[Sidenote: A Startling Face]
George Fasch kissed her and patted her shoulder; then a suppressed sob caught his ear. He held Anna away from him, and looked at her face.
It was red and green in streaks, and her eyes were red and inflamed. The father was startled by her appearance.
"What is the matter, dear child?" he said. "You are ill."
Then his eyes fell on her ap.r.o.n. Its crumpled state, and the red and green smears on it, showed the use to which it had been put, and he began to guess what had happened.
Anna hung her head.
"I was crying and I leaned against a tree. Oh, dear, it was a clean ap.r.o.n! Aunt will be vexed."
Her father sighed, but he pitied her confusion.
"Why did you cry, my child?" he said, half-tenderly, half in rebuke.
"Aunt Christina means well, though she speaks abruptly."
He only provoked fresh tears, but Anna tried so hard to keep them back that she was soon calm again.
"I am not vexed with Aunt Christina for scolding me," she said; "I deserved it; I am sorry for myself."
"Well, well," he said cheerfully, "we cannot expect old heads on young shoulders." His honest, sunburned face was slightly troubled as he looked at her. "You will have to brush up a bit, you know, when Christina goes to Zurich. You are going to be left in charge of the house for a week or so."
Anna pressed her hands nervously together. She felt that the house would suffer greatly under her guidance; but then, she should have her father all to herself in her aunt"s absence, and she should be freed from those scathing rebukes which made her feel all the more clumsy and helpless when they were uttered in her father"s presence.
George Fasch, however, had of late become very much aware of his daughter"s awkwardness, and secretly he was troubled by the prospect of her aunt"s absence. He was a kind man and an affectionate father, but he objected to Gretchen"s unaided cookery, and he had therefore resolved to transact some long-deferred business in Zurich during his sister"s stay there. This would lessen the number of his badly-cooked dinners at home.
"I shall start with Christina," he said--"some one must go with her to Pardisla; and next day I shall come home by Malans, so you will have to meet me on Wednesday evening at the old place, eh, Anna?"
She nodded and smiled, but she felt a little disappointed. She reflected, however, that she should have her father alone for some days after his return.
Christina was surprised to see how cheerful the girl looked when she came indoors.
Rain fell incessantly for several days, and even when it ceased ma.s.ses of white vapour rose up from the neighbouring valleys and blotted out everything. The vapour had lifted, however, when Fasch and his sister started on their expedition, and Anna, tired of her week"s seclusion, set out on a ramble. A strange new feeling came over the girl as soon as she lost sight of her aunt"s straight figure. She was free, there would be no one to scold her or to make her feel awkward; she vaulted with delight, and with an ease that surprised her, over the fence that parted the two meadows; she looked down at her skirt, and she saw with relief that she had not much frayed it, yet she knew there were thorns, for there had been an abundance of wild roses in the hedge.
A lark was singing blithely overhead, and the gra.s.shoppers filled the air with joyful chirpings. Anna"s face beamed with content.
"If life could be always like to-day!" she thought, "oh, how nice it would be!"
[Sidenote: In the Marsh]
Presently she reached the meadow with the brook running across it, and she gave a cry of delight; down in the marsh into which the brook ran across the sloping field she saw a ma.s.s of bright dark-blue. These were gentian-flowers, opening blue and green blossoms to the sunshine, and in front of them the meadow itself was white with a sprinkling of gra.s.s of Parna.s.sus.
Anna had a pa.s.sionate love of flowers, and, utterly heedless of all but the joy of seeing them, she ran down the slope, and only stopped when she found herself ankle-deep in the marsh below, in which the gentian grew.
This sobered her excitement. She pulled out one foot, and was shocked to find that she had left her shoe behind in the black slime; she was conscious, too, that her other foot was sinking deeper and deeper in the treacherous marsh. There was nothing to hold by, there was not even an osier near at hand; behind the gentian rose a thicket of rosy-blossomed willow-herb, and here and there was a creamy ta.s.sel of meadowsweet, but even these were some feet beyond her grasp.
Anna looked round her in despair. From the next field came a clicking sound, and as she listened she guessed that old Andreas was busy mowing.
