the caravaners
I
IN June this year there were a few fine days, and we
supposed the summer had really come at last. The
effect was to make us feel our flat (which is really a
very nice well-planned one on the second floor at the
corner overlooking the cemetery, and not at all stuffy)
but a dull place after all, and think with something
like longing of the country.
It was the year of the
fifth anniversary of our wedding, and having decided
to mark the occasion by a trip abroad in the proper
holiday season of August we could not afford, neither
did we desire, to spend money on trips into the
country in June. My wife therefore suggested that
we should devote a few afternoons to a series of short
excursions within a radius of, say, from five to ten
miles round our town, and visit one after the other
those of our acquaintances who live near enough to
Storchwerder and farm their own estates. " In this
way," said she, " we shall get much fresh air at little
cost."
After a time I agreed. Not immediately, of
course, for a reasonable man will take care to consider
the suggestions made by his wife from every point of
view before consenting to follow them or allowing her
to follow them. Women do not reason: they have
instincts; and instincts would land them in strange
places sometimes if it were not that their husbands
are there to illuminate the path for them and behave,
if one may so express it, as a kind of guiding and very
clever glow-worm. As for those who have not succeeded
in getting husbands, the flotsam and jetsam,
so to speak, of their sex, all I can say is God help them.
There was nothing, however, to be advanced
against Edelgard's idea in this case ; on the contrary,
there was much to commend it. We should get fresh
air; we should be fed (well fed, and, if we chose, to
excess, but of course we know how to be reasonable) ;
and we should pay nothing. As Major of the artillery
regiment stationed at Storchwerder I am obliged
anyhow to keep a couple of horses (they are fed at
the cost of the regiment,) and I also in the natural
order of things have one of the men of my battalion
in my flat as servant and coachman, who costs me
little more than his keep and may not give me notice.
All, then, that was wanting was a vehicle, and we
could, as Edelgard pointed out, easily borrow our
Colonel's waggonette for a few afternoons, so there was
our equipage complete, and without spending a penny.
The estates round Storchwerder are big, and we
found on counting up that five calls would cover the
entire circle of our country acquaintance. There
might have been a sixth, but for reasons with which
I entirely concurred my dear wife did not choose to
include it. Lines have to be drawn, and I do not
think an altogether bad definition of a gentleman or
a lady would be one who draws them. Indeed,
Edelgard was in some doubt as to whether there
should be even five, a member of the five-not in
this case actually the land-owner but the brother of
the widowed lady owning it, who lives with her and
looks after her interests-being a person we neither
of us can care much about, because he is not only
unsound politically, with a decided leaning disgraceful
in a man of his birth and which he hardly takes any
trouble to hide towards those views the middle
classes and Socialist sort of people call (God save
the mark) enlightened, but he is also either unable
or unwilling-Edelgard and I could never make up
our minds which-to keep his sister in order. Yet
to keep the woman one is responsible for in order
whether she be sister, or wife, or mother, or daughter,
or even under certain favourable conditions aunt-
a difficult race sometimes, as may be seen by the
case of Edelgard's Aunt Bockhugel, of whom perhaps
more later-is really quite easy. It is only a question
of beginning in time, as you mean to go on in fact,
and of being especially firm whenever you feel
internally least so. It is so easy that I never could
understand the difficulty. It is so easy that when
my wife at this point brought me my eleven o'clock
bread and ham and butter and interrupted me by
looking over my shoulder, I smiled up at her, my
thoughts still running on this theme, and taking the
hand that put down the plate said, " Is it not, dear
wife? "
" Is what not ? " she asked,-rather stupidly I
thought, for she had read what I had written to the
end ; then without giving me time to reply she said,
" Are you not going to write the story of our experiences in England after all, Otto ? "
" Certainly," said I.
" To lend round among our relations next winter ? "
" Certainly," said I.
" Then had you not better begin ? "
" Dear wife," said I, " it is what I am doing."
" Then," said she, " do not waste time going off
the rails."
And sitting down in the window she resumed her
work of enlarging the armholes of my shirts.
This, I may remark, was tartness. Before she
went to England she was never tart. However, let
me continue.
I wonder what she means by rails. (I shall revise
all this, of course, and no doubt will strike out
portions.) I wonder if she means I ought to begin
with my name and address. It seems unnecessary,
for I am naturally as well known to persons in Storchwerder
as the postman. On the other hand this is
my first attempt (which explains why I wonder at all
what Edelgard may or may not mean, beginners
doing well, I suppose, to be humble) at what poetic
and literary and other persons of bad form call,
I believe, wooing the Muse. What an expression!
And I wonder what Muse. I would like to ask
Edelgard whether she-but no, it would almost seem
as if I were seeking her advice, which is a reversing
of the proper relative positions of husband and wife.
So at this point, instead of adopting a course so
easily disastrous, I turned my head and said quietly-
" Dear wife, our English experiences did begin
with our visits to the neighbours. If it had not been
for those visits we would probably not last summer
have seen Frau von Eckthum at all, and if we had
not come within reach of her persuasive tongue we
would have gone on our silver wedding journey to
Italy or Switzerland, as we had so often planned, and
left that accursed island across the Channel alone."
I paused; and as Edelgard said nothing, which is
what she says when she is unconvinced, I continued
with the patience I always show her up to the point
at which it would become weakness, to explain the
difference between the exact and thorough methods
of men, their liking for going to the root of a matter
and beginning at the real beginning, and the jumping
tendencies of women, who jump to things such as
conclusions without paying the least heed to all the
important places they have passed over while they
were, so to speak, in the air.
" But we get there first," said Edelgard.
I frowned a little. A few months ago-before,
that is, our time on British soil-she would not have
made such a retort. She used never to retort, and
the harmony of our wedded life was consequently
unclouded. I think she saw me frown, but she took
no notice-another novelty in her behaviour; so,
after waiting a moment, I determined to continue
the narrative.
But before I go straight on with it I should like to
explain why we, an officer and his wife who naturally
do not like spending money, should have contemplated
so costly a holiday as a trip abroad. The
fact is, for a long time past we had made up our minds
to do so in the fifth year of our marriage, and for the
following reason. Before I married Edelgard I had
been a widower for one year, and before being a
widower I was married for no fewer than nineteen
years. This sounds as though I must be old, but I
need not tell my readers who see me constantly that
I am not. The best of all witnesses are the eyes ;
also, I began my marrying unusually young. My first
wife was one of the Mecklenburg Lunewitzes, the
elder (and infinitely superior) branch. If she had
lived, I would last year have been celebrating our
silver wedding on August 1st, and there would have
been much feasting and merry-making arranged for
us, and many acceptable gifts in silver from our
relations, friends, and acquaintances. The regiment
would have been obliged to recognise it, and perhaps
our two servants would have clubbed together and
expressed their devotion in a metal form. All this
I feel I have missed, and through no fault of my
own. I fail to see why I should be deprived of every
benefit of such a celebration, for have I not, with
an interruption of twelve months forced upon me,
been actually married twenty-five years ? And why,
because my poor Marie-Luise was unable to go on
living, should I have to attain to the very high number
of (practically) five and twenty years' matrimony
without the least notice being taken of it ? I had
been explaining this to Edelgard for a long time, and
the nearer the date drew on which in the natural
order of things I would have been reaping a silver
harvest and have been put in a position to gauge the
esteem in which I was held, the more emphatic did I
become. Edelgard seemed at first unable to understand,
but she was very teachable, and gradually
found my logic irresistible. Indeed, once she grasped
the point she was even more strongly of opinion than
I was that something ought to be done to mark the
occasion, and quite saw that if Marie-Luise failed me
it was not my fault, and that I at least had done my
part and gone on steadily being married ever since.
From recognising this to being indignant that our
friends would probably take no notice of the anniversary
was but, for her, a step ; and many were
the talks we had together on the subject, and many
the suggestions we both of us made for bringing
our friends round to our point of view. We finally
decided that, however much they might ignore it,
we ourselves would do what was right, and accordingly
we planned a silver-honeymoon trip to the land
proper to romance, Italy, beginning it on the first of
August, which was the date of my marriage twenty-
five years before with Marie-Luise.
I have gone into this matter at some length because
I wished to explain clearly to those of our relations
who will have this lent to them why we undertook a
journey so, in the ordinary course of things,
extravagant; and having I hope done this satisfactorily,
will now proceed with the narrative.
We borrowed the Colonel's waggonette ; I wrote
five letters announcing our visit and asking (a mere
formality, of course) if it would be agreeable; the
answers arrived assuring us in every tone of well-bred
enthusiasm that it would; I donned my parade
uniform; Edelgard put on her new summer finery;
we gave careful instructions to Clothilde our cook,
helping her to carry them out by locking everything
up ; and off we started in holiday spirits, driven by
my orderly Hermann and watched by the whole
street.
At each house we were received with becoming
hospitality. They were all families of our own
standing, members of that chivalrous, God-fearing,
and well-born band that upholds the best traditions
of the Fatherland and gathers in spirit if not (owing
to circumstances) in body, like a protecting phalanx
around our Emperor's throne. First we had coffee
and cakes and a variety of sandwiches (at one of the
houses there were no sandwiches, only cakes, and we
both discussed this unaccountable omission during
the drive home) ; then I was taken to view the pigs
by our host, or the cows, or whatever happened to be
his special pride, but in four cases out of the five it
was pigs, and while I was away Edelgard sat on the
lawn or the terrace or wherever the family usually sat
(only one had a terrace), and conversed on subjects
interesting to women-folk, such as Clothilde and
Hermann and I know not what; then, after having
thoroughly exhausted the pigs and been in my turn
thoroughly exhausted by them, for naturally a
Prussian officer on active service cannot be expected
to take the same interest in these creatures so long
as they are raw as a man does who devotes his life
to them, we rejoined the ladies and strolled in the
lighter talk suited to our listeners about the grounds,
endeavouring with our handkerchiefs to drive away
the mosquitoes, till summoned to supper; and after
supper which usually consisted of one excellent hot
dish and a variety of cold ones, preceded by bouillon
in cups and followed by some elegant sweet and
beautiful fruit (except at Frau von Eckthum's, our
local young widow's, where it was a regular dinner
of six or seven courses, she being what is known as
ultra-modern, her sister having married an Englishman),
after supper, I repeat, having sat a while
smoking on the lawn or terrace, drinking coffee and
liqueurs and secretly congratulating ourselves on not
having in our town to live with so many and such
hungry mosquitoes, we took our leave and drove
back to Storchwerder, refreshed always and sometimes pleased as well.
The last of these visits was to Frau von Eckthum
and her brother Graf Flitz von Flitzburg, who, as
is well known, being himself unmarried lives with
her and looks after the estate left by the deceased
Eckthum, thereby stepping into shoes so comfortable
that they may more properly be spoken of as slippers.
All had gone well up to that, nor was I conscious till
much later that that had not gone well too ; for only
on looking back do we see the distance we have come
and the way in which the road, at first so promising,
led us before we knew where we were into a wilderness
plentiful in stones.
During our first four visits we
had naturally talked about our plan to take a trip
in August in Italy. Our friends, obviously surprised,
and with the expression on their faces that has its
source in thoughts of legacies; first enthusiastically
applauded and then pointed out that it would be hot.
August, they said, would be an impossible month in
Italy : go where we would we should not meet a
single German. This had not struck us before, and
after our first disappointment we willingly listened
to their advice rather to choose Switzerland, with
its excellent hotels and crowds of our countrymen.
Several times in the course of these conversations
did we try to explain the honeymoon nature of the
journey, but were met with so much of what I strongly
suspect to have been wilful obtuseness that to our
chagrin we began to see there was probably nothing
to be done. Edelgard said she wished it would occur
to them if, owing to the unusual circumstances, they
did not intend to give us actual ash-trays and match-
boxes, to join together in defraying the cost of the
wedding journey of such respectable silver-honey-
mooners; but I do not think that at any time they
had the least intention of doing anything at all for
us-on the contrary, they made us quite uneasy by
the sums they declared we would have to disburse;
and on our last visit (to Frau von Eckthum) happening
to bewail the amount of good German money that
was going to be dragged out of us by the rascally
Swiss, she-Frau von Eckthum-said, " Why not
come to England ? "
At the moment I was so much engaged mentally
reprobating the way in which she was lying back in
a low garden chair with one foot crossed over the
other and both feet encased in such thin stockings
that they might just as well not have been stockings
at all, that I did not immediately notice the other-
wise striking expression, " Come." " Go " would of
course have been the usual and expected form ; but
the substitution, I repeat, escaped me at the moment
because of my attention being otherwise engaged.
I never saw such little shoes. Has a woman a
right to be conspicuous at the extremities? So
conspicuous-Frau von Eckthum's hands also easily
become absorbing-that one is unable connectedly
to follow the conversation ? I doubt it : but she is
an attractive lady. There sat Edelgard, straight and
seemly , the perfect flower of a stricter type of virtuous
German womanhood, her feet properly placed side by
side on the grass and clothed, as I knew, in decent
wool with the flat-heeled boots of the Christian
gentlewoman, and I must say the type-in one's
wife, that is-is preferable. I rather wondered
whether Flitz noticed the contrast between the two
ladies. I glanced at him, but his face was as usual
a complete blank. I wondered whether he could or
could not make his sister sit up if he had wished to;
and for the hundredth time I felt I never could really
like the man, for from the point of view of a brother
one's sister should certainly sit up. She is, however,
an attractive lady : alas that her stockings should be
so persistently thin.
" England," I heard Edelgard saying, " is not, I
think, a suitable place."
It was then that I consciously noticed that Frau
von Eckthum had said " Come."
" Why not? " she asked; and her simple way of
asking questions, or answering them with others of
her own without waiting to adorn them or round them
off with the title of the person addressed, has helped
I know to make her unpopular in Storchwerder
society.
" I have heard," said Edelgard cautiously, no
doubt bearing in mind that to hosts whose sister had
married an Englishman and was still living with him
one would not say all one would like to about it,
" I have heard that it is not a place to go to if the
object is scenery."
" Oh ? " said Frau von Eckthum. Then she
added-intelligently, I thought-" But there always
is scenery."
" Edelgard means lofty scenery," said I gently, for
we were both holding cups of the Eckthum tea (this
was the only house in which we were made to drink
tea instead of our aromatic and far more filling
national beverage) in our hands, and I have always
held one ought to humour the persons whose hospitality
one happens to be enjoying-" Or enduring,"
said Edelgard cleverly when, on our way home, I
mentioned this to her.
" Or enduring," I agreed after a slight pause,
forced on reflection to see that it is not true hospitality
to oblige your visitors to go without their
coffee by employing the unworthy and barbarically
simple expedient of not allowing it to appear. But
of course that was Flitz. He behaves, I think, much
too much as though the place belonged to him.
Flitz who knows England well, having spent
several years there at our Embassy, said it was the
most delightful country in the world. The unpatriotic
implication contained in this assertion caused Edelgard
and myself to exchange glances, and no doubt
she was thinking, as I was, that it would be a sad
and bad day for Prussia if many of its gentlemen had
sisters who made misguided marriages with foreigners,
the foreign brother-in-law being so often the thin end
of that wedge which at its thick one is a denial of
our right to regard ourselves as specially raised by
Almighty God to occupy the first place among the
nations, and a dislike (I have heard with my own
ears a man at a meeting express it), an actual dislike
-I can only call it hideous-of the gloriouus cement
of blood and iron by means of which we intend to
stick there.
" But I was chiefly thinking," said Frau von
Ekthum, her head well back in the cushions and
her eyes fixed pensively on the summer clouds sailing
over our heads, " of what you were saying about
expense."
"Dear lady," I said, " I have been told by all
who have done it that travelling in England is the
most expensive holiday you can take. The hotels
are ruinous as well as bad, the meals are uneatable
as well as dear, the cabs cost you a fortune, and the
inhabitants are rude."
I spoke with heat, because I was roused (justly)
by Flitz's unpatriotic attitude, but it was a tempered
heat owing to the undoubted (Storchwerder cannot
deny it) personal attractiveness of our hostess. Why
are not all women attractive ? What habitual lambs
our sex would become if they were.
" Dear Baron," said she in her pretty gentle voice,
" do come over and see for yourself. I would like,
I think, to convert you. Look at this-" she picked
up some papers lying on the grass by her chair, and
spreading out one showed me a picture-" do you
not think it nice ? And, if you want to be economical,
it only costs fourteen pounds for a whole month."
