CHAPTER II

THERE WAS A GERMAN RELATION of Anna’s, her mother’s brother, known to Susie as Uncle Joachim. He had been twice to England; once during his sister’s life, when Anna was little, and Peter was unmarried, and they were all poor and happy together at Estcourt; and once after Susie’s introduction into the family, just at that period when Anna was beginning to stiffen and put her hair behind her ears.

Susie knew all about him, having inquired with her usual frankness on first hearing of his existence whether he would be likely to leave Anna anything on his death; and upon being informed that he had a family of sons, and large estates and little money, looked upon it as a great hardship to be obliged to have him in her London house. She objected to all Germans, and thought this particular one a dreadful old man, and never wearied of making humorous comments on his clothes and the oddness of his manners at meals. She was vexed that he should be with them in Hill Street, and refused to give dinners while he was there. She also asked him several times if he would not enjoy a stay at Estcourt, and said that the country was now at its best, and the primroses were in full beauty.

“I want not primroses,” said Uncle Joachim, who seldom spoke at length; “I live in the country. I will now see London.”

So he went about diligently to all the museums and picture-galleries, sometimes alone and sometimes with Anna, who neglected her social duties more than ever in order to be with him, for she loved him.

They talked together chiefly in German, Uncle Joachim carefully correcting her mistakes; and while they went frugally in omnibuses to the different sights, and ate buns in confectioners’ shops at lunch-time, and walked long distances where no omnibuses were to be found—for besides having a great fear of hansoms he was very thrifty—he drew her out, saying little himself, and in a very short time knew almost as much about her life and her perplexities as she did.

She was very happy during his visit, and told herself contentedly that blood, after all, was thicker than water. She did not stop to consider what she meant exactly by this, but she had a vague notion that Susie was the water. She felt that Uncle Joachim understood her better than anyone had yet done; and was it not natural that her dear mother’s brother should? And it was only after she had taken him to service at St. Paul’s that she began to perceive that there might perhaps be points on which their tastes differed. Uncle Joachim had remained seated while other people knelt or stood; but that did not matter in that liberal place, where nobody notices the degree of his neighbour’s devoutness. And he had slept during the anthem, one of those unaccompanied anthems that are sung there with what seem of a certainty to be the voices of angels. And on coming out, when a fugue was rolling in glorious confusion down the echoing aisles, and Anna, who preferred her fugues confused, felt that her spirit was being caught up to heaven, he had looked at her rapt face and wet eyelashes, and patted her hand very kindly, and said encouragingly, “In my youth I too cultivated Bach. Now I cultivate pigs. Pigs are better.”

Anna’s mother had been his only sister, and he had come over, not, as he told Susie, to see London, but to see Susie herself, and to find out how it was that Anna had reached an age that in Germany is the age of old maids without marrying. By the time he had spent two evenings in Hill Street he had formed his opinion of his nephew and his nephew’s wife, and they remained fixed until his death. “The good Peter,” he said suddenly one day to Anna when they were wandering together in the maze at Hampton Court—for he faithfully went the rounds of sightseeing prescribed by Baedeker, and Anna followed him wherever he went—"the good Peter is but a Quatschkopf.”

“A Quatschkopf?” echoed Anna, whose acquaintance with her mother-tongue did not extend to the byways of opprobrium. “What in the world is a Quatschkopf?”

“Quatschkopf is a Duselfritz,” explained Uncle Joachim, “and also it is the good Peter.”

“I believe you are calling him ugly names,” said Anna, slipping her arm through his; by this time, if not kindred spirits, they were the best of friends.

Uncle Joachim did not immediately reply. They had come to the open space in the middle of the maze, and he sat down on the seat to recover his breath, and to wipe his forehead; for though the wind was cold the sun was fierce. “Gott, was man Alles durchmacht auf Reisen!” he sighed. Then he put his handkerchief back into his pocket, looked up at Anna, who was standing in front of him leaning on her sunshade, and said, “A Quatschkopf is a foolish fellow who marries a woman like that.”

“Oh, poor Susie!” cried Anna, at once ready to defend her, and full of the kindly feelings absence invariably produced. “Peter did a very sensible thing. But I don’t think Susie did, marrying Peter.”

“He is a Quatschkopf,” said Uncle Joachim, not to be shaken in his opinions, “and the geborene Dobbs is a vulgar woman who is not rich enough.”

“Not rich enough? Why, we are all suffocated by her money. We never hear of anything else. It would be dreadful if she had still more.”

“Not rich enough,” persisted Uncle Joachim, pursing up his lips into an expression of great disapproval, and shaking his head. “Such a woman should be a millionnaire. Not of marks, but of pounds sterling. Short of that, a man of birth does not impose her as a mother on his children. Peter has done it. He is a Quatschkopf.”

“It is a great mercy that she isn’t a millionnaire,” said Anna, appalled by the mere thought. “Things would be just the same, except that there would be all that money more to hear about. I hate the very name of money.”

“Nonsense. Money is very good.”

“But not somebody else’s.”

“That is true,” said Uncle Joachim approvingly. “One’s own is the only money that is truly pleasant.” Then he added suddenly, “Tell me, how comes it that you are not married?”

Anna frowned. “Now you are growing like Susie,” she said.

“Ach—she asks you that often?”

“Yes—no, not quite like that. She says she knows why I am not married.”

“And what knows she?”

“She says that I frighten everybody away,” said Anna, digging the point of her sunshade into the ground. Then she looked at Uncle Joachim, and laughed.

“What?” he said incredulously. This pretty creature standing before him, so soft and young—for that she was twenty-four was hardly credible—could not by any possibility be anything but lovable.

“She says that I am disagreeable to people—that I look cross—that I don’t encourage them enough. Now isn’t it simply terrible to be expected to encourage any wretched man who has money? I don’t want anybody to marry me. I don’t want to buy my independence that way. Besides, it isn’t really independence.”

“For a woman it is the one life,” said Uncle Joachim with great decision. “Talk not to me of independence. Such words are not for the lips of girls. It is a woman’s pride to lean on a good husband. It is her happiness to be shielded and protected by him. Outside the narrow circle of her home, for her happiness is not. The woman who never marries has missed all things.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Anna.

“It is nevertheless true.”

“Look at Susie—is she so happy?”

“I said a good husband; not a Duselfritz.”

“And as for narrow circles, why, how happy, how gloriously happy, I could be outside them, if only I were independent!”

“Independent—independent,” repeated Uncle Joachim testily, “always this same foolish word. What hast thou in thy head, child, thy pretty woman’s head, made, if ever head was, to lean on a good man’s shoulder?”

“Oh—good men’s shoulders,” said Anna, shrugging her own, “I don’t want to lean on anybody’s shoulder. I want to hold my head up straight, all by itself. Do you then admire limp women, dear uncle, whose heads roll about all loose till a good man comes along and props them up?”

“These are English ideas. I like them not,” said Uncle Joachim, looking stony.

Anna sat down on the seat by his side, and laid her cheek for a moment against his sleeve. “This is the only good man’s shoulder it will ever lean on,” she said. “If I were a preacher, do you know what I would preach?”

“Thou art not, and never wilt be, a preacher.”

“But if I were? Do you know what I would preach? Early and late? In...