He was old, but he was not deaf, and she could easily make him hear a cry for help; but she was afraid of Andreas. He kept the hotel garden in order, and if he found footmarks on the vegetable plots, or if anything went wrong with the plants, he always laid the blame on Anna; he was as neat as he was captious, and the girl shrank from letting him see the plight she was in.
She stooped down and felt for her shoe, and as she recovered it she nearly fell full length into the bog; the struggle to keep her balance was fatal; her other foot sank several inches; it seemed to her that she must soon be sucked down by the horrible black water that spurted up from the marsh with her struggles.
Without stopping to think, she cried out as loud as she could, "Help me, Andreas! Help! I am drowning!"
At the cry the top of a straw hat appeared in sight, and its owner came up-hill--a small man, with twisted legs, in pale clay-coloured trousers, a black waistcoat, and brown linen shirtsleeves. His wrinkled face looked hot, and his hat was pushed to the back of his head. He took it off and wiped his face with his handkerchief while he looked round him.
"Pouf!" He gave a grunt of displeasure. "So you are once more in mischief, are you? Ah, ah, ah! What, then, will the aunt, that ever to be respected Fraulein, say, when she hears of this?"
He called this out as he came leisurely across the strip of meadow that separated him from Anna.
She was in an agony of fear lest she should sink still farther in before he reached her; but she knew Andreas far too well to urge him even by a word to greater haste. So she stood shivering and pale with fear while she clasped her bog-stained shoe close to her.
Andreas had brought a stake with him, and he held this out to Anna, but when she tried to draw out her sinking foot she shook her head, it seemed to be stuck too fast in the bog.
Andreas gave a growl of discontent, and then went slowly up to the plank bridge. With some effort he raised the smaller of the two planks and carried it to where Anna stood fixed like a statue among the flowering water-plants. Then he pushed the plank out till it rested on a hillock of rushes, while the other end remained on the meadow.
"Ah!"--he drew a long breath--"see the trouble you give by your carelessness."
He spoke vindictively, as if he would have liked to give her a good shaking; but Anna smiled at him, she was so thankful at the prospect of release.
[Sidenote: Rescued]
The mischievous little man kept her waiting some minutes. He pretended to test the safety of the plank by walking up and down it and trying it with his foot. At last, when the girl"s heart had become sick with suspense, he suddenly stretched out both hands and pulled her on to the plank, then he pushed her along before him till she was on dry ground once more.
"Oh, thank you, Andreas," she began, but he cut her thanks very short.
"Go home at once and dry yourself," he said. "You are the plague of my life, and if I had been a wise man I should have left you in the marsh.
Could not your senses tell you that all that rain meant danger in boggy places? There"ll be mischief somewhere besides this; a landslip or two, more than likely. There, run home, child, or you"ll get cold."
He turned angrily away and went back to his work.
Anna hurried to the narrowest part of the brook and jumped across it.
She could not make herself in a worse plight than she was already; her skirts were dripping with the black and filthy water of the marsh.
Heavy rain fell again during the night, and continued throughout the morning, but in the afternoon there was a glimpse of sunshine overhead.
This soon drew the vapour up again from the valley, and white steam-clouds sailed slowly across the landscape.
Gretchen had been very kind and compa.s.sionate about Anna"s disaster; she made the girl go to bed for an hour or two, and gave her some hot broth, and Anna would have forgotten her trouble but for the certainty she felt that old Andreas would make as bad a story of it as he could to her Aunt Christina. But this morning the girl was looking forward to her father"s home-coming, and she was in good spirits; she had tried to make herself extra neat, and to imitate as closely as she could her Aunt Christina"s way of tidying the rooms; but one improvement suggested itself to Anna which would certainly not have occurred to her tidy aunt; if she had thought of it, she would have scouted the idea as useless, and a frivolous waste of time.
Directly after the midday meal Anna went out to gather a wild-flower nosegay, to place in the sitting-room in honour of her father"s return.
It seemed to her the only means she had of showing him how glad she was to see him again.
While she was busy gathering Andreas crossed the meadow; he did not see Anna stooping over the flowers, and she kept herself hidden; but the sight of him brought back a haunting fear. What was it? What had Andreas said that she had forgotten? He had said something which had startled her at the time, and which now came pressing urgently on her for remembrance, although she could not distinctly recall it.