The picture she held out to me was one bearing
a strong resemblance to the gipsy carts that are
continually (and very rightly) being sent somewhere
else by our local police; a little less gaudy perhaps,
a little squarer and more solid, but undoubtedly a
near relation.
" It is a caravan," said Frau von Eckthum, in
answer to the question contained in my eyebrows;
and turning the sheet she showed me another picture
representing the same vehicle's inside.
Edelgard got up and looked over my shoulder.
What we saw was certainly very nice. Edelgard
said so at once. There were flowered curtains, and
a shelf with books, and a comfortable chair with a
cushion near a big window, and at the end two
pretty beds placed one above the other as in a
ship.
" A thing like this," said Frau von Eckthum,
" does away at once with hotels, waiters, and expense.
It costs fourteen pounds for two persons for a whole
month, and all your days are spent in the sun."
She then explained her plan, which was to hire
one of these vehicles for the month of August and
lead a completely free and Bohemian existence during
that time, wandering through the English lanes,
which she described as flowery, and drawing up for
the night in a secluded spot near some little streamlet,
to the music of whose gentle rippling, as Edelgard
always easily inclined to sentiment suggested, she
would probably be lulled to sleep.
"Come too," said she, smiling up at us as we
looked over her shoulder.
"Two hundred and eighty marks is fourteen
pounds," said I, making mental calculations.
" For two people," said Edelgard, obviously doing
the same.
" No hotels," said our hostess.
" No hotels," echoed Edelgard.
" Only lovely green fields," said our hostess.
" And no waiters," said Edelgard.
" Yes, no horrid waiters," said our hostess.
" Waiters are so expensive," said Edelgard.
" You wouldn't see one," said our hostess. " Only
a nice child in a clean apron from a farm bringing
eggs and cream. And you move about the whole
time, and see the country in a way you never would
going from place to place by train."
" But," said I shrewdly, " if we move about
something must either pull or push us, and that
something must also be paid for."
" Oh yes, there has to be a horse. But think of
all the railway tickets you won't buy and all the
porters you won't tip," said Frau von Eckthum.
Edelgard was manifestly impressed. Indeed, we
both were. If it were a question of being in England
for little money or being in Switzerland for much
we felt unanimously that it was better to be in
England. And then to travel through it in one of
these conveyances was so distinctly original that we
would be objects of the liveliest interest during the
succeeding winter gaieties in Storchwerder. " The
von Ottringels are certainly all that is most modern,"
we could already hear our friends saying to each
other, and could already see in our mind's eye how
they would press round us at soirees and bombard
us with questions. We should be the centre of
attraction.
" And think of the nightingales! " cried Edelgard,
suddenly recollecting those poetic birds.
" In August they're like Germans in Italy," said
Flitz, to whom I had mentioned our reason for giving
up the idea of travelling in that country.
" How so ? " said Edelgard, turning to him with
the slight instinctive stiffening of every really virtuous
German lady when speaking to an unrelated (by
blood) man.
" They're not there," said Flitz.
Well, of course the moment we were able to look
in our Encyclopaedia at home we knew as well as he
did that they do not sing in August, but I do not see
how townsfolk are to keep these odds and ends of
information lying loose about in their heads. We
do not have the bird in Storchwerder and are therefore
unable to study its habits at first hand as Flitz
can, but I know that all the pieces of poetry I have
come across mention nightingales before they have
done, and the consequent perfectly natural impression
left on my mind was that they were always more or
less about. But I do not like Flitz's tone, and never
shall. It is true I have not actually seen him do it,
but one feels instinctively that he is laughing at one;
and there are different ways of laughing, and not all
of them appear on the face. As for politics, if I were
not as an officer debarred from alluding to them and
were led to discuss them with him, I have no doubt
that each discussion would end in a duel. That is,
if he would fight. The appalling suspicion has just
crossed my mind that he would not. He is one of
those dreadful persons who cloke their cowardice
behind the garb of philosophy. Well, well, I see I am
growing angry with a man ten miles away, whom I
have not seen for months, I, a man of the world
sitting in the calm of my own flat, surrounded by
quiet domestic objects such as my wife, my shirt, and
my little meal of bread and ham. Is this reasonable ?
Certainly not. Let me change the subject.
The long, then, and the short of our visit to Graf
Flitz and his sister in June last was that we returned
home determined to join Frau von Eckthum's party,
and not a little full of pleasurable anticipations.
When she does talk she has a persuasive tongue. She
talked more at this time than she ever did afterwards,
but of course there were reasons for that which I may
or may not disclose. Edelgard listened with something
like rapt interest to her really picturesque
descriptions, or rather prophecies, for she had not herself
done it before, of the pleasures of camp life; and I
wish it to be clearly understood that Edelgard, who
has since taken the line of telling people it was I,
was the one who was swept off her usually cautious
feet and who took it upon herself without waiting for
me to speak to ask Frau von Eckthum to write and
hire another of the carts for us.
Frau von Eckthum laughed, and said she was sure
we would like it. Flitz himself smoked in silence.
And Edelgard developed a sudden eloquence in regard
to natural phenomena such as moons and poppies
that would have done credit to a young and sentimental girl.
" Think of sitting in the shade of some
mighty beech tree," she said for instance (she actually
clasped her hands), " with the beams of the sinking
sun slanting through its branches, and doing one's
needlework."
And she said other things of the same sort, things
that made me, who knew she was going to be thirty
next birthday, gaze upon her with a deep surprise.
II
I HAVE decided not to show Edelgard my manuscript
again, and my reason is that I may have a freer hand.
For the same reason I will not, as we at first proposed,
send it round by itself among our relations, but will
either accompany it in person or invite our relations
to a cosy beer-evening, with a simple little cold something
to follow, and read aloud such portions of it as I
think fit, omitting of course much that I say about
Edelgard and probably also a good deal that I say
about everybody else. A reasonable man is not a
woman, and does not willingly pander to a love of
gossip. Besides, as I have already hinted, the Edelgard
who came back from England is by no means the
Edelgard who went there. It will wear off I am
confident in time, and we will return to the status quo
ante-(how naturally that came out: it gratifies me
to see I still remember)-a status quo full of trust and .
obedience on the one side and of kind and wise guidance
on the other. Surely I have a right to refuse
to be driven, except by a silken thread? When I,
noticing a tendency on Edelgard's part to attempt
to substitute, if I may so express it, leather, asked her
the above question, will it be believed that what she
answered was Bosh ?
It gave me a great shock to hear her talk like that.
Bosh is not a German expression at all. It is purest
English. And it amazes me with what rapidity she
picked it and similar portions of the language up,
adding them in quantities to the knowledge she
already possessed of the tongue, a fairly complete
knowledge (she having been well educated), but
altogether excluding words of that sort. Of course
I am aware it was all Jellaby's fault-but more of
him in his proper place ; I will not now dwell on
later incidents while my narrative is still only at the
point where everything was eager anticipation and
preparation.
Our caravan had been hired; I had sent, at Frau
von Eckthum's direction, the money to the owner,
the price (unfortunately) having to be paid beforehand ;
and August the first, the very day of my
wedding with poor Marie-Luise, was to see us start.
Naturally there was much to do and arrange, but it
was pleasurable work such as getting a suit of civilian
clothes adapted to the uses it would be put to,
searching for stockings to match the knickerbockers, and
for a hat that would be useful in both wet weather
and sunshine.
" It will be all sunshine," said Frau von Eckthum
with her really unusually pretty smile (it includes the
sudden appearance of two dimples) when I expressed
fears as to the effect of rain on the Panama that I
finally bought and which, not being a real one, made
me anxious.
We saw her several times because of our need for
hints as to luggage, meeting place, etc., and I found
her each time more charming. When she was on her
feet, too, her dress hid the shoes; and she was really
helpful, and was apparently looking forward greatly
to showing us the beauties of her sister's more or less
native land.
As soon as my costume was ready I put it on and
drove out to see her. The stockings had been a difficulty
because I could not bear, accustomed as I am
to cotton socks, their woollen feet. This was at last
surmounted by cutting off their feet and sewing my
ordinary sock feet on to the woollen legs. It answered
splendidly, and Edelgard assured me that with care
no portion of the sock (which was not of the same
colour) would protrude. She herself had sent to
Berlin to Wertheim for one of the tailor-made dresses
in his catalogue which turned out to be of really
astonishing value for the money, and in which she
looked very nice. With a tartan silk blouse and a
little Tyrolese hat and a pheasant's feather stuck in it
she was so much transformed that I declared I could
not believe it was our silver wedding journey, and that
I felt exactly as I did twenty-five years before.
" But it is not our silver wedding journey," she
said with some sharpness.
" Dear wife," I retorted surprised, " you know very
well that it is mine, and that what is mine is also
by law yours, and that therefore without the least
admissible logical doubt it is yours."
She made a sudden gesture with her shoulders that
was almost like impatience; but I, knowing what
victims the best of women are to incomprehensible
moods, went out and bought her a pretty little bag
with a leather strap to wear over one shoulder and
complete her attire, thus proving to her that a reasonable
man is not a child and knows when and how to
be indulgent.
Frau von Eckthum, who was going to stay with
her sister for a fortnight before they both joined us
(the sister I regretted to hear was coming too), left
in the middle of July. Flitz, at that time
incomprehensibly to me, made excuses for not taking part
in the caravan tour, but since then light has been
thrown on his behaviour: he said, I remember, that
he could not leave his pigs.
" Much better not leave his sister," said Edelgard
who, I fancy, was just then a little envious of Frau
von Eckthum.
" Dear wife," I said gently, " we shall be there to
take care of her, and he knows she is safe in our hands.
Besides, we do not want Flitz. He is the last man I
can imagine myself ever wanting."
It was perfectly natural that Edelgard should be
a little envious, and I felt it was and did not therefore
in any way check her. I need not remind those
relatives who will next winter listen to this that
the Flitzes of Flitzburg, of whom Frau von Eckthum
was one, are a most ancient and still more penniless
family. Frau von Eckthum and her gaunt sister
(last time she was staying in Prussia both Edelgard
and I were struck with her extreme gauntness) each
married a wealthy man by two most extraordinary
strokes of luck; for what man nowadays will marry
a girl who cannot take, if not the lion's share, at least
a very substantial one of the household expenses
upon herself ? What is the use of a father if he cannot
provide his daughter with the money required suitably
to support her husband and his children ? I myself
have never been a father, so that I am qualified to
speak with perfect impartiality ; that is, strictly, I
was one twice, but only for so few minutes each time
that they can hardly be said to count. The two von
Flitz girls married so young and so well, and have
been, without in any way really deserving it, so
snugly wrapped in comfort ever since (Frau von
Eckthum actually losing her husband two years after
marriage and coming into everything) that naturally
Edelgard cannot be expected to like it. Edelgard
had a portion herself of six thousand marks a year
besides an unusual quantity of house linen, which
enabled her at last-she was twenty-four when I
married her-to find a good husband; and she cannot
understand by what wiles the two sisters, without
a penny or a table cloth, secured theirs at eighteen.
She does not see that they are-" were " is the better
word in the case of the gaunt sister-attractive ; but
then the type is so completely opposed to her own that
she would not be likely to. Certainly I agree that a
married woman verging, as the sister must be, on
thirty should settle down to a smooth head and at
least the beginnings of a suitable embonpoint. We
do not want wives like lieutenants in a cavalry
regiment; and Edelgard is not altogether wrong when
she says that both Frau von Eckthum and her sister
make her think of those lean and elegant young men.
Your lean woman with her restlessness of limb and
brain is far indeed removed from the soft amplitudes
and slow movements of her who is the ideal wife of
every German better-class bosom. Privately, however,
I feel I can at least understand that there may
have been something to be said at the time for the
Englishman's conduct, and I more than understand
that of the deceased Eckthum. No one can deny
that his widow is undoubtedly-well, well; let me
return to the narrative.
We had naturally told everybody we met what we
were going to do, and it was intensely amusing to see
the astonishment created. Bad health for the rest of
our days was the smallest of the evils predicted. Also
our digestions were much commiserated. " Oh," said
I with jaunty recklessness at that, " we shall live on
boiled hedgehogs, preceded by mice soup,"-for I had
studied the article Gipsies in our Encyclopaedia, and
discovered that they often eat the above fare.
The faces of our friends when I happened to be
in this jocose vein were a study. " God in heaven,"
they cried, " what will become of your poor wife ? "
But a sense of humour carries a man through anything,
and I did not allow myself to be daunted.
Indeed it was not likely, I reminded myself sometimes
when inclined to be thoughtful at night, that
Frau von Eckthum, who so obviously was delicately
nurtured, would consent to eat hedgehogs or risk
years in which all her attractiveness would evaporate
on a sofa of sickness.
" Oh, but Frau von Eckthum ! " was the
invariable reply, accompanied by a shrug when I
reassured the ladies of our circle by pointing this out.
I am aware Frau von Eckthum is unpopular in
Storchwerder. Perhaps it is because the art of
conversation is considerably developed there, and she
will not talk. I know she will not go to its balls,
refuses its dinners, and turns her back on its coffees.
I know she is with difficulty induced to sit on its
philanthropic boards, and when she finally has been
induced to sit on them does not do so after all but
stays at home. I know she is different from the type
of woman prevailing in our town, the plain, flat-
haired, tightly buttoned up, God-fearing wife and
mother, who looks up to her husband and after her
children, and is extremely intelligent in the kitchen
and not at all intelligent out of it. I know that this
is the type that has made our great nation what it is,
hoisting it up on ample shoulders to the first place
in the world, and I know that we would have to
request heaven to help us if we ever changed it.
But-she is an attractive lady.
Truly it is an excellent thing to be able to put
down one's opinions on paper as they occur to one
without risk of irritating interruption-I hope my
hearers will not interrupt at the reading aloud-and
now that I have at last begun to write a book-for
years I have intended doing so-I see clearly the
superiority of writing over speaking. It is the same
kind of superiority that the pulpit enjoys over the
(very properly) muzzled pews. When, during my
stay on British soil, I said anything, however short,
of the nature of the above remarks about our German
wives and mothers, it was most annoying the way
I was interrupted and the sort of questions that were
instantly put me by, chiefly, the gaunt sister. But of
that more in its place. I am still at the point where
she had not yet loomed on my horizon, and all was
pleasurable anticipation.
We left our home on August 1st, punctually as we
had arranged, after some very hard-worked days at
the end during which the furniture was beaten and
strewn with naphthalin (against moths), curtains, etc.,
taken down and piled neatly in heaps, pictures
covered up in newspapers, and groceries carefully
weighed and locked up. I spent these days at the
club, for my leave had begun on the 25th of July and
there was nothing for me to do. And I must say,
though the discomfort in our flat was intense, when
I returned to it in the evening in order to go to bed
I was never anything but patient with the unappetisingly
heated and dishevelled Edelgard. And she
noticed it, and was grateful. It would be hard to say
what would make her grateful now. These last bad
days, however, came to their natural end, and the
morning of the first arrived and by ten we had taken
leave, with many last injunctions, of Clothilde who
showed an amount of concern at our departure that
gratified us, and were on the station platform with
Hermann standing respectfully behind us carrying
our hand luggage in both his gloved hands and with
what he could not carry piled about his feet, while
I could see by the expression on their faces that the
few strangers present recognised we were people of
good family or, as England would say, of the Upper
Ten. We had no luggage for registration because of
the new law by which every kilo has to be paid for,
but we each had a well-filled substantial hold-all
and a leather portmanteau, and into these we had
succeeded in packing most of the things Frau von
Eckthum had from time to time suggested we might
want. Edelgard is a good packer, and got far more
in than I should have thought possible, and what
was left over was stowed away in different bags and
baskets. Also we took a plentiful supply of vaseline
and bandages, " For," as I remarked to Edelgard
when she giddily did not want to, quoting the most
modern (though rightly disapproved of in Storchwerder)
of English writers, " you never can possibly
tell,"-besides a good sized ox-tongue, smoked
specially for us by our Storchwerder butcher and
which was later on to be concealed in our caravan
for private use in case of need at night.
