Part 44 (1/2)
There was a pause. Neither of the ladies had expected such an att.i.tude.
”This is very serious,” then observed Frau von Treumann helplessly. She took up her work again and pulled at the st.i.tches, making knots in the thread. Both she and the baroness had felt so certain that Anna would be properly incensed when she heard the truth. Her manner without doubt suggested displeasure, but the displeasure, strangely enough, seemed to be directed against themselves instead of Fraulein Kuhrauber. What could they, with dignity, do next? Frau von Treumann felt angry and perplexed.
She remembered Karlchen's advice in regard to ultimatums, and wished she had remembered it sooner; but who could have imagined the extent of Anna's folly? Never, she reflected, had she met anyone quite so foolish.
”It is a case for the police,” burst out the baroness pa.s.sionately, all the pride of all the Elmreichs surging up in revolt against a fate threatening to condemn her to spend the rest of her days with the progeny of a postman. ”Your advertis.e.m.e.nt specially mentioned good birth as essential, and she is here under false pretences. You have the proofs in her letters. She is within reach of the arm of the law.”
Anna could not help smiling. ”Don't denounce her,” she said. ”I should be appalled if anything approaching the arm of the law got into my house. I'll burn the proofs after dinner.” Then she turned to Frau von Treumann. ”If you think it over,” she said, ”I _know_ you will not wish me to be so merciless, so pitiless, as to send Emilie back to misery only because her father, who has been dead thirty years, was a postman.”
”But, Anna, you must be reasonable--you must look at the other side. No Treumann has ever yet been required to a.s.sociate----”
”But if he was a good man? If he did his work honestly, and said his prayers, and behaved himself? We have no reason for doubting that he was a most excellent postman,” she went on, a twinkle in her eye; ”punctual, diligent, and altogether praiseworthy.”
”Then you object to nothing?” cried the baroness with extraordinary bitterness. ”You draw the line nowhere? All the traditions and prejudices of gentlefolk are supremely indifferent to you?”
”Oh, I object to a great many things. I would have liked it better if the postman had really been the literary luminary poor Emilie said he was--for her sake, and my sake, and your sakes. And I don't like untruths, and never shall. But I do like Emilie, and I forgive it all.”
”Then she is to remain here?”
”Yes, as long as she wants to. And do, _do_ try to see how good she is, and how much there is to love in her. You have done her a real service,”
Anna added, smiling, ”for now she won't have it on her mind any more, and will be able to be really happy.”
The baroness gathered up her work and rose. Frau von Treumann looked at her nervously, and rose too.
”Then----” began the baroness, pale with outraged pride and propriety.
”Then really----” began Frau von Treumann more faintly, but feeling bound in this matter to follow her example. After all, they could always allow themselves to be persuaded to change their minds again.
Anna got up too, and they stood facing each other. Something awful was going to happen, she felt, but what? Were they, she wondered, both going to give her notice?
The baroness, drawn up to her full height, looked at her, opened her lips to complete her sentence, and shut them again. She was exceedingly agitated, and held her little thin, claw-like hands tightly together to hide how they were shaking. All she had left in the world was the pride of being an Elmreich and a baroness; and as, with the relentless years, she had grown poorer, plainer, more insignificant, so had this pride increased and strengthened, until, together with her pa.s.sionate propriety and horror of everything in the least doubtful in the way of reputations, it had come to be the very mainspring of her being.
”Then----” she began again, with a great effort; for she remembered how there had actually been no food sometimes when she was hungry, and no fire when she was cold, and no doctor when she was sick, and how severe weather had seemed to set in invariably at those times when she had least money, making her first so much hungrier than usual, and afterwards so much more sick, as though nature itself owed her a grudge.
”Oh, these ultimatums!” inwardly deplored Frau von Treumann; the baroness was very absurd, she thought, to take the thing so tragically.
And at that instant the door was thrown open, and without waiting to be announced, Karlchen, resplendent in his hussar uniform, and beaming from ear to ear, hastened, clanking, into the room.
”Karlchen! _Du engelsgute Junge!_” shrieked his mother, in accents of supremest relief and joy.
”I could not stay away longer,” cried Karlchen, returning her embrace with vigour, ”I felt impelled to come. I obtained leave after many prayers. It is for a few hours only. I return to-night. You forgive me?”
he added, turning to Anna and bowing over her hand.
”Yes,” she said, smiling; Karlchen had come this time, she felt, exactly at the right moment.
”I wrote this very morning----” began his mother in her excitement; but she stopped in time, and covered her confusion by once again folding him in her arms.
Karlchen was so much delighted by this unexpectedly cordial reception that he lost his head a little. Anna stood smiling at him as she had not done once last time. Yes, there were the dimples--oh, sweet vision!--they were, indeed, glorious dimples. He seized her hand a second time and kissed it. The pretty hand--so delicate and slender. And the dress--Karlchen had an eye for dress--how dainty it was! ”Your kind welcome quite overcomes me,” he said enthusiastically; and he looked so gay, and so intensely satisfied with himself and the whole world, that Anna laughed again. Besides, the uniform was really surprisingly becoming; his civilian clothes on his first visit had been melancholy examples of what a military tailor cannot do.