hands. Letty looked round when she heard the shout, and began to run too. The flaming outer wall of the yard swayed and tottered and then fell outwards with a terrific crash and crackling, filling the road with a smoking heap of rubbish, and sending a shower of sparks on a puff of wind after the flying spectators.

The princess had certainly not run so fast since her girlhood as she did with Anna towards the spot in the field where they had last seen Letty.

A crowd had gathered round it, they could see, an excited, gesticulating crowd. But they found her apparently unhurt, sitting on the ground, surrounded by sympathisers, and with someone's coat over her head. She looked up, very pale, but smiling apologetically at her aunt. ”It's all gone,” she said, pointing to her head.

”What is gone?” cried Anna, dropping on her knees beside her.

”_Ach Gott, die Haare--die herrlichen Haare!_” lamented a woman in the crowd. The smell of burnt hair explained what had happened.

Anna seized her in her arms. ”You might have been killed--you might have been killed,” she panted, rocking her to and fro. ”Oh, Letty--who saved you?”

”Somebody put this beastly thing over my head--it smells of herrings.

Sparks got into my hair, and it all frizzled up. Can't I take this off?

It's out now--and off too.”

The princess felt all over her head through the coat, patting and pressing it carefully; then she took the coat off, and restored it with effusive thanks to its sheepish owner. There was a murmur of sympathy from the women as Letty emerged, shorn of those flowing curls that were her only glory. ”_Oh Weh, die herrlichen Haare!_” sighed the women to one another, ”_Oh Weh, oh Weh!_” But the handkerchief tied so tightly round her head had saved her from a worse fate; she had been an ugly little girl before--all that had happened was that she looked now like an ugly little boy.

”I say, Aunt Anna, don't mind,” said Letty; for her aunt was crying, and kissing her, and tying and untying the handkerchief, and arranging and rearranging it, and stroking and smoothing the singed irregular wisps of hair that were left as though she loved them. ”I'm frightfully sorry--I didn't know you were so fond of my hair.”

”Come, we'll go to the house,” was all Anna said, stumbling on to her feet and putting her arm round Letty. And they clung to each other so close that they could hardly walk.

”We are going indoors a moment,” called the princess, who was very pale, to Axel as they pa.s.sed the engines.

He smiled across at her, and lifted his hat.

”I never saw anyone quite so composed,” she observed to Anna, trying to turn her attention to other things. ”Your man Dellwig, who has nothing to do with it all, is displaying the kind of behaviour the people expect on these occasions. I am sure that Axel has puzzled a great many people to-night.”

Anna did not answer. She was thinking only of Letty. What a slender thread of chance had saved her from death, from a dreadful death, the little Letty who was under her care, for whom she was responsible, and whom she had quite forgotten in her stupid interest in Axel Lohm's affairs. Woman-like, she felt very angry with Axel. What did it matter to her whether his place burnt to ashes or not? But Letty mattered to her, her own little niece, poor solitary Letty, practically motherless, so ugly, and so full of good intentions. She had scolded her so much about Klutz; wretched Klutz, it was entirely his fault that Letty had been so silly, and yet only Letty had had the scoldings. Anna held her closer. In the light of that narrow escape how trivial, how indifferent, all this folly of love-talk and messages and anger seemed. For a short s.p.a.ce she touched the realities, she saw life and death in their true proportion; and even while she was looking at them with clear and startled vision they were blurred again into indistinctness, they faded away and were gone--rubbed out by the inevitable details of the pa.s.sing hour.

”I thought as much,” said the princess, as they drew near the house.

”All the doors wide open and the place deserted.” And Anna came back with a start from the reality to the well-known dream of daily life, and immediately felt as though that other flash had been the dream and only this were real.

The hall was in darkness, but there was light s.h.i.+ning through the c.h.i.n.ks of a door, and they groped their way towards it. The house was as quiet as death. They could hear the distant shouts of the men cutting down the trees in the garden, and the blows of the axes. The princess pushed open the door behind which the light was, and they found themselves in Axel's study, where the candles he had lit in order to read Letty's poem were still guttering and flaring in the draught from the open window. A clock on the writing-table showed that it was past midnight. The room looked very untidy and ill-cared for.

”A man without a wife,” said the princess, gazing round at the litter, composed chiefly of cigar-ashes and old envelopes, ”is a truly miserable being. What condition can be more wretched than to be at the mercy of a Mamsell? I shall go and inquire into the whereabouts of this one. Axel will want some food when he comes in.”

She took up one of the candles and went out. Letty had sat down at once on the nearest chair, and was looking very pale. Anna untied the handkerchief, and tried to arrange what was left of her hair. ”I must cut off these uneven ends,” she said, ”but there won't be any scissors here.”

”I say,” began Letty, staring very hard at her.

”I believe you were terribly scared, you poor little creature,” said Anna, struck by her pale face, and pa.s.sing her hand tenderly over the singed head.

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