The train did not start till 10.45, but we wanted
to be early in order to see who would come to see us
off ; and it was a very good thing we were in such
good time, for hardly a quarter of an hour had elapsed
before to my dismay I recollected that I had left my
Panama at home. It was Edelgard's fault, who had
persuaded me to wear a cap for the journey and carry
my Panama in my hand, and I had put it down on
some table and in the heat of departure forgotten it.
I was deeply annoyed, for the whole point of the type
of costume I had chosen would be missed without
just that kind of hat, and, at my sudden exclamation
and subsequent explanation of my exclamation,
Edelgard showed that she felt her position by becoming exceedingly red.
There was nothing for it but to leave her there
and rush off in a Droschke to our deserted flat.
Hurrying up the stairs two steps at a time and letting
myself in with my latch-key I immediately found the
Panama on the head of one of the privates in my own
battalion, who was lolling in my chair at the breakfast-
table I had so lately left being plied with our food
by the miserable Clothilde, she sitting on Edelgard's
chair and most shamelessly imitating her mistress's
manner when she is affectionately persuading me to
eat a little bit more.
The wretched soldier, I presume, was endeavouring
to imitate me, for he called her a dear little hare,
an endearment I sometimes apply to my wife, on
Clothilde's addressing him as Edelgard sometimes
does (or rather did) me in her softer moments as
sweet snail. The man's imitation of me was a very
poor affair, but Clothilde hit my wife off astoundingly
well, and both creatures were so riotously mirthful
that they neither heard nor saw me as I stood struck
dumb in the door. The clock on the wall, however,
chiming the half-hour recalled me to the necessity for
instant action, and rushing forward I snatched the
Panama off the amazed man's head, hurled a furious
dismissal at Clothilde, and was out of the house and
in the Droschke before they could so much as pray
for mercy. Immediately on arriving at the station I
took Hermann aside and gave him instructions about
the removal within an hour of Clothilde, and then,
swallowing my agitation with the gulp of the man of
the world, I was able to chat courteously and amiably
with the friends who had collected to see us off, and
even to make little jokes as though nothing whatever
had happened. Of course directly the last smile had
died away at the carriage window and the last handkerchief
had been fluttered and the last promise to
send many picture postcards had been made, and our
friends had become mere black and shapeless masses
without bodies parts or passions on the grey of the
receding platform, I recounted the affair to Edelgard,
and she was so much upset that she actually wanted
to get out at the next station and give up our holiday
and go back and look after her house.
Strangely enough, what upset her more than the
soldier's being feasted at our expense and more than
his wearing my new hat while he feasted, was the fact
that I had dismissed Clothilde.
" Where and when am I to get another ? " was her
question, repeated with a plaintiveness that was at
length wearisome, " And what will become of all our
things now during our absence ? "
" Would you have had me not dismiss her instantly,
then ? " I cried at last, goaded by this persistence.
" Is every shamelessness to be endured ? Why, if the
woman were a man and of my own station, honour
would demand that I should fight a duel with her."
" But you cannot fight a duel with a cook," said
Edelgard stupidly.
" Did I not expressly say that I could not ? " I
retorted; and having with this reached the point
where patience becomes weakness I was obliged to
put it aside and explain to her with vigour that I am
not only not a fool but decline to be talked to as if I
were. And when I had done, she having given no
further rise to discussion, we were both silent for the
rest of the way to Berlin.
This was not a bright beginning to my holiday,
and I thought with some gloom of the difference
between it and the start twenty-five years before
with my poor Marie-Luise. There was no Clothilde
then, and no Panama hat (for they were not yet the
fashion), and all was peace. Unwilling, however, to
send Edelgard as the English say any longer to
Coventry-we are both good English scholars as my
hearers know-when we got into the Droschke in
Berlin that was to take us across to the Potsdamer
Bahnhof (from which station we departed for
London via Flushing) I took her hand, and turning
(not without effort) an unclouded face to her,
said some little thing which enabled her to become
aware that I was willing once again to overlook and
forgive.
Now I do not propose to describe the journey to
London. So many of our friends know people who
have done it that it is not necessary for me to dwell
upon it further than to say that, being all new to us,
it was not without its charm-at least, up to the
moment when it became so late that there were no
more meals taking place in the restaurant-car and no
more attractive trays being held up to our windows
at the stations on the way. About what happened
later in the night I would not willingly speak: suffice
it to say that I had not before realised the immense
and apparently endless distance of England from the
good dry land of the Continent. Edelgard, indeed,
behaved the whole way up to London as if she had not
yet got to England at all; and I was forced at last
to comment very seriously on her conduct, for it
looked as much like wilfulness as any conduct I can
remember to have witnessed.
We reached London at the uncomfortable hour
of eight a.m. or thereabouts, chilled, unwell,
and disordered. Although it was only the second of August
a damp autumn draught pervaded the station.
Shivering, we went into the sort of sheep-pen in
which our luggage was searched for dutiable articles,
Edelgard most inconsiderately leaving me to bear
the entire burden of opening and shutting our things,
while she huddled into a corner and assumed (very
conveniently) the air of a sufferer. I had to speak
to her quite sharply once when I could not fit the
key of her portmanteau into its lock and remind her
that I am not a lady's maid, but even this did not
rouse her, and she continued to huddle apathetically.
It is absurd for a wife to collapse at the very moment
when she ought to be most helpful; the whole theory
of the helpmeet is shattered by such behaviour.
And what can I possibly know about Customs?
She looked on quite unmoved while I struggled to
replace the disturbed contents of our bags, and my
glances, in turn appealing and indignant, did not
make her even raise her head. There were too many
strangers between us for me to be able to do more than
glance, so reserving what I had to say for a more
private moment I got the bags shut as well as I could,
directed the most stupid porter (who was also
apparently deaf, for each time I said anything to him
he answered perfectly irrelevantly with the first letter
of the alphabet) I have ever met to conduct me and
the luggage to the refreshment room, and far too
greatly displeased with Edelgard to take any further
notice of her, walked on after the man leaving her to
follow or not as she chose.
I think people must have detected as I strode
along that I was a Prussian officer, for so many looked
at me with interest. I wished I had had my uniform
and spurs on, so that for once the non-martial island
could have seen what the real thing is like. It was
strange to me to be in a crowd of nothing but civilians.
In spite of the early hour every arriving train
disgorged myriads of them of both sexes. Not the flash
of a button was to be seen; not the clink of a sabre
to be heard; but, will it be believed ? at least every
third person arriving carried a bunch of flowers, often
wrapped in tissue paper and always as carefully as
though it had been a specially good belegtes Brodchen.
That seemed to me very characteristic of the effeminate
and non-military nation. In Prussia useless persons
like old women sometimes transport bunches of flowers
from one point to another-but that a man should
be seen doing so, a man going evidently to his office,
with his bag of business papers and his grave face,
is a sight I never expected to see. The softness of
this conduct greatly struck me. I could understand
a packet of some good thing to eat between meals
being brought, some tit-bit from the home kitchen,-
but a bunch of flowers! Well, well ; let them go on
in their effeminacy. It is what has always preceded
a fall, and the fat little land will be a luscious morsel
some day for muscular continental (and almost
certainly German) jaws.
We had arranged to go straight that very day to
the place in Kent where the caravans and Frau von
Eckthum and her sister were waiting for us, leaving
the sights of London for the end of our holiday, by
which time our already extremely good though slow
and slightly literary English (by which I mean that
we talked more as the language is written than other
people do, and that we were singularly pure in the
matter of slang) would have developed into an up-
to-date agility; and there being about an hour and
a half's time before the train for Wrotham started-
which it conveniently did from the same station we
arrived at-our idea was to have breakfast first and
then, perhaps, to wash. This we accordingly did in the
station restaurant, and made the astonishing
acquaintance of British coffee and butter. Why, such stuff
would not be tolerated for a moment in the poorest
wayside inn in Germany, and I told the waiter so very
plainly; but he only stared with an extremely stupid
face, and when I had done speaking said " Eh ? "
It was what the porter had said each time I
addressed him, and I had already therefore, not then
knowing what it was or how it was spelt, had about
as much of it as I could stand.
" Sir," said I, endeavouring to annihilate the man
with that most powerful engine of destruction, a
witticism, " what has the first letter of the alphabet
to do with everything I say ? "
" Eh ? " said he.
"Suppose, sir," said I, " I were to confine my
remarks to you to a strictly logical sequence, and
when you say A merely reply B-do you imagine we
should ever come to a satisfactory understanding ? "
" Eh ? " said he.
" Yet, sir," I continued, becoming angry, for this
was deliberate impertinence, " it is certain that one
letter of the alphabet is every bit as good as another
for conversational purposes."
" Eh ? " said he; and began to cast glances about
him for help.
" This," said I to Edelgard, " is typical. It is
what you must expect in England."
The head waiter here caught one of the man's
glances and hurried up.
" This gentleman," said I, addressing the head
waiter and pointing to his colleague, " is both impertinent and a fool."
" Yes, sir. German, sir," said the head waiter,
flicking away a crumb.
Well, I gave neither of them a tip. The German
was not given one for not at once explaining his
inability to get away from alphabetical repartee and
so shamefully hiding the nationality he ought to have
openly rejoiced in, and the head waiter because of
the following conversation:-
" Can't get 'em to talk their own tongue, sir," said
he, when I indignantly inquired why he had not.
" None of 'em will, sir. Hear 'em putting German
gentry who don't know English to the greatest inconvenience.
'Eh ? ' this one'll say-it's what he picks
up his first week, sir. ` A thousand damns,' say the
German gentry, or something to that effect. `All
right,' says the waiter-that's what he picks up in his
second week-and makes it worse. Then the German
gentry gets really put out, and I see 'em almost
foamin' at the mouth. Impatient set of people,
sir-"
" I conclude," said I, interrupting him with a frown,
" that the object of these poor exiled fellows is to learn
the language as rapidly as possible and get back to
their own country."
" Or else they're ashamed of theirs, sir," said he,
scribbling down the bill. " Rolls, sir ? Eight, sir ?
Thank you, sir-"
" Ashamed ? "
" Quite right, sir. Nasty cursin' language. Not fit
for a young man to get into the habit of. Most of
the words got a swear about 'em somewhere, sir."
" Perhaps you are not aware," said I icily, " that
at this very moment you are speaking to a German
gentleman."
" Sorry, sir. Didn't notice it. No offence meant.
Two coffees, four boiled eggs, eight-you did say
eight rolls, sir ? Compliment really, you know, sir."
" Compliment!" I exclaimed, as he whisked away
with the money to the paying desk; and when he
came back I pocketed, with elaborate deliberation,
every particle of change.
" That is how," said I to Edelgard while he watched
me, " one should treat these fellows."
To which she, restored by the hot coffee to speaking
point, replied (rather stupidly I thought) " Is it ? "
III
SHE became, however, more normal as the morning
wore on, and by about eleven o'clock was taking an
intelligent interest in hop-kilns.
These objects, recurring at frequent intervals as
one travels through the county of Kent, are striking
and picturesque additions to the landscape, and as
our guide book described them very fully I was able
to talk a good deal about them. Kent pleased me
very well. It looked as if there were money in it.
Many thriving villages, many comfortable farmhouses,
and many hoary churches peeping slyly at us
through surrounding groups of timber so ancient that
its not yet having been cut down and sold is in itself
a testimony to the prevailing prosperity. It did not
need much imagination to picture the comfortable
clergyman lurking in the recesses of his snug parsonage
and rubbing his well-nourished hands at life.
Well, let him rub. Some day perhaps-and who
knows how soon ?-we shall have a decent Lutheran
pastor in his black gown preaching the amended faith
in every one of those churches.
Shortly, then, Kent is obviously flowing with milk
and honey and well-to-do inhabitants; and when on
referring to our guide book I found it described as the
Garden of England I was not in the least surprised,
and neither was Edelgard. In this county, as we
knew, part at any rate of our gipsying was to take
place, for the caravans were stationed at a village
about three miles from Wrotham, and we were very
well satisfied that we were going to examine it more
closely, because though no one could call the scenery
majestic it yet looked full of promise of a comfortable
nature. I observed for instance that the roads
seemed firm and good, which was clearly important;
also that villages were so plentiful that there would
be no fear of our ever getting beyond the reach of
provisions. Unfortunately the weather was not true
August weather, which I take it is properly described
by the word bland. This was not bland. The
remains of the violent wind that had blown us across
from Flushing still hurried hither and thither, and
gleams of sunshine only too frequently gave place to
heavy squalls of rain and hail. It was more like a
blustering October day than one in what is supposed
to be the very height and ripeness of summer, and we
could only both hope, as the carriage windows banged
and rattled, that our caravan would be heavy enough
to withstand the temptation to go on by itself during
the night, urged on from behind by the relentless
forces of nature. Still, each time the sun got the
better of the inky clouds and the Garden of England
laughed at us from out of its bravery of graceful
hopfields and ripening corn, we could not resist a feeling
of holiday hopefulness. Edelgard's spirits rose with
every mile, and I, having readily forgiven her on her
asking me to and acknowledging she had been selfish,
was quite like a boy; and when we got out of the train
at Wrotham beneath a blue sky and a hot sun with
the hail-clouds retreating over the hills and found
we would have to pack ourselves and our many
packages into a fly so small that, as I jocularly
remarked in English, it was not a fly at all but an insect,
Edelgard was so much entertained that for several
minutes she was perfectly convulsed with laughter.
By means of the address neatly written in Latin
characters on an envelope, we had no difficulty in
getting the driver to start off as though he knew where
he was going, but after we had been on the way for
about half an hour he grew restless, and began to
twist round on his box and ask me unintelligible
questions. I suppose he talked and understood only
patois, for I could not in the least make out what he
meant, and when I requested him to be more clear I
could see by his foolish face that he was constitutionally unable to be it.
A second exhibition of the
addressed envelope, however, soothed him for a time,
and we continued to advance up and down chalky
roads, over the hedges on each side of which leapt the
wind and tried to blow our hats off. The sun was in
our eyes, the dust was in our eyes, and the wind was
in our faces. Wrotham, when we looked behind, had
disappeared. In front was a chalky desolation. We
could see nothing approaching a village, yet Panthers,
the village we were bound for, was only three miles
from the station, and not, observe, three full-blooded
German miles, but the dwindled and anaemic English
kind that are typical as so much else is of the soul and
temper of the nation. Therefore we began to be
uneasy, and to wonder whether the man were trustworthy.
It occurred to me that the chalk pits we
constantly met would not be bad places to take us
into and rob us, and I certainly could not speak
English quickly enough to meet a situation demanding
rapid dialogue, nor are there any directions in my
German-English Conversational Guide as to what you
are to say when you are being murdered.
Still jocose, but as my hearers will notice jocose
with a tinge of grimness, I imparted these two linguistic
facts to Edelgard, who shuddered and suggested
renewed applications of the addressed envelope
to the driver. "Also it is past dinner time," she added
anxiously. " I know because mein Magen knurrt."
By means of repeated calls and my umbrella I
drew the driver's attention to us and informed him
that I would stand no further nonsense. I told him
this with great distinctness and the deliberation forced
upon me by want of practice. He pulled up to hear
me out, and then, merely grinning, drove on. " The
youngest Storchwerder Droschke driver," I cried
indignantly to Edelgard, " would die of shame on his
box if he did not know every village, nay, every house
within three miles of it with the same exactitude with
which he knows the inside of his own pocket."
Then I called up to the man once more, and
recollecting that nothing clears our Hermann's brain at
home quicker than to address him as Esel I said,
" Ask, ass."
He looked down over his shoulder at me with an
expression of great surprise.
"What?" said he.
" What ? " said I, confounded by this obtuseness.
" What ? The way, of course."
He pulled up once more and turned right round on
his box.
"Look here-" he said, and paused.
" Look where?" said I, very naturally supposing
he had something to show me.
" Who are you talkin' to ? " said he.
The question on the face of it was so foolish that
a qualm gripped my heart lest we had to do with
a madman. Edelgard felt the same, for she drew
closer to me.
Luckily at that moment I saw a passer-by some
way down the road, and springing out of the fly
hastened to meet him in spite of Edelgard's demand
that I should not leave her alone. On reaching him
I took off my hat and courteously asked him to direct
us to Panthers, at the same time expressing my belief
that the flyman was not normal. He listened with
the earnest and strained attention English people
gave to my utterances, an attention caused I believe
by the slightly unpractised pronunciation combined
with the number and variety of words at my command,
and then going up (quite fearlessly) to the
flyman he pointed in the direction entirely opposed
to the one we were following and bade him go there.
