The Benefactress

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

Susie thought it the most God-forsaken country she had ever seen, and expressed this opinion plainly on her face and in her attitudes without any need for opening her lips, shuddering back ostentatiously into her corner, wrapping herself with elaborate care in her furs, and behaving as slaves to duty sometimes do when the paths they have to tread are rough.

After driving along the chaussée for about an hour, they passed a big house standing among trees back from the road on the right, and a little farther on came to a small village. The carriage, pulled up with a jerk, and looking eagerly round the hood Anna found they had come to a standstill in front of a new red-brick building, whose steps were crowded with children. Two or three men and some women were with the children. Two of the men appeared to be clergymen, and the elder, a middle-aged, mild-faced man, came down the steps, and bowing profoundly proceeded to welcome Anna solemnly, on behalf of those children from Kleinwalde who attended this school, to her new home. He concluded that Anna was the person to be welcomed because he could see nothing of the lady in the other corner but her eyes, and they looked anything but friendly; whereas the young lady on the left was leaning forward and smiling and holding out her hand.

He took it, and shook it slowly up and down, while he begged her to allow the hood of the carriage to be put back, so that the children from her village, who had walked three miles to welcome her, might be able to see her; and on Anna's readily agreeing to this, himself helped the coachman with his own white-gloved hands to put it down. Susie was therefore exposed to the full fury of the blast, and shrank still farther into her corner—an interesting and tantalising object to the school-children, a dark, mysterious combination of fur, cocks' feathers, and black eyebrows.

Then the clergyman, hat in hand, made a speech. He spoke distinctly, as one accustomed to speaking often and long, and Anna understood every word. She was wholly taken aback by these ceremonies, and had no idea of what she should say in reply, but sat smiling vaguely at him, looking very pretty and very shy. She soon found that her smiles were inappropriate, and they died away; for, warming as he proceeded, the parson, it appeared, was taking it for granted that she intended to live on her property, and was eloquently descanting on the comfort she was going to be to the poor, assuring those present that she would be a mother to the sick, nursing them with her tender woman's hands, an angel of mercy to the hungry, feeding them in the hour of their distress, a friend and sister to the little children, succouring them, caring for them, pitiful of their weakness and their sins. His face lit up with enthusiasm as he went on, and Anna was thankful that Susie could not understand. This crowd of children, the women, the young parson, her coachman, were all hearing promises made on her behalf that she had no thought of fulfilling. She looked down, and twisted her fingers about nervously, and felt uncomfortable.

At the end of his speech, the parson, his eyes full of the tears drawn forth by his own eloquence, held up his hand and solemnly blessed her, rounding off his blessing with a loud Amen, after which there was an awkward pause. Susie heard the Amen, and guessed that something in the nature of a blessing was being invoked, and made a movement of impatience. The parson was odious in her eyes, first because he looked like the ministers of the Baptist chapels of her unmarried youth, but principally because he was keeping her there in the gale and prolonging the tortures she was enduring from the smell of fish. Anna did not know what to say after the Amen, and looked up more shyly than ever, and stammered in her confusion Danke sehr, hoping that it was a proper remark to make; whereupon the parson bowed again, as one who should say Pray don't mention it. Then another man, evidently the schoolmaster, took out a tuning-fork, gave out a note, and the children sang a chorale, following it up with other more cheerful songs, in which the words Frühling and Willkommen were repeated a great many times, while the wind howled flattest contradiction.

When this was over, the parson begged leave to introduce the other clerical-looking person, a tall narrow youth, also in white kid gloves, buttoned up tightly in a long coat of broadcloth, with a pallid face and thick, upright flaxen hair.

"Herr Vicar Klutz," said the elder parson, with a wave of the hand; and the Herr Vicar, making his bow, and having his limp hand heartily grasped by that other little hand, and his furtive eyes smiled into by those other friendly eyes, became on the spot desperately enamoured; which was very natural, seeing that he had not spoken to a woman under forty for six months, and was himself twenty and a poet. He spent the rest of the afternoon shut up in his bedroom, where, refusing all nourishment, he composed a poem in which berauschten Sinn was made to rhyme with Engländerin, while the elder parson, in whose house he lived, thought he was writing his Good Friday sermon.

Then the schoolmaster was introduced, and then came the two women—the schoolmaster's wife and the parson's wife; and when Anna had smiled and murmured polite and incoherent little speeches to each in turn, and had nodded and bowed at least a dozen times to each of these ladies, who could by no means have done with their curtseys, and had introduced them to the dumb figure in the corner, during which ceremonies Letty stared round-eyed and open-mouthed at the school-children, and the school-children stared round-eyed and open-mouthed at Letty, and Miss Leech looked demure, and Susie's brows were contracted by suffering, she wondered whether she might not now with propriety continue her journey, and if so whether it were expected that she should give the signal.

Everybody was smiling at everybody else by way of filling up this pause of hesitation, except Susie, who shut her eyes with great dignity, and shivered in so marked a manner that the parson himself came to the rescue, and bade the coachman help him put up the hood again, explaining to Anna as he did so that her Frau Schwester was not used to the climate.

Evidently the moment had come for going on, and the bows that had but just left off began again with renewed vigour. Anna was anxious to say something pleasant at the finish, so she asked the parson's wife, as she bade her good-bye, whether she and her husband would come to Kleinwalde the next day to dinner.