" I won't take him nowhere," said the flyman with
strange passion, " he calls me a ass."
" It is not your fault," said I (very handsomely,
I thought). " You are what you were made. You
cannot help yourself."
" I won't take him nowhere," repeated the flyman
with, if anything, increased passion.
The passer-by looked from one to another with
a faint smile.
" The expression," said he to the flyman, " is, you
see, merely a term of recognition in the gentleman's
country. You can't reasonably object to that, you
know. Drive on like a sensible man, and get your fare."
And lifting his hat to Edelgard he continued his
passing by.
Well, we did finally arrive at the appointed place-
indeed my hearers next winter will know all the time
that we must have, or why should I be reading this
aloud ?-after being forced by the flyman to walk
the last twenty minutes up a hill which, he declared,
his horse would not otherwise be able to ascend. The
sun shone its hottest while we slowly surmounted
this last obstacle -a hard one to encounter when it is
long past dinner time. I am aware that by English
clocks it was not past it, but what was that to me ?
My watch showed that in Storchwerder, the place our
inner natures were used to, it was half-past two, a
good hour beyond the time at which they are accustomed
daily to be replenished, and no arbitrary
theory, anyhow no perilously near approach to one,
will convince a man against the evidence of his senses
that he is not hungry because a foreign clock says it
is not dinner time when it is.
Panthers, we found on reaching the top of the hill
and pausing to regain our composure, is but a house
here and a house there scattered over a bleak ungenial
landscape. It seemed an odd, high up district to use
as a terminus for caravans, and I looked down the
steep narrow lane we had just ascended and wondered
how a caravan would get up it. Afterwards I found
that they never do get up it, but arrive home from
the exactly opposite direction along a fair road which
was the one any but an imbecile driver would have
brought us. We reached our destination by, so to
speak, its back door ; and we were still standing on the
top of the hill doing what is known as getting one's
wind, for I am not what would be called an ill-covered
man but rather, as I jestingly tell Edelgard, a walking
compliment to her good cooking, and she herself was
always of a substantial build, not exaggeratedly but
agreeably so-we were standing, I say, struggling for
breath, when some one came out quickly from a neighbouring
gate and stopped with a smile of greeting
upon seeing us.
It was the gaunt sister.
We were greatly pleased. Here we were, then,
safely arrived, and joined to at least a portion of our
party. Enthusiastically we grasped both her hands
and shook them. She laughed as she returned our
greetings, and I was so much pleased to find some one
I knew that though Edelgard commented afterwards
somewhat severely on her dress because it was so
short that it nowhere touched the ground, I noticed
nothing except that it seemed to be extremely neat,
and as for not touching the ground Edelgard's skirt
was followed wherever she went by a cloud of chalky
dust which was most unpleasant.
Now why were we so glad to see this lady again?
Why, indeed, are people ever glad to see each other
again ? I mean people who when they last saw each
other did not like each other. Given a sufficient lapse
of time, and I have observed that even those who
parted in an atmosphere thick with the sulphur of
implied cursings will smile and genially inquire how
the other does. I have observed this, I say, but I
cannot explain it. There had, it is true, never been
any sulphur about our limited intercourse with the
lady on the few occasions on which proper feeling
prevailed enough to induce her to visit her flesh
and blood in Prussia-our attitude towards her had
simply been one of well-bred chill, of chill because
no thinking German can, to start with, be anything
but prejudiced against a person who commits the
unpatriotism-not to call it by a harsher name-of selling
her inestimable German birth-right for the mess of
an English marriage. Also she was personally not
what Storchwerder could like, for she was entirely
wanting in the graces and undulations of form which
are the least one has a right to expect of a being
professing to be a woman. Also she had a way of
talking which disconcerted Storchwerder, and nobody
likes being disconcerted. Our reasons for joining
issue with her in the matter of caravans were first, that
we could not help it, only having discovered she was
coming when it was too late; and secondly, that it
was a cheap and convenient way of seeing a new
country. She with her intimate knowledge of English
was to be, we privately told each other, our unpaid
courier-I remember Edelgard's amusement when the
consolatory cleverness of this way of looking at it
first struck her.
But I am still at a loss to explain how it was that
when she unexpectedly appeared on the top of the
hill at Panthers we both rushed at her with an effusiveness
that could hardly have been exceeded if it had
been Edelgard's grandmother Podhaben who had
suddenly stood before us, an old lady of ninety-two of
whom we are both extremely fond, and who, as is
well known, is going to leave my wife her money when
she (which I trust sincerely she will not do for a long
time yet) dies. I cannot explain it, I say, but there
it is. Rush we did, and effusive we were, and it was
reserved for a quieter moment to remember with some
natural discomposure that we had showed far more
enthusiasm than she had. Not that she was not
pleasant, but there is a gap between pleasantness and
enthusiasm, and to be the one of two persons who is
most pleased is to put yourself in the position of the
inferior, of the suppliant, of him who hopes, or is eager
to ingratiate himself. Will it be believed that when
later on I said something to this effect about some
other matter in general conversation, the gaunt sister
immediately cried, " Oh, but that's not generous ? "
" What is not generous ? " I asked surprised, for
it was the first day of the tour and I was not then as
much used as I subsequently became to her instant
criticism of all I said.
" That way of thinking," said she.
Edelgard immediately bristled-(alas, what would
make her bristle now ?)
" Otto is the most generous of men," she said.
" Every year on Sylvester evening he allows me to
invite six orphans to look at the remains of our
Christmas tree and be given, before they go away,
dough-nuts and grog."
"What! Grog for orphans?" cried the gaunt
sister, neither silenced nor impressed; and there
ensued a warm discussion on, as she put it, (a) the
effect of grog on orphans, (b) the effect of grog on
dough-nuts, (c) the effect of grog on combined orphans
and dough-nuts.
But I not only anticipate, I digress.
Inside the gate through which this lady had
emerged stood the caravans and her gentle sister. I
was so much pleased at seeing Frau von Eckthum
again that at first I did not notice our future homes.
She was looking remarkably well and was in good
spirits, and, though dressed in the same way as her
sister, by adding to the attire all those graces so
peculiarly her own the effect she produced was totally
different. At least, I thought so. Edelgard said she
saw nothing to choose between them.
After the first greetings she half turned to the row
of caravans, and with a little motion of the hand
and a pretty smile of proprietary pride said, " There
they are."
There, indeed, they were.
There were three ; all alike, sober brown vehicles,
easily distinguishable, as I was pleased to notice,
from common gipsy carts. Clean curtains fluttered
at the windows, the metal portions were bright, and
the names painted prettily on them were the Elsa,
the Ilsa, and the Ailsa. It was an impressive moment,
the moment of our first setting eyes upon them.
Under those frail roofs were we for the next four
weeks to be happy, as Edelgard said, and healthy
and wise-" Or," I amended shrewdly on hearing her
say this, " vice versa."
Frau von Eckthum, however, preferred Edelgard's
prophecy, and gave her an appreciative look,-my
hearers will remember I am sure how agreeably her
dark eyelashes contrast with the fairness of her hair.
The gaunt sister laughed, and suggested that we
should paint out the names already on the caravans
and substitute in large letters Happy, Healthy, and
Wise, but not considering this particularly amusing
I did not take any trouble to smile.
Three large horses that were to draw them and
us stood peacefully side by side in a shed being fed
with oats by a weather-beaten person the gaunt sister
introduced as old James. This old person, a most
untidy, dusty-looking creature, touched his cap,
which is the inadequate English way of showing
respect to superiors-as inadequate at its end of the
scale as the British army is at the other-and shuffled
off to fetch in our luggage, and the gaunt sister
suggesting that we should climb up and see the
interior of our new home with some difficulty we did
so, there being a small ladder to help us which, as a
fact, did not help us either then or later, no means
being discovered from beginning to end of the tour
by which it could be fixed firmly at a convenient
angle.
I think I could have climbed up better if Frau von
Eckthum had not been looking on ; besides at that
moment I was less desirous of inspecting the caravans
than I was of learning when, where, and how we were
going to have our delayed dinner. Edelgard however
behaved like a girl of sixteen once she had succeeded
in reaching the inside of the Elsa, and most
inconsiderately kept me lingering there too while she examined
every corner and cried with tiresome iteration that it
was wundervoll, herrlich, and putzig.
" I knew you'd like it," said Frau von Eckthum
from below, amused apparently by this kittenish
conduct.
" Like it ? " called back Edelgard. " But it is
delicious-so clean, so neat, so miniature."
" May I ask where we dine ? " I inquired, endeavouring
to free the skirts of my new mackintosh from the
door, which had swung to (the caravan not standing
perfectly level) and jammed them tightly. I did not
need to raise my voice, for in a caravan even with
its door and windows shut people outside can hear
what you say just as distinctly as people inside, unless
you take the extreme measure of putting something
thick over your head and whispering. (Be it under-
stood I am alluding to a caravan at rest : when in
motion you may shout your secrets, for the noise of
crockery leaping and breaking in what we learned
-with difficulty-to allude to as the pantrry will
effectually drown them.)
The two ladies took no heed of my question, but
coming up after us-they never could have got in had
they been less spare-filled the van to overflowing
while they explained the various arrangements by
which our miseries on the road were to be mitigated.
It was chiefly the gaunt sister who talked, she being
very nimble of tongue, but I must say that on this
occasion Frau von Eckthum did not confine herself
to the attitude I so much admired in her, the ideal
feminine one of smiling and keeping quiet. I,
meanwhile, tried to make myself as small as possible,
which is what persons in caravans try to do all the
time. I sat on a shiny yellow wooden box that ran
down one side of our " room " with holes in its lid
and a flap at the end by means of which it could, if
needed, be lengthened and turned into a bed for a
third sufferer. (On reading this aloud I shall probably
substitute traveller for sufferer, and some milder word
such as discomfort for the word miseries in the first
sentence of the paragraph.) Inside the box was a
mattress, also extra sheets, towels, etc., so that, the
gaunt sister said, there was nothing to prevent our
having house-parties for week-ends. As I do not like
such remarks even in jest I took care to show by
my expression that I did not, but Edelgard, to my
surprise, who used always to be the first to scent the
vicinity of thin ice, laughed heartily as she continued
her frantically pleased examination of the van's
contents.
It is not to be expected of any man that he shall
sit in a cramped position on a yellow box at an hour
long past his dinner time and take an interest in
puerilities. To Edelgard it seemed to be a kind of
doll's house, and she, entirely forgetting the fact of
which I so often remind her that she will be thirty
next birthday, behaved in much the same way as a
child who has just been presented with this expensive
form of toy by some foolish and spendthrift relation.
Frau von Eckthum, too, appeared to me to be less
intelligent than I was accustomed to suppose her.
She smiled at Edelgard's delight as though it pleased
her, chatting in a way I hardly recognised as she
drew my wife's attention to the objects she had not
had time to notice. Edelgard's animation amazed
me. She questioned and investigated and admired
without once noticing that as I sat on the lid of the
wooden box I was obviously filled with sober thoughts.
Why, she was so much infatuated that she actually
demanded at intervals that I too should join in this
exhibition of childishness ; and it was not until I said
very pointedly that I, at least, was not a little girl,
that she was recalled to a proper sense of her
behaviour.
" Poor Otto is hungry," she said, pausing suddenly
in her wild career round the caravan and glancing at
my face.
Is he ? Then he must be fed," said the gaunt
sister, as carelessly and with as little real interest as
if there were no particular hurry. " Look-aren't
these too sweet ?-each on its own little hook-six of
them, and their saucers in a row underneath."
And so it would have gone on indefinitely if an
extremely pretty, nice, kind little lady had not put
her head in at the door and asked with a smile that
fell like oil on the troubled water of my brain whether
we were not dying for something to eat.
Never did the British absence of ceremony and
introductions and preliminary phrases seem to me
excellent before. I sprang up, and immediately
knocked my elbow so hard against a brass bracket
holding a candle and hanging on a hook in the wall
that I was unable altogether to suppress an exclamation
of pain. Remembering, however, what is due
to society I very skilfully converted it into a rather
precipitate and agonised answer to the little lady's
question, and she, with a charming hospitality,
pressing me to come into her adjoining garden and
have some food, I accepted with alacrity, only regretting
that I was unable, from the circumstance of her
going first, to help her down the ladder. (As a matter
of fact she had in the end to help me, because the
door slammed behind me and again imprisoned the
skirts of my mackintosh.)
Edelgard, absorbed in delighted contemplation of
a corner beneath the so-called pantry full of brooms
and dusters also hanging in rows on hooks, only shook
her head when I inquired if she would not come too;
so leaving her to her ecstasies I went off with my new
protector, who asked me why I wore a mackintosh
when there was not a cloud in the sky. I avoided
giving a direct answer by retorting playfully (though
wholly politely) " Why not? "-and indeed my
reasons, connected with creases and other ruin
attendant on confinement in a hold-all, were of too domestic
and private a nature to be explained to a stranger so
charming. But my counter-question luckily amused
her, and she laughed as she opened a small gate in the
wall and led me into her garden.
Here I was entertained with the greatest hospitality
by herself and her husband. The fleet of caravans
which yearly pervades that part of England is
stationed when not in action on their premises.
Hence departs the joyful caravaner, accompanied by
kind wishes; hither he returns sobered, and is
received with balm and bandages-at least, I am sure
he would find them and every other kind form of
solace in the little garden on the hill. I spent a very
pleasant and reviving half-hour in a sheltered corner
of it, enjoying my alfresco meal and acquiring much
information. To my question as to whether my
entertainers were to be of our party they replied,
to my disappointment, that they were not. Their
functions were restricted to this seeing that we
started happy, and being prompt and helpful when
we came back. From them I learned that our party
was to consist, besides ourselves and Frau von
Eckthum and that sister whom I have hitherto
distinguished by the adjective gaunt, putting off the
necessity as long as possible of alluding to her by
name, she having, as my hearers perhaps remember,
married a person with the unpronounceable one if you
see it written and the unspellable one if you hear it
said of Menzies-Legh-the party was to consist, I say,
besides these four, of Menzies-Legh's niece and one
of her friends ; of Menzies-Legh himself ; and of two
young men about whom no precise information was
obtainable.
" But how ? But where ? " said I, remembering
the limited accommodation of the three caravans.
My host reassured me by explaining that the two
young men would inhabit a tent by night which, by
day, would be carried in one of the caravans.
" In which one ? " I asked anxiously.
" You must settle that among yourselves," said he,
smiling.
" That's what one does all day long caravaning,"
said my hostess, handing me a cup of coffee.
" What does one do ? " I asked, eager for information.
" Settle things among oneselves," said she. " Only
generally one doesn't."
I put it down to my want of practice in the more
idiomatic involutions of the language that I did not
quite follow her meaning; but as one of my principles
is never to let people know that I have not understood
them I merely bowed slightly and, taking out my
note-book, remarked that if that were so I would
permit myself to make a list of our party in order to
keep its various members more distinct in my mind.
The following is the way in which we were to be
divided :-
1. A caravan (the Elsa), containing the Baron and
the Baroness von Ottringel, of Storchwerder in
Prussia.
2. Another caravan (the Ailsa), containing Mr.
and Mrs. Menzies-Legh, of various addresses, they
being ridiculously and superfluously rich.
3. Another caravan (the Ilsa), containing Fran von
Eckthum, the Menzies-Legh niece, and her (as I
gathered school) friend. In this caravan the yellow
box was to be used.
4. One tent, containing two young men, name and
status unknown.
The ill-dressed person old James was coming too,
but would sleep each night with the horses, they being
under his special care ; and all of the party (except
ourselves and Frau von Eckthum and her sister who
had already, as I need not say, done so) were yet to
assemble. They were expected every moment, and
had been expected all day. If they did not come soon
our first day's march, opined my host, would not see
us camping further away than the end of the road,
for it was already past four o'clock. This reminded
me that my luggage ought to be unpacked and stowed
away, and I accordingly begged to be excused that
I might go and superintend the operation, for I have
long ago observed that when the controlling eye of
the chief is somewhere else things are very apt to go
irremediably wrong. " Against stupidity," says some
great German-it must have been Goethe, and if it
was not then no doubt it was Schiller, they having
I imagine between them said everything there is to
be said-" against stupidity the very gods struggle in
vain." And I beg that this may not be taken as a
reflection on my dear wife, but rather as an inference
of general applicability. In any case the recollection
of it sent me off with a swinging stride to the caravans.
IV
DARKNESS had, if not actually gathered, certainly
approached within measurable distance, substantially
aided by lowering storm-clouds, by the time we were
ready to start. Not that we were, as a fact, ever
ready to start, because the two young girls of the
party, with truly British inconsideration for others,
had chosen to do that which Menzies-Legh in fantastic
idiom described as not turning up. I heard him say
it several times before I was able, by carefully comparing
it with the context, to discover his meaning.
The moment I discovered it I of course saw its truth
turned up they certainly had not, and though too
well-bred to say it aloud I privately applauded him
every time he remarked, with an accumulating
emphasis, " Bother those girls."
For the first two hours nobody had time to bother
them, and to get some notion of the busy scene
the yard presented my hearers must imagine a
bivouac during our manoeuvres in which the soldiers
shall all be recruits just joined and where there shall
be no superior to direct them. I know to imagine this
requires imagination, but only he who does it will be
able to form an approximately correct notion of what
the yard looked like and sounded like while the whole
party (except the two girls who were not there) did
their unpacking.
It will be obvious on a moment's reflection that
portmanteaus, etc., had to be opened on the bare
earth in the midst, so to speak, of untamed nature,
with threatening clouds driving over them, and rude
winds seizing what they could of their contents and
wantoning with them about the yard. It will be
equally obvious that these contents had to be handed
up one by one by the person below to the person in
the caravan who was putting them away, and the
person below having less to do would be quicker in
his movements, while the person above having more
to do would be-I suppose naturally, but I think
with a little self-control it ought not to be so-quicker
in her temper; and so she was, and quite unjustifiably,
because though she might have the double
work of sorting and putting away I, on the other
hand, had to stoop so continuously that I was very
shortly in a condition of actual physical distress.
The young men, who might have helped and at first
did help Frau von Eckthum (though I consider they
were on more than delicate ground while they did it)
were prevented being of use because one had brought
a bull terrier, a most dangerous looking beast, and the
other-probably out of compliment to us-a white
Pomeranian; and the bull terrier, without the least
warning or preliminary growl such as our decent
German dogs emit before proceeding to action,
suddenly fixed his teeth into the Pomeranian and left
them there. The howls of the Pomeranian may be
imagined. The bull terrier, on the other hand, said
nothing at all. At once the hubbub in the yard was
increased tenfold. No efforts of its master could make
the bull terrier let go. Menzies-Legh called for pepper,
and the women-folk ransacked the larders in the rear
of the vans, but though there were cruets there was
no pepper. At length the little lady of the garden,
whose special gift it seemed to appear at the right
moment, judging no doubt that the sounds in the yard
could not altogether be explained by caravaners
unpacking, came out with a pot full, and throwing it
into the bull terrier's face he was obliged to let go in
order to sneeze.
During the rest of the afternoon the young men
could help no one because they were engaged in the
care of their dogs, the owner of the Pomeranian
attending to its wounds and the owner of the bull
terrier preventing a repetition of its conduct. And
Menzies-Legh came up to me and said in his singularly
trailing, melancholy voice, did I not think they were
jolly dogs and going to be a great comfort to us.
" Oh quite," said I, unable exactly to understand
what he meant.
Still less was I able to understand the attitude of
the dogs' masters towards each other. Not thus would
our fiery German youth have behaved. Undoubtedly
in a similar situation they would have come to blows,
or in any case to the class of words that can only be
honourably wiped out in the blood of a duel. But
these lymphatic Englishmen, both of them straggly,
pale persons, in clothes so shabby and so much too
big that I was at a loss to conceive how they could
appear in them before ladies, hung on each to his dog
in perfect silence, and when it was over and the
aggressor's owner said he was sorry, the Pomeranian's
owner, instead of confronting him with the fury of a
man who has been wronged and owes it to his virility
not to endure it, actually tried to pretend that somehow,
by some means, it was all his dog's fault or his
own in allowing him to be near the other, and therefore
it was he who, in their jargon, was " frightfully
sorry." Such is the softness of this much too rich and
far too comfortable nation. Merely to see it made me
blush to be a man; but I became calm again on
recollecting that the variety of man I happened to
be was, under God, a German. And I discovered
later that neither of them ever touch an honest mug
of beer, but drink instead-will it be believed ?
-water.
Now it must not be supposed that at this point of
my holiday I had already ceased to enjoy it. On the
contrary, I was enjoying myself in my quiet way very
much. Not only does the study of character greatly
interest me but I am blest with a sense of humour
united to that toughness of disposition which stops
a man from saying, however much he may want to,
die. Therefore I bore the unpacking and the arranging
and the advice I got from everybody and the questions
I was asked by everybody and the calls here and the
calls there and the wind that did not cease a moment
and the rain that pelted down at intervals, without
a murmur. I had paid for my holiday, and I meant to
enjoy it. But it did seem to me a strange way of
taking pleasure for wealthy people like the Menzies-
Leghs, who could have gone to the best hotel in the
gayest resort, and who instead were bent into their
portmanteaus as double as I was, doing work that
their footmen would have scorned; and when during
an extra sharp squall we had hastily shut our
portmanteaus and all scrambled into our respective-I
was going to say kennels, but I will be just and say
caravans, I expressed this surprise to Edelgard, she
said Mrs. Menzies-Legh had told her while I was at
luncheon that both she and her sister desired for a
time to remove themselves as far as possible from what
she called the ministrations of menials. They wished,
said Edelgard, quoting Mrs. Menzies-Leghs words,
to endeavour to fulfil the Scriptures and work with
their hands the things which are good; and Edelgard,
who was much amused by the reference to the Scriptures,
agreed with me, who was also greatly diverted,
that it is a game, this working with one's hands, that
only seems desirable to those so much surfeited with
all that is worth having that they cease to be able to
distinguish its value, and that it would be interesting
to watch how long the two pampered ladies enjoyed
playing it. Edelgard of course had no fears for herself,
for she is a most admirably trained Hausfrau,
and the keeping of our tiny wheeled house in order
would be easy enough after the keeping in order of
our flat at home and the constant supervision,
amounting on washing days to goading, of Clothilde. But the
two sisters had not had the advantage of a husband
who kept them to their work from the beginning, and
Mrs. Menzies-Legh was a ne'er-do-well, spoiled, and
encouraged to do nothing whatever except, so far as
I could see, practise how best to pretend she was
clever.
By six we were ready to start. From six to seven
we bothered the girls. At seven serious consultations
commenced as to what had better be done. Start
we must, for kind though our host and hostess were
I do not think they wanted us to camp in their front
yard ; if they did they did not say so, and it became
every moment more apparent that a stormy night
was drawing nearer across the hills. Menzies-Legh,
with growing uneasiness, asked his wife I suppose a
dozen times what on earth, as he put it, had become
of the girls ; whether she thought he had better go
and look for them ; whether she thought they had
had an accident ; whether she thought they had lost
the address or themselves; to all of which she
answered that she thought nothing except that they
were naughty girls who would be suitably scolded
when they did come.
The little lady of the garden came on the scene at
this juncture with her usual happy tact, and suggested
that it being late and we being new at it and therefore
no doubt going to take longer arranging our camp this
first night than we afterwards would, we should start
along the road to a bit of common about half a mile
further on and there, with no attempt at anything like
a march, settle for the night. We would then, she
pointed out, either meet the girls or, if they came
another way, she would send them round to us.
Such sensible suggestions could only, as the English
say, be jumped at. In a moment all was bustle. We
had been sitting disconsolately each on his ladder
arguing (not without touches of what threatened to
become recrimination), and we now briskly put them
away and prepared to be off.
With some difficulty
the horses, who did not wish to go, were put in, the
dogs were chained behind separate vans, the ladders
slung underneath (this was no easy job, but one of the
straggly young men came to our assistance just as
Edelgard was about to get under our caravan and find
out how to do it, and showed such unexpected skill
that I put him down as being probably in the bolt and
screw trade), adieux and appropriate speeches were
made to our kind entertainer, and off we went.
First marched old James, leading the Ilsa's horse,
with Menzies-Legh beside him, and Mrs. Menzies-
Legh, her head wrapped up very curiously in yards
and yards of some transparent fluttering stuff of
a most unpractically feminine nature and her hand
grasping a walking stick of a most aggressively
masculine one, marched behind, giving me who
followed (to my surprise I found it was expected of
me that far from sitting as I had intended to do inside
our caravan I should trudge along leading our horse)
much unneeded and unasked-for advice. Her absurd
head arrangement, which I afterwards learned was
called a motor veil, prevented my seeing anything
except egregiously long eyelashes and the tip of an
inquiring and strange to say not over aristocratic
nose-Edelgard's, true to its many ancestors, is purest
hook. Taller and gaunter than ever in her straight
up and down sort of costume, she stalked beside me
her head on a level with mine (and I am by no means
a short man) telling me what I ought to do and what I
ought not to do in the matter of leading a horse ; and
when she had done that ad nauseam, ad libitum, and
ad infinitum (I believe I have forgotten nothing at
all of my classics) she turned to my peaceful wife
sitting on the Elsa's platform and announced that if
she stayed up there she would probably soon be sorry.
In another moment Edelgard was sorry, for unfortunately
my horse had had either too many oats or
not enough exercise, and the instant the first van had
lumbered through the gate and out of sight round the
corner to the left he made a sudden and terrifying
attempt to follow it at a gallop.
Those who know caravans know that they must
never gallop : not, that is, if the contents are to remain
unbroken and the occupants unbruised. They also
know that no gate is more than exactly wide enough
to admit of their passing through it, and that unless
the passing through is calculated and carried out to a
nicety the caravan that emerges will not be the caravan
that went in. Providence that first evening was on
my side, for I never got through any subsequent gate
with an equal neatness. My heart had barely time to
leap into my mouth before we were through and out in
the road, and Mrs. Menzies-Legh, catching hold of the
bridle, was able to prevent the beast's doing what was
clearly in his eye, turn round to the left after his mate
with a sharpness that would have snapped the Elsa
in two.
Edelgard, rather pale, scrambled down. The sight
of our caravan heaving over inequalities or lurching as
it was turned round was a sight I never learned to look
at without a tightened feeling about the throat.
Anxiously I asked Mrs. Menzies-Legh, when the horse,
having reached the rear of the Ilsa, had settled down
again, what would happen if I did not get through the
next gate with an equal skill.
" Everything may happen," said she, " from the
scraping off of the varnish to the scraping off of
a wheel."
" But this is terrible," I cried. " What would we
do with one wheel too few ? "
"We couldn't do anything till there was a new one."
" And who would pay-"
I stopped. Aspects of the tour were revealed to me
which had not till then been illuminated.
" It depends," said she, answering my unfinished
question, " whose wheel it was."
" And suppose my dear wife," I inquired after a
pause during which many thoughts surged within me,
" should have the misfortune to break, say, a cup ? "
" A new cup would have to be provided."
" And would I-but suppose cups are broken by
circumstances over which I have no control ? "
She snatched quickly at the bridle. " Is that the
horse ? " she asked.
" Is what the horse ? "
" The circumstances. If I hadn't caught him then
he'd have had your caravan in the ditch."
" My dear lady," I cried nettled, " he would have
done nothing of the sort. I was paying attention.
As an officer you must admit that my ignorance of
horses cannot be really as extensive as you are pleased
to pretend you think."
" Dear Baron, when does a woman ever admit? "
A shout from behind drowned the answer that
would, I was sure, have silenced her, for I had not then
discovered that no answer ever did. It was from one
of the pale young men, who was making signs to us
from the rear.
" Run back and see what he wants," commanded
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, marching on at my horse's head
with Edelgard, slightly out of breath, beside her.
I found that our larder had come undone and was
shedding our ox-tongue, which we had hoped to keep
private, on to the road in front of the eyes of Frau von
Eckthum and the two young men. This was owing
to Edelgard's carelessness, and I was extremely
displeased with her. At the back of each van were two
lockers, one containing an oil stove and saucepans
and the other, provided with air-holes, was the larder
in which our provisions were to be kept. Both had
doors consisting of flaps that opened outwards and
downwards and were fastened by a padlock. With
gross carelessness Edelgard, after putting in the
tongue, had merely shut the larder door without
padlocking it, and when a sufficient number of jolts
had occurred the flap fell open and the tongue fell out.
It was being followed by some private biscuits we
had brought.
Naturally I was upset. Every time Edelgard is
neglectful or forgetful she recedes about a year in my
esteem. It takes her a year of attentiveness and
diligence to regain that point in my affection on which
she previously stood. She knew this, and used to be
careful to try to keep proper pace, if I may so express
it, with my love, and at the date at which I have
arrived in the narrative had not yet given up trying,
so that when by shouting I had made Mrs. Menzies-
Legh understand that the Elsa was to be stopped
Edelgard hurried back to inquire what was wrong, and
was properly distressed when she saw the result of her
negligence. Well, repentance may be a good thing,
but our ox-tongue was gone for ever; before he could
be stopped the Ailsa's horse, following close behind,
had placed his huge hoof on it and it became pulp.
" How sad," said Frau von Eckthum gazing upon
this ruin. " But so nice of you, dear Baroness, to
think of it. It might just have saved us all from
starvation."
" Well, it can't now," said one of the young men;
and he took it on the point of his stick and cast it into
the ditch.
Edelgard began silently to pick up the scattered
biscuits. Immediately both the young men darted
forward to do it for her with a sudden awakening to
energy that seemed very odd in persons who slouched
along with their hands in their pockets. It made me
wonder whether perhaps they thought her younger
than she was. As we resumed our march I came to
the conclusion that this must be so, for such activity
of assistance would otherwise be unnatural, and I
resolved to take the earliest opportunity of bringing
the conversation round to birthdays and then carelessly
mentioning that my wife's next one would be
her thirtieth. In this department of all others I am
not the man to allow buds to go unnipped.
We had not been travelling ten minutes before we
came to a stony turning up to the right which old
James, who was a native of those parts, said was the
entrance to the common. It seemed strange to camp
almost within a stone's throw of our starting-place,
but the rain was at that moment pelting down on our
defenceless heads, and people hurrying to their snug
homes stopped in spite of it to look at us with a wondering
pity, so that we all wished to get off the road as
soon as possible and into the privacy of furze bushes.
The lane was in no sense a hill : it was a gentle incline,
almost immediately reaching flat ground; but it was
soft and stony, and the Ilsa's horse after dragging his
caravan for a few yards up it could get no further, and
when Menzies-Legh put the roller behind the back
wheel to prevent the Ilsa's returning thither from
whence it had just come the chain of the roller snapped,
the roller, released, rolled away, and the Ilsa began to
move backwards on top of the Elsa, which in its turn
began to move backwards on top of the Ailsa, which
in its turn began to move backwards across the road
in the direction of the ditch.
It was an unnerving spectacle; for it must be
borne in mind that however small the caravans seemed
when you were inside them when you were outside
they looked like mighty monsters, towering above
hedges, filling up all but wide roads, and striking awe
into the hearts even of motorists, who got out of their
way with the eager politeness otherwise rude persons
display when confronted by yet greater powers of
being disagreeable.
Menzies-Legh and the two young men, acting on
some shouted directions from old James, rushed at the
stones lying about and selecting the biggest placed
them, I must say with commendable promptness,
behind the Ilsa's wheels, and what promised to be
an appalling catastrophe was averted. I, who was
reassuring Edelgard, was not able to help. She had
asked me with ill-concealed anxiety whether I thought
the caravans would begin to go backwards in the night
when we were inside them, and I was doing my best to
calm her, only of course I had to point out that it was
extremely windy; and quite a dirty and undesirable
workman trudging by at that moment with his bag of
tools on his back and his face set homewards, she
stared after him and said, " Otto, how nice to be going
to a house."
" Come, come," said I rallying her,-but
undoubtedly the weather was depressing.
We had to trace up the lane to the common. This
was the first time that ominous verb fell upon my
ear ; how often it was destined to do so will be readily
imagined by those of my countrymen who have ever
visited the English county of Sussex supposing, which
I doubt, that such there are. Its meaning is that
you are delayed for any length of time from an hour
upwards at the bottom of each hill while the united
horses drag one caravan after another to the top.
On
this first occasion the tracing chains we had brought
with us behaved in the same way the roller chain had
and immediately snapped, and Menzies-Legh moved
to anger inquired severely of old James how it was
that everything we touched broke ; but he, being
innocent, was not very voluble, and Menzies-Legh
soon left him alone. Happily we had another pair of
chains with us. All this however meant great delays,
and the rain had almost left off, and the sun was
setting in a gloomy bank of leaden clouds across a
comfortless distance and sending forth its last pale
beams through thinning raindrops, by the time the
first caravan safely reached the common.
If any of you should by any chance, however remote,
visit Panthers, pray go to Grib's (or Grip's-in spite
of repeated inquiries I at no time discovered which
it was) Common, and picture to yourselves our first
night in that bleak refuge. For it was a refuge-
the alternative being to march along blindly till the
next morning, which was, of course, equivalent to not
being an alternative at all-but how bleak a one !
Grey shadows were descending on it, cold winds were
whirling round it, the grass was, naturally, dripping,
and scattered in and out among the furze bushes were
the empty sardine and other tins of happier sojourners.
These last objects were explained by the presence of
a hop-field skirting one side of the common, a hop-
field luckily not yet in that state which attracts
hop-pickers, or the common would hardly have been
a place to which gentlemen care to take their wives.
On the opposite side to the hop-field the ground fell
away, and the tips of two hop-kilns peered at us over
the edge. In front of us, concealed by the furze
and other bushes of a prickly, clinging nature, lay
the road, along which people going home to houses,
as Edelgard put it, were constantly hurrying. All
round, except on the hop-field side, we could see much
further than we wanted to across a cheerless stretch
of country. The three caravans were drawn up in a
row facing the watery sunset, because the wind chiefly
came from the east (though it also came from all round)
and the backs of the vans offered more resistance to
its fury than any other side of them, there being only
one small wooden window in that portion of them
which, being kept carefully shut by us during the whole
tour, would have been infinitely better away.
I hope my hearers see the caravans : if not it seems
to me I read in vain. Square-or almost square-
brown boxes on wheels, the door in front, with a big
aperture at the side of it shut at night by a wooden
shutter and affording a pleasant prospect (when there
was one) by day, a much too good-sized window on
each side, the bald back with no relief of any sort
unless the larders can be regarded as such, for the
little shutter window I have mentioned became
invisible when shut, and inside an impression (I never
use a word other than deliberately), an impression,
then, I say, of snugness, produced by the green carpet,
the green arras lining to the walls, the green eiderdown
quilts on the beds, the green portiere dividing
the main room from the small portion in front which
we used as a dressing room, the flowered curtains, the
row of gaily bound books on a shelf, and the polish of
the brass candle brackets that seemed to hit me every
time I moved. What became of this impression in the
case of one reasonable man, too steady to be blown
hither and thither by passing gusts of enthusiasm,
perhaps the narrative will disclose.
Meanwhile the confusion on the common was
indescribable. I can even now on calling it to mind
only lift up hands of amazement. To get the three
horses out was in itself no easy task for persons
unaccustomed to such work, but to get the three
tables out and try to unfold them and make them
stand straight on the uneven turf was much worse.
All the things in a caravan have hinges and flaps, the
idea being that they shall take up little room; but if
they take up little room they take up a great deal of
time, and that first night when there was not much of
it these patent arrangements which made each chair
and table a separate problem added considerably to
the prevailing chaos. Having at length set them out
on wet grass, table-cloths had to be extracted from
the depths of the yellow boxes in each caravan and
spread upon them, and immediately they blew away
on to the furze bushes. Recaptured and respread
they immediately did it again. Mrs. Menzies-Legh,
when I ventured to say that I would not go and fetch
them next time they did it, told me to weigh them
down with the knives and forks, but nobody knew
where they were, and their discovery having defied
our united intelligences for an immense amount of
precious time was at last the result of the merest
chance, for who could have dreamed they were con
cealed among the bedding ? As for Edelgard, I
completely lost control over her. She seemed to slip
through my fingers like water. She was everywhere,
and yet nowhere. I do not know what she did, but
I know that she left me quite unaided, and I found
myself performing the most menial tasks, utterly
unfit for an officer, such as fetching cups and saucers
and arranging spoons in rows. Nor, if I had not
witnessed it, would I ever have believed that the
preparation of eggs and coffee was so difficult. What
could be more frugal than such a supper ? Yet it
took the united efforts for nearly two hours of seven
highly civilised and intelligent beings to produce it.
Edelgard said that that was why it did, but I at once
told her that to reason that the crude and the few are
more capable than the clever and the many was
childish.
When, with immense labour and infinite conversation,
this meagre fare was at last placed upon
the tables it was so late that we had to light our
lanterns in order to be able to see it ; and my hearers
who had never been outside the sheltered homes of
Storchwerder and know nothing about what can
happen to them when they do will have difficulty in
picturing us gathered round the tables in that gusty
place, vainly endeavouring to hold our wraps about
us, our feet in wet grass and our heads in a stormy
darkness. The fitful flicker of the lanterns played
over rapidly cooling eggs and grave faces. It was
indeed a bad beginning, enough to discourage the
stoutest holiday-maker. This was not a holiday:
this was privation combined with exposure. Frau
von Eckthum was wholly silent. Even Mrs. Menzies-
Legh, although she tried to laugh, produced nothing
but hollow sounds. Edelgard only spoke once, and
that was to say that the coffee was very bad and
might she make it unaided another time, a remark and
a question received with a gloomy assent. Menzies-
Legh was by this time extremely anxious about the
girls, and though his wife still said they were naughty
and would be scolded it was with an ever fainter
conviction. The two young men sat with their
shoulders hunched up to their ears in total silence. No
one, however, was half so much deserving of sympathy
as myself and Edelgard, who had been travelling since
the previous morning and more than anybody needed
good food and complete rest. But there were hardly
enough scrambled eggs to go round, most of them
having been broken in the jolting up the lane on to
the common, and after the meal, instead of smoking a
cigar in the comparative quiet and actual dryness of
one's caravan, I found that everybody had to turn to
and-will it be believed ?-wash up.
" No servants, you know-so free, isn't it ? " said
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, pressing a cloth into one of my
hands and a fork into the other, and indicating a
saucepan of hot water with a meaning motion of
her forefinger.
Well, I had to. My hearers must not judge me
harshly. I am aware that it was conduct unbecoming
in an officer, but the circumstances were unusual.
Menzies-Legh and the young men were doing it too,
and I was taken by surprise. Edelgard, when she
saw me thus employed, first started in astonishment
and then said she would do it for me.
" No, no, let him do it," quickly interposed Mrs.
Menzies-Legh, almost as though she liked me to wash
up in the same saucepan as herself.
But I will not dwell on the forks. We were still
engaged in the amazingly difficult and distasteful work
of cleaning them when the rain suddenly descended
with renewed fury. This was too much. I slipped
away from Mrs. Menzies-Legh's side into the darkness,
whispered to Edelgard to follow, and having found my
caravan bade her climb in after me and bolt the door.
What became of the remaining forks I do not know,-
there are limits to that which a man will do in order
to have a clean one. Stealthily we undressed in the
dark so that our lighted windows might not betray
us,-" Let them each," I said to myself with grim
humour, " suppose that we are engaged helping one
of the others "-and then, Edelgard having ascended
into the upper berth and I having crawled into the
lower, we lay listening to the loud patter of the rain on
the roof so near our faces (especially Edelgard's), and
marvelled that it should make a noise that could
drown not only every sound outside but also our
voices when we, by shouting, endeavoured to speak.
V
UNDER the impression that I had not closed my eyes
all night I was surprised to find when I opened them
in the morning that I had. I must have slept, and
with some soundness ; for there stood Edelgard,
holding back the curtain that concealed me when in
bed from the gaze of any curious should the caravan
door happen to burst open, already fully dressed
and urging me to get up. It is true that I had been
dreaming I was still between Flushing and Queenboro',
so that in my sleep I was no doubt aware of the heavings
of the caravan while she dressed; for a caravan
gives, so to speak, to every movement of the body,
and I can only hope that if any of you ever go in one
the other person in the bed above you may be a
motionless sleeper. Indeed, I discovered that after
all it was not an advantage to occupy the lower bed.
While the rain was striking the roof with the deafening
noise of unlimited and large stones I heard nothing
of Edelgard, though I felt every time she moved.
When, however, it left off, the creakings and crunchings
of her bed and bedding (removed only a few
inches from my face) every time she turned round were
so alarming that disagreeable visions crossed my mind
of the bed, unable longer to sustain a weight greater
perhaps than what it was meant to carry, descending
in toto in one of these paroxysms upon the helpless
form (my own) stretched beneath. Clearly if it did
I should be very much hurt, and would quite likely
suffocate before assistance could be procured. These
visions however, in spite of my strong impression of
unclosed eyes, must ultimately and mercifully have
been drowned in sleep, and my bed being very
comfortable and I at the end of my forces after the
previous day when I did sleep I did it soundly and I
also apparently did it long; for the sun was coming
through the open window accompanied by appetising
smells of hot coffee when Edelgard roused me by the
information that breakfast was ready, and that as
everybody seemed hungry if I did not come soon I
might as well not come at all.
She had put my clothes out, but had brought me
no hot water because she said the two sisters had
told her it was too precious, what there was being
wanted for washing up. I inquired with some
displeasure whether I, then, were less important
than forks, and to my surprise Edelgard replied that
it depended on whether they were silver; which was,
of course, perilously near repartee. She immediately
on delivering this left the caravan, and as I could not
go to the door to call her back-as she no doubt
recollected-I was left to my cold water and to my
surprise. For though I had often noticed a certain
talent she has in this direction (my hearers will
remember instances) it had not yet been brought to
bear personally on me. Repartee is not amiss in the
right place, but the right place is never one's husband.
Indeed, on the whole I think it is a dangerous addition
to a woman, and best left alone. For is not that which
we admire in woman womanliness? And womanliness,
as the very sound of the word suggests, means nothing
that is not round, and soft, and pliable; the word, as
one turns it on one's tongue has a smoothly liquid
sound as of sweet oil, or precious ointment, or balm,
that very well expresses our ideal. Sharp tongues,
sharp wits,-what are these but drawbacks and
blots on the picture?
Such (roughly) were my thoughts while I washed
in very little and very cold water, and putting on
my clothes was glad to see that Edelgard had at
least brushed them. I had to pin the curtains carefully
across the windows because breakfast was going
on just outside, and hurried heads kept passing to
and fro in search, no doubt, of important parts of
the meal that had either been forgotten or were
nowhere to be found.
I confess I thought they might have waited with
breakfast till I came. It is possible that Frau von
Eckthum was thinking so too ; but as far as the
others were concerned I was dealing, I remembered,
with members of the most inconsiderate nation in
Europe. And besides, I reflected, it was useless to
look for the courtesy we in Germany delight to pay
to rank and standing among people who had neither
of these things themselves. For what was Menzies-
Legh ? A man with much money (which is vulgar)
and no title at all. Neither in the army, nor in the
navy, nor in the diplomatic service, not even the
younger son of a titled family, which in England as
perhaps my hearers have heard with surprise is a
circumstance sometimes sufficient to tear the title
a man would have had in any other country from
him and send him forth a naked Mr. into the world
-Menzies-Legh, I suppose, after the fashioon of our
friend the fabled fox in a similar situation saw no
dignity in, nor any reason why he should be polite to,
noble foreign grapes. And his wife's original good
German blood had become so thoroughly undermined
by the action of British microbes that I could no
longer regard her as a daughter of one of our oldest
families; while as for the two young men, on asking
Menzies-Legh the previous evening over that damp
and dreary supper of insufficient eggs who they were,
being forced to do so by his not having as a German
gentleman would have done given me every information
at the earliest opportunity of his own accord,
with details as to income, connections, etc., so that
I would know the exact shade of cordiality my
behaviour towards them was to be tinged with,-on
asking Menzies-Legh, I repeat, he merely told me that
the one with the spectacles and the hollow cheeks and
the bull terrier was Browne, who was going into the
Church, and the other with the Pomeranian and the
round hairless face was Jellaby.
Concerning Jellaby he said no more. Who and
what he was except pure Jellaby I would have been
left to find out by degrees as best I could if I had
not pressed him further, and inquired whether
Jellaby also were going into the Church, and if not
what was he going in to ?
Menzies-Legh replied-not with the lively and
detailed interest a German gentleman would have
displayed talking about the personal affairs of a
friend, but with an appearance of being bored that
very extraordinarily came over him whenever I
endeavoured to talk to him on topics of real interest,
and disappeared whenever he was either doing dull
things such as marching, or cleaning his caravan, or
discussing tiresome trivialities with the others such
as some foolish poem lately appeared, or the best
kind of kitchen ranges to put into the cottages he was
building for old women on his estates-that Jellaby
was not going into anything, being in already ; and
that what he was in was the House of Commons,
where he was not only a member of the Labour Party
but also a Socialist.
I need not say that I was considerably upset.
Here I was going to live, as the English say, cheek
by jowl for a substantial period with a Socialist
member of Parliament, and it was even then plain
to me that the caravan mode of life encourages, if
I may so express it, a degree of cheek by jowlishness
unsurpassed, nay, unattained, by any other with
which I am acquainted. To descend to allegory, and
taking a Prussian officer of noble family as the cheek,
how terrible to him of all persons on God's earth must
be a radical jowl. Since I am an officer and a gentleman
it goes without saying that I am also a Conservative.
You cannot be one without the others, at least not
comfortably, in Germany. Like the three Graces,
these other three go also hand in hand. The King
of Prussia is I am certain in his heart passionately
Conservative. So also I have every reason to believe
is God Almighty. And from the Conservative point
of view (which is the only right one), all Liberals
are bad -bad, unworthy, and unfit; persons with
whom one would never dream of either dining or
talking; persons dwelling in so low a mental and
moral depth that to dwell in one still lower seems
almost extravagantly impossible. Yet in that lower
depth, moving about like those blind monsters
science tells us inhabit the everlasting darkness of
the bottom of the seas, beyond the reach of light,
of air, and of every Christian decency, dwells the
Socialist. And who can be a more impartial critic
than myself ? Excluded by my profession from
any opinion or share in politics I am able to look on
with the undisturbed impartiality of the disinterested,
and I see these persons as a danger to my country,
a danger to my King, and a danger (if I had any)
to my posterity. In consequence I was very cold to
Jellaby when he asked me to pass him something
at supper-I think it was the salt. It is true he
is prevented by his nationality from riddling our
Reichstag with his poisonous theories (not a day
would I have endured his company if he had been
a German) but the broad principle remained, and as
I dressed I reflected with much ruefulness that even
as it was his presence was almost compromising,
and I could not but blame Frau von Eckthum for
not having informed me of its imminence beforehand.
And the other-the future pastor, Browne. A
pastor is necessary and even very well at a christening,
a marriage, or an interment ; but for mingling
purposes on common social ground-no. Sometimes
at public dinners in Storchwerder there has been one
in the background, but he very properly remained
in it ; and once or twice dining with our country
neighbours their pastor and his wife were present,
and the pastor said grace and his wife said nothing,
and they felt they were not of our class, and if they
had not felt it of themselves they would very quickly
have been made to feel it by others. This is all as
it should be: perfectly natural and proper; and it
was equally natural and proper that on finding I was
required to do what the English call hob nob with
a future pastor I should object. I did object.
Strongly. And decided, while I dressed, that my
attitude towards both Jellaby and Browne should
be of the chilliest coolness.
Now in this narrative nothing is to be hidden, for
I desire it to be a real and sincere human document,
and I am the last man, having made a mistake, to
pass it over in silence. My friends shall see me as I
am, with all my human weaknesses and, I hope, some
at least of my human strengths. Not that there is
anything to be ashamed of in the matter of him
Menzies-Legh spoke baldly of as Browne-rather
should Menzies-Legh have been ashamed of leading
me through his uncommunicativeness into a natural
error; for how could I be supposed to realise that
the singular nation places the Church as a profession
on practically the same level as the only three that
to us have a level at all, namely the Army, the Navy,
and the Service diplomatic or ministerial of the
State?
To Browne, therefore, when I finally climbed
down from my caravan into the soaking grass that
awaited me at the bottom and found him breakfasting
alone, the others being scattered about in the
condition of feverish yet sterile activity that is
characteristic of caravan life, I behaved in a manner
perfectly suitable applied to an ordinary pastor who
should begin to talk to me with an air of equality-
I was, that is, exceedingly stiff.
He pushed the coffee-pot towards me: I received
it with a cold bow. He talked of the rain in the
night and his fears that my wife had been disturbed
by it : I replied with an evasive shrug. He spoke
cheerily of the brightness of the morning, and the
promise it held of a pleasant day: I responded with
nothing more convivial than Perhaps or Indeed-
at this moment I cannot recall which. He suggested
that I should partake of a thick repulsive substance
he was eating which he described as porridge and as
the work of Jellaby, and which was, he said,
extraordinarily good stuff to march on: I sternly repressed
a very witty retort that occurred to me and declined
by means of a monosyllable. In a word, I was stiff.
Judge then of my vexation and dismay when I
discovered not ten minutes later by the merest
accident while being taken by Mrs. Menzies-Legh to
a farm in order that I might carry back the vegetables
she proposed to buy at it, that the young gentleman
not only has a title but is the son of one of the greatest
of English families. He is a younger son of the Duke
of Hereford, that wealthy and well-known nobleman
whose sister was not considered (on the whole)
unworthy to marry our Prince of Grossburg-Niederhausen,
and far from being mere Browne in the way
in which Jellaby was and remained mere Jellaby, the
young gentleman I had been deliberately discouraging
was Browne indeed, but with the transfiguring
addition of Sigismund and Lord.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, with the same careless indifference
I had observed in her husband, spoke of
him briefly as Sidge. He was, it appeared, a distant
cousin of her husband's. I had to question her
closely and perseveringly before I could extract these
details from her, she being apparently far more
interested in the question as to whether the woman
at the farm would not only sell us vegetables but
also a large iron vessel in which to stew them. Yet
it is clearly of great importance first, that one should
be in good company, and secondly that one should
be told one is in it, because if one is not told how in
the world is one to know ? And my hearers will I
am sure sympathise with me in the disagreeable
situation in which I found myself, for never was there,
I trust and believe, a more polite man than myself,
a man more aware of what he owes to his own birth
and breeding and those of others, a man more careful
to discharge punctiliously all the little
(but so important) nameless acts of courtesy where and
whenever they are due, and it greatly distressed me to
think I had unwittingly rejected the advances of the
nephew of an Aunt whom the entire German nation
agrees to address on her envelopes as Serene.
While I bore back the iron vessel called a stew-pot
which Mrs. Menzies-Legh had unfortunately persuaded
the farmer's wife to sell her, and also a basket (in
my other hand) full of big unruly vegetables such as
cabbages, and smooth green objects, unknown to me
but resembling shortened and widened cucumbers,
that would not keep still and continually rolled into
the road, I wished that at least I had eaten the
porridge. It could not have killed me, and it was
churlish to refuse. The manner of my refusal had
made the original churlishness still more churlish.
I made up my mind to seek out Lord Sigismund
without delay and endeavour by a tactful word to
set matters right between us, for one of my principles
is never to be ashamed of acknowledging when I
have been in the wrong; and so much preoccupied
was I deciding on the exact form the tactful word
was to take that I had hardly time to object to
the nature and size of my burdens. Besides, I was
beginning to realise that burdens were going to be my
fate. There was little hope of escaping them, since
the other members of the party bore similar ones and
seemed to think it natural. Mrs. Menzies-Legh at
that moment was herself carrying a bundle of little
sticks for lighting fires, tied up in a big red handkerchief
the farmer's wife had sold her, and also a parcel
of butter, and she walked along perfectly indifferent
to the odd figure she would cut and the wrong
impression she would give should we by any chance
meet any of the gentlefolk of the district. And one
should always remember, I consider, when one wishes
to let one's self go, that the world is very small, and
that it is at least possible that the last person one
would choose as a witness may be watching one
through an apparently deserted hedge with his eye-
glasses up. Besides, there is no pleasure in behaving
as though you were a servant, and old James certainly
ought to have accompanied us and carried our purchases back.
Of what use is a man servant, however
untidy, who is nowhere to be seen when washing up
begins or shopping takes place ? Being forced to
pause a moment and put the stew-pot down in order
to rest my hand (which ached) I inquired somewhat
pointedly of my companion what she supposed the
inhabitants of Storchwerder would say if they could
see us at that moment.
" They wouldn't say anything," she replied-but
her smile is not equal to her sister's because she has
only one dimple-" they'd faint."
" Exactly," said I meaningly ; adding, after a
pause sufficient to point my words, " and very
properly."
" Dear Baron," said she, pretending to look all
innocent surprise and curling up her eyelashes, " do
you think it is wrong to carry stew-pots ? You
mustn't carry them, then. Nobody must ever do
what they think wrong. That's what is called
perjuring one's soul-a dreadfully wicked thing to
do. Do you suppose I would have you perjure yours
for the sake of a miserable stew-pot ? Put it down.
Don't touch the accursed thing. Leave it in the
ditch. Hang it on the hedge. I'll send Sidge for it."
Send Sidge ? At once I snatched it up again,
remarking that what Lord Sigismund could fetch I
hoped Baron von Ottringel could carry; to which
she made no answer, but a faint little sound as we
resumed our journey came from behind her motor
veil, whether of approval and acquiescence or
disapproval and contradiction I cannot say, for there
was nothing, on looking at her as she walked beside
me, to go on except the tip of a slightly inquiring nose
and the tip of a slightly defiant chin and the
downward curve of the row of ridiculously long eyelashes
that were on the side next to me.
When we got back to the camp we found it in
precisely the same condition in which we had left it
-that is, in confusion. Every one seemed tto be
working very hard, and nothing seemed to be different
from what it was a full hour before. Indeed, hours
seem to have strangely little effect in caravaning:
even hours and hours have little; and it is only when
you get to hours and hours and hours that you see
a change. In our preparations each morning for
departure it always appeared to me that they would
never have ended but for a sudden desperate
unanimous determination to break them off and go.
The two young girls who had not appeared the
previous night when I retired to rest had at last,
as Menzies-Legh would say, turned up. They had
done this, I gathered, early in the morning, having
slept with their governess at an inn in Wrotham, she
being a discreet person who preferred not to search
in rain and darkness for that which when found
might not be nice. She had arrived after breakfast,
handed over her charges, and taken her departure ;
and the young girls as I at once saw were not young
girls at all, but that nondescript creature with a
thick plait down its back and a disconcerting way of
staring at one that we in Germany describe as Backfisch
and the English, I am told, allude to as flapper.
Lord Sigismund was cleaning boots, seated on the
edge of a table in his shirt sleeves with these two
nondescripts standing in a row watching him, and I
was greatly touched by observing that the boot he
was actually engaged upon at the moment of our
approach was one of Edelgard's.
This was magnanimity. More than ever was I
sorry about the porridge. I hastily put down the
stew-pot and the basket and hurried across to him.
" Pray allow me," I said, snatching up another
boot that stood on the table at his side and plunging
a spare brush into the blacking.
"That one's done," said he, pipe in mouth.
" Ah, yes-I beg your pardon. Are these- ? "
I took up another pair with some diffidence, for
the done ones and the undone ones had a singular
resemblance to each other.
" No. But you'd better take off your coat, Baron
-it's hot work."
So I did. And much relieved to hear by his tone
that he bore me no ill will I joined him on the edge
of the table ; and if any one had told me a week
before that a day was at hand when I should clean
boots I would, without hesitation, have challenged
him to fight, the extremity of the statement's
incredibleness leaving me no choice but to believe it
a deliberate insult.
Thus, as it were with blacking, did I cement my
friendship with Lord Sigismund. I think he thought
me a thoroughly good fellow who was only, like so
many people, a little stiff at breakfast, as I sat there
helping him, my hat pushed back off my forehead,
one leg swinging, and while I brushed and blackened
chatting cheerfully about the inferior position the
clergy occupy to the German eye. I am sure he was
interested, for he paused several times in his work
and looked at me over his spectacles with much
attention. As for the two nondescripts, they never
took their exceedingly round and unblinking eyes off
me for an instant.
VI
IT was twelve o'clock before we left Grib's (or Grip's)
Common, lurching off it by another grassy lane down
into the road in the direction of Mereworth, and
leaving as we afterwards discovered several portions
of our equipment behind us.
"What a lovely, sparkling world! " said Mrs.
Menzies-Legh, coming and walking beside me.
I was struggling with the tempers of my very
obstinate horse, so could only gasp a brief assent.
The road was narrow, and wound along hard and
smooth between hedges she seemed to find attractive,
for every few yards she stopped to pull something
green out of them and take it along with her. The
heavy rain in the night had naturally left things wet,
and there being a bright sun the drops on the blades
of grass and on the tips of the leaves could not help
sparkling, but there was nothing remarkable in that,
and I would not have noticed it if she had not looked
round with such apparent extreme delight and sniffed
in the air as if she were in a first-class perfumery shop
Unter den Linden where there really are things worth
sniffing. Also she appeared to think there was
something very wonderful about the sky, which was just
the ordinary blue one has a right to expect in summer
sprinkled over with the usual number of white fine-
weather clouds, for she gazed up at that too, and
evidently with the greatest pleasure.
" Schwarmerisch," said I to myself ; and was
internally slightly amused.
My hearers will agree with me that such raptures
are well enough in a young girl in a white gown,
with blue eyes and the washed out virginal appearance
one does not dislike at eighteen before Love the
Artist has pounced on it and painted it pink, and they
will also I think agree that the older and married
women must take care to be at all times quiet.
Ejaculations of a poetic or ecstatic nature should not, as
a rule, pass their lips. They may ejaculate perhaps
over a young baby (if it is their own) but that is the
one exception ; and there is a good reason for this
one, the possession of a young baby implying as a
general rule a corresponding youth in its mother.I I
do not think however that it is nice when a woman
ejaculates over, say, her tenth young baby. The
baby of course will still be sufficiently young for it
is a fresh one, but it is not a fresh mother, and by
that time she should have stiffened into stolidity,
and apart from the hours devoted to instructing her
servant, silence. Indeed, the perfect woman does
not talk at all. Who wants to hear her ? All that
we ask of her is that she shall listen intelligently
when we wish, for a change, to tell her about our
own thoughts, and that she should be at hand when
we want anything. Surely this is not much to ask.
Matches, ash-trays, and one's wife should be, so to
speak, on every table; and I maintain that the
perfect wife copies the conduct of the matches and
the ash-trays and combines being useful with being
dumb.
These are my views, and as I drove my caravan
along the gravelly road I ruminated on them. The
great brute of a horse, overfed and underworked, was
constantly endeavouring to pass the Ailsa which was
in front of us, and as that meant in that narrow lane
taking the Elsa up the bank as a preliminary, I was
as constantly endeavouring to thwart him. And the
sun being hot and I (if I may so put it) a very meltable
man, I soon grew tired of this constant tugging and
looked round for Edelgard to come and take her turn.
She was nowhere to be seen.
" Have you dropped anything ? " asked Frau von
Eckthum, who was walking a little way behind.
" No," said I ; adding, with much readiness, " but
my wife has dropped me."
" Oh ? " said she.
I kept the horse back till she caught me up, while
her leaner sister, who did not slacken her pace, went
on ahead. Then I explained my theory about wives
and matches. She listened attentively, in just the way
the really clever woman who knows best how to impress
us favourably does, busying herself as she listened
in tying some flowers she had gathered into a bunch,
and not doing anything so foolish as to interrupt.
Every now and then as I warmed and drove my
different points home, she just looked at me with
thoughtful interest. It was delightful. I forgot the
annoying horse, the heat of the sun, the chill of the
wind, the bad breakfast, and all the other
inconveniences, and saw how charming a caravan tour can
be. " Given," I thought, " the right people and fine
weather, such a holiday is bound to be agreeable."
The day was undoubtedly fine, and as for the right
people they were amply represented by the lady at
my side. Never had I found so good a listener. She
listened to everything. She took no mean advantage
of one's breath-pauses to hurry in observations of
her own as so many women do. And the way she
looked at me when anything struck her particularly
was sufficient to show how keenly appreciative she
was. After all there is nothing so enjoyable as a
conversation with a thoroughly competent listener.
The first five miles flew. It seemed to me that we
had hardly left Grip's Common before we were pulling
up at a wayside inn and sinking on to the bench in
front of it and calling for drink.
What the others all drank was milk, or a grey
frothy liquid they said was ginger-beer -childish,
sweet stuff, with little enough beer about it, heaven
knows, and quite unfit one would think for the
stomach of a real man. Jellaby brought Frau von
Eckthum a glass of it, and even provided the two
nondescripts with refreshments, and they took his
attentions quite as a matter of course, instead of
adopting the graceful German method of ministering
to the wants of the sterner and therefore more
thirsty sex.
The road stretched straight and white as far as
one could see on either hand. On it stood the string
of caravans, with old James watering the horses in
the sun. Under the shadow of the inn we sat and
rested, the three Englishmen, to my surprise, in their
shirt-sleeves, a condition in which no German
gentleman would ever show himself to a lady.
" Why ? Are there so many holes in them ? "
asked the younger and more pink and white of the
nondescripts, on hearing me remark on this difference
of custom to Mrs. Menzies-Legh ; and she looked at
me with an air of grave interest.
Of course I did not answer, but inwardly criticised
the upbringing of the English child. It is characteristic
of the nation that Mrs. Menzies-Legh did not so
much as say Hush to her.
On the right, the direction in which we were going
to travel, the road dipped down into a valley with
distant hills beyond, and the company, between their
sips of milk, talked much about the blueness of this
distance. Also they talked much about the greenness
of the Mereworth woods rustling opposite, and the
way the sun shone; as though woods in summer were
ever anything but green, and as though the sun, when
it was there at all, could do anything but go on
shining !
I was on the point of becoming impatient at such
talk and suggesting that if they would only leave
off drinking milk they would probably see things
differently, when Frau von Eckthum came and sat
down beside me on the bench, her ginger-beer in one
hand and a biscuit, also made of ginger, in the other
(the thought of what they must taste like together
made me shiver) and said in her attractive voice-
" I hope you are going to enjoy your holiday. I
feel responsible, you know." And she looked at me
with her pretty smile.
I liked to think of the gentle lady as a kind of
godmother, and made the proper reply, chivalrous and
sugared, and was asking myself what it is that gives
other people's wives a charm one's own never did,
never could, and never will possess, when the door-
curtain of the Elsa was pulled aside, and Edelgard,
whose absence at our siesta I had not noticed, stepped
out on to the platform.
Lord Sigismund and Jellaby immediately got up
and unhooked the steps and held them for her to come
down by. Menzies-Legh also went across and offered
her a hand. I alone sat still, as well I might; for not
only am I her husband, but it is absurd to put false
notions of her importance into a woman's head who
has not had such attentions paid her since she was
eighteen and what we call appetitlich.
Besides, I was rooted to the bench by amazement
at her extraordinary appearance. No wonder she
was not to be seen when duty ought to have kept
her at my side helping me with the horse. She had
not walked one of those five hot miles. She had been
sitting in the caravan, busily cutting her skirt short,
altering her hair, and transforming herself into as
close a copy as she could manage of Mrs. Menzies-Legh
and her sister.
Small indeed was the resemblance now to the
Christian gentlewoman one wishes one's wife to seem
to be. Few were the traces of Prussia. I declare I
would not have recognised her had I met her casually
in the road ; and to think she had dared do it without
a word, without asking my permission, without even
asking my opinion! Her nice new felt hat with its
pheasant's wing had almost disappeared beneath a
gauze veil arranged after the fashion adopted by the
sisters. Heaven knows where she got it, or out of
what other garment, now of course ruined, she had
cut and contrived it ; and what is the use of having
a pheasant's wing if you hide it ? Her hair, up to
then so tight and inconspicuous, was loosened, her
skirt showed almost all of both her boots. The whole
figure was strangely like that of the two sisters, a little
thickened, a little emphasised.
What galled me was the implied entire indifference
to my authority. My mind's indignant eye saw the
snap her fingers were executing in its face. Also,
one's own wife is undoubtedly a thing apart. It is
proper and delightful that the wives of others should
be attractive, but one's own ought to be adorned
solely with the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit
combined with that other ornament, an enduring
desire to keep the husband God has given her
comfortable and therefore happy. Without these two a wife
cannot be regarded as a fit object for her husband's
esteem. I plainly saw that I would find it impossible
to esteem mine in that skirt. I do not know what she
had done to her feet, but they looked much smaller
than I had been accustomed to suppose them as she
came down the steps assisted by the three gentlemen.
My full beer-glass, held neglected in my hand, dripped
unheeded on to the road as I stared stupidly at this
apparition. Rapidly I selected the first few of the
phrases I would address to her the moment we found
ourselves alone. There should be an immediate stop
put to this loosening of the earth round the roots of
the great and sheltering tree of a husband's authority.
" Poor silly sheep," I could not help murmuring,
those animals flashing into my mind as a legitimate
development of the sheltering-tree image.
Then I felt there was a quotation atmosphere about
them, and was sure Horace or Virgil-elusive bugbears
of my boyhood-must have said something that began
like that and went on appropriately if only I could
remember it. I regretted that having forgotten it I
was unable to quote it, to myself as it were, but yet
just loud enough for the lady beside me to hear. She,
however, heard what I did say, and looked at me
inquiringly.
" If I were to explain, dear lady," said I, instantly
responding to the look, " you would not understand."
" Oh ? " said she.
" I was thinking in symbols."
" Oh," said she.
" It is one of my mental tricks," I said, my gaze
however contracting sternly as it fell on Edelgard's
approaching form.
" Oh ? " said she.
Certainly she is a quiet lady. But how stimulating.
Her solitary oh's are more packed with expressiveness
than other women's hour-long tirades.
She too was watching Edelgard coming towards us
across the sun-beaten bit of road, her head slightly
turned away from me but not so much that I could not
see she was smiling at my wife. Of course she must
have been amused at such a slavish imitation; but
with her usual kindness she made room on the bench
for her and, without alluding to the transformation,
suggested refreshment.
Edelgard as she sat down shot a very curious
glance at me round the corner of her head-wrappings.
I was surprised to see little that could be called
apology in her way of sitting down, and looked in vain
for the red spot that used to appear on each cheek
at home when she was aware that she had done wrong
and that it was not going to be passed over. She was
sheltered from immediate steps on my part by Frau
von Eckthum who sat between us, and when Jellaby
approached her with a glass of milk she actually took
it, without so much as breathing the honest word beer.
This was too much. I threw back my head and
laughed as heartily as I have ever seen a man laugh.
Edelgard and milk! Why, I do not believe she had
drunk it pure like that since the day she parted from
the last of her infancy's bottles. Edelgard becoming
squeamish; Edelgard posing-and what a pose;
good heavens, what a pose ! Edelgard, one of Prussia's
daughters, one of Prussia's noblemen's daughters,
accepting milk instead of beer, and accepting it at
the hands of a Socialist in shirt sleeves. A vision of
Storchwerder's face if it could see these things rose
before me. Of course I laughed. Not, mind you,
without some slight tinge of bitterness, for laughter
may be bitter and hearty at the same time, but on
the whole I think I did credit to my unfailing sense of
humour in spite of very great provocation, and I
laughed till even the horses pricked up their ears and
turned their heads and stared.
Nobody else smiled. On the contrary-it cannot
be true that laughter is infectious-they watched me
with a serious, amusingly serious, surprise. Edelgard
did not watch. She knew better than that. Carefully
she concealed her face in the milk, feeling no doubt
it was the best place for it, and unable to leave off
drinking the stuff because of the problem of how
to meet my eyes once she did. Frau von Eckthum
regarded me with much the same attentive interest
she had shown when I was explaining some of my
views to her on the march,-I mean of course my
views on wives, but language is full of pitfalls. The
Menzies-Legh niece (they called her Jane) paused in
the middle of a banana to stare. Her friend, who
answered to the singular name (let us hope it was
merely a sobriquet) of Jumps, forgot to continue
greedily pressing biscuits into her mouth, and,
forgetting also that her mouth was open to receive them,
left it in that condition. Mrs. Menzies-Legh got up
and snap-shotted me. Menzies-Legh leaned forward
when I had had my laugh nearly out and said, "Come
Baron, let us share the joke ? " But his melancholy
voice belied his words, and looking round at him I
thought he seemed little in the mood for sharing
anything. I never saw such a solemn dull face; it
shrivelled up my merriment just to see it. So I
merely shrugged one of my shoulders and said it was
a German joke.
" Ah," said Menzies-Legh ; and did not press me
further. And Jellaby, wiping his forehead (on which
lay perpetually a long lank strand of hair which he
was as perpetually brushing aside with his hand,
apparently desirous of not having it there, but only
apparently, for five seconds with any competent
barber would have rid him of it for ever), Jellaby, I
say, asking Menzies-Legh in his womanish tenor voice
if the green shadows in the wood opposite did not
remind him of some painter friend's work, they began
talking pictures as though they were as important
every bit as the great objects of life, wealth, and
war, and a foot on the neck of the nations.
Well, it was impossible to help contrasting their
sluggishness with a party of Germans under similar
conditions. Edelgard would have been greeted with
one immense roar of laughter on her appearing
suddenly in her new guise. She would have been assailed
with questions, pelted with mocking comments, and
I might have expressed my own disapproval frankly
and openly and no one would have thought it
anything but natural. There, however, in that
hypocritical country they one and all pretended not to have
seen any change at all; and there was something so
depressing about so many stiff and lantern jaws
whichever way I turned my head that after my one Homeric
burst I found myself unable to go on. A joke soon palls
if nobody else can see it. In silence I drank my beer
and realised that my opinion of the nation is low.
It was chiefly Menzies-Legh and Jellaby who sent
down the mercury, I reflected as we resumed the
march. One gets impressions, one knows not how or
why, nor does one know when. I had not spoken much
to either, yet there the impressions were. It was not
likely that I could be mistaken, for I suppose that of
all people in the world a Prussian officer is the least
likely to be that. He is too shrewd, too quick, of too
disciplined an intelligence. It is these qualities that
keep him at the top of the European tree, combined,
indeed, with his power of concentrating his entire
being into one noble determination to stay on it.
Again descending to allegory, I can see Menzies-Legh
and Jellaby and all the other slow-spoken and slow-
thoughted Englishmen flapping ineffectually among
the lower and more comfortable branches of the tree
of nations. Yes, they are more sheltered there; they
have roomier nests ; less wind and sun ; less distance
to fly in order to fetch the waiting grub from the moss
beneath ; but what about the Prussian eagle sitting
at the top, his beak flashing in the light, his watchful
eye never off them? Some day he will swoop down on
them when they are, as usual, asleep, clear out their and
similar well-lined nests, and have the place to himself
-becoming, as the well-known picture has iit (for I
too can allude to pictures), in all his glory Enfin seul.
The road went down straight and long and white
into the flat. High dusty hedges shut us in on either
side. Across the end, which looked an interminable
way off, lay the blue distance the milk drinkers
admired. The three caravans creaked over the loose
stones. Their brown varnish glistened blindingly in the
sun. The horses plodded onwards with hanging heads,
subdued, no doubt, by the growing number of the
hours. It was half-past three, and there were no
signs of camp or dinner; no signs of our doing anything
but walk along like that in the dust, our feet
aching, our throats parching, our eyes burning, and
our stomachs empty, for ever.
VII
A MAN who is writing a book should have a free hand.
When I began my narrative I hardly realised this, but
I do now. No longer is Edelgard allowed to look over
my shoulder. No longer are the sheets left lying open
on my desk. I put Edelgard off with the promise that
she shall hear it when it is done. I lock it up when
I go out. And I write straight on without wasting
time considering what this or that person may like
or not.
At the end, indeed, there is to be a red pencil,-
an active censor running through the pages making
danger signals, and whenever on our beer evenings I
come across its marks I shall pause, and probably
cough, till my eye has found the point at which I may
safely resume the reading. Our guests will tell me
that I have a cold, and I shall not contradict them;
for whatever one may say to one friend at a time
in confidence about, for instance, one's wife, one is
bound to protect her collectively.
I hope I am clear. Sometimes I fear I am not ;
but language, as I read in the paper lately, is but
a clumsy vehicle for thought, and on this clumsy
vehicle therefore, overloaded already with all I have
to say, let us lay the whole blame, using it (to descend
to quaintness) as a kind of tarpaulin or other water-
proof cover, and tucking it in carefully at the corners.
I mean the blame. Also, let it not be forgotten that
this is the maiden flight of my Muse, and that even
if it were not, a gentleman cannot be expected to
write with the glibness of your Jew journalist or other
professional quill-driver.
We did not get into camp that first day till nearly
six (much too late, my friends, if you should ever find
yourselves under the grievous necessity of getting into
such a thing), and we had great difficulty in finding
one at all. That, indeed, is a very black side of
caravaning : camps are rarely there when they are
wanted, and, conversely, frequently so when they are
not. Not once, nor twice, but several times have I,
with the midday sun streaming vertically on my head,
been obliged to labour along past a most desirable
field, with just the right aspect, the sheltering trees
to the north, the streamlet for the dish-washing
loitering about waiting, the yard full of chickens, and
cream and eggs ready to be bought, merely because
it came, the others said, too early in the march and
we had not yet earned our dinner. Earned our
dinner ? Why, long before I left the last night's
camp I had earned mine, if exhaustion from overwork
is what they meant, and earned it well too.
I pity a pedant; I pity a mind that is made up like
a bed the first thing in the morning, and goes on
grimly like that all day, refusing to be unmade till a
certain fixed evening hour has been reached; and
I assert that it is a sign of a large way of thinking,
of the intellectual pliability characteristic of the real
man of the world, to have no such hard and fast
determinations and to be always ready to camp. Left
to myself, if I were to see the right spot ten minutes,
nay, five, after leaving the last one, I would instantly
pounce on it. But no man can pounce instantly on
anything who shall not first have rid himself of his
prejudices.
On that second day of dusty endeavouring to get
to Sussex, which was and remained in the much talked
of blue distance, we passed no spot at all except one
that was possible. That one, however, was very
possible indeed in the eyes of persons who had endured
sun and starvation since the morning-a shaded
farmhouse, of an appearance that pleased the ladies
owing to the great profusion of flowers clambering up
and down it, an orchard laden with fruit suggestive
of dessert, a stream whose clear waters promised an
excellent foot bath, and fat chickens in great numbers,
merely to look on whom caused little rolls of bacon
and dabs of bread sauce and even fragments of salad
to dance delightfully before one's eyes.
But the woman was cross. Worse, she was inhuman.
She was a monster of indifference to the
desires of her fellow-creatures, deaf to their offers of
payment, stony in regard to their pains. Arguing
with her, we gave up one by one our first more
succulent visions, and retreating before the curtness of her
refusals let first the camp beneath the plum trees
go, then the dessert, then the chickens with their
etcaeteras, then, still further backwards, and fighting
over each one, egg after egg of all those many eggs
we were so sure she would sell us and we wanted so
badly to buy.
Audaciously she swore she had no eggs, while
there beneath our very eyes walked chickens brimful
of the eggs of the morrow. Where were the eggs of
the morning, and where the eggs of yesterday ? To
this question, put by me, she replied that it was no
business of mine. Accursed British female,-certainly
not lady, doubtfully even woman, but emphatically
Weib-of twisted appearance, and a gnarled and
knotty age ! May you in your turn be refused rest
and nourishment when hard put to it and willing to
pay, and after you have marched five hours in the
sun controlling, from your feet, the wayward impulses
of a big rebellious horse.
She shut the door while yet we were protesting.
In silence we trooped back down the brick path
between rose bushes that were tended with a care
she denied humans, to where the three caravans
waited hopefully in the road for the call to come in
and be at rest.
We continued our way subdued. This is a characteristic
of those who caravan, that in the afternoons
they are subdued. So many things have happened
to them by then ; and, apart from that, they have
daily got by then into that physical condition doctors
describe as run down-or, if I may alter it better
to fit this special case, walked down. Subdued,
therefore, we journeyed along flat uncountrified roads,
reminding one, by the frequent recurrence of villas,
of the outskirts of some big town rather than of the
seclusion it had been and still was our aim to court,
and in this way we came at last to a broad and
extremely sophisticated bridge crossing a river someone
murmured was the Medway.
Houses and shops lined its approach on the right.
On the left was a wide and barren field with two
donkeys finding difficulties in collecting from the
scanty herbage a sufficiency of supper. In the gutter,
opposite a public house, stood a piano-organ, emitting
the sounds of shrill yet unconvincing joyfulness
natural to those instruments, and mingled with these
was a burr of machinery at work, and a smell of
so searching a nature that it provoked Frau von
Eckthum into a whole sentence-a plaintive and
faintly spoken one, but a long one-describing her
conviction that there must be a tannery somewhere
near, and that it was very disagreeable.
Her plaintiveness increased a hundredfold when Menzies-Legh
announced that camp we must at all costs, or night
would be upon us.
We drew up in the middle of the road while Lord
Sigismund made active inquiries of the inhabitants
as to which of them would be willing to lend us a
field.
"But surely not here?" murmured Frau von
Eckthum, holding her little handkerchief to her nose.
It was here, however, and in the field, said Lord
Sigismund returning, containing the donkeys. For the
privilege of sharing with these animals their bare and
shelterless field, exposed as it was to all the social
amenities of the district, including the piano-organ;
the shops opposite, the smell of leather in the making;
and the company as long as the light lasted of
innumerable troops of children, the owner would make
us a charge of half a crown per caravan for the night,
but this only on condition that we did not turn out,
as he appeared to have had the greatest suspicions we
would turn out, to be a circus.
With a flatness of which I would not have thought
her capable Frau von Eckthum refused to spend a
night in the donkey field; and Mrs. Menzies-Legh,
who was absorbed in snap-shooting the ever-swelling
crowd of children and loafers who were surrounding
us, suddenly stamped her foot and said she would
not either.
" The horses can't go another yard," remonstrated
Menzies-Legh.
" I won't sleep with the donkeys," said his wife,
taking another snap.
Her sister said nothing, but held her handkerchief
as before.
Then Jellaby, descrying a hedge with willows
beyond it at the far-away end of the field, and no
doubt conscious of a parliamentary practice in
persuasion, said he would get permission to go in there
for the night, and disappeared. Lord Sigismund
expressed doubts as to his success, for the man, he
said, was apparently own brother to the female at the
farm, or at any rate of the closest spiritual affinity;
but Jellaby did come back after a while, during which
the piano-organ's waltzes had gone on accentuating
the blank dreariness of the spot, and said it was all
right.
Later on I discovered that what he called all right
was paying exactly twice as much per caravan for the
superior exclusiveness of the willow field as what was
demanded for the donkey field. Well, he did not have
to pay, being Menzies-Legh's guest, so no doubt he
did think it all right; but I call it monstrous that I
should be asked to pay that which would have secured
me a perfectly dry bedroom with no grass in it in
a first-rate Berlin hotel for the use for a few hours
of a gnat-haunted, nettle-infested, low-lying, swampy
meadow.
The monstrosity struck me more afterwards when
I looked back. That evening I was too tired to be
struck, and would, I truly believe, have paid five
shillings just for being allowed to sink down into a
sitting position, it mattered not where, and remain
in it; but there was still much, I feared, to do and
to suffer before I could so sink down,-for instance,
there was the gate leading into the donkey field to
be got through, the whole population watching, and
the pleasant prospect before me of having to reimburse
any damage done to a caravan that could only, under
the luckiest circumstances, just fit in. Then there
was Edelgard to be brought to reason, and suppose
she refused to be brought ? That is, quickly; for I
had no fears as to her ultimate bringing.
Well, the gate came first, and as it would require
my concentrated attention I put the other away from
me till I should be more at leisure. Old James,
assisted by Menzies-Legh, got the Ailsa safely through,
and away she heaved, while the onlookers cheered,
over the mole heaps towards the willows on the
horizon. Then Menzies-Legh, calling Jellaby, came
to help me pull the Elsa through, Lord Sigismund
waiting with the third horse who had been his special
charge throughout the day. It seemed all very well
to help me, but any scratches to the varnish caused by
the two gentlemen in their zeal would be put in my
bill, not in theirs, and under my breath I called down
a well-known Pomeranian curse of immense body
and scope on all those fools who had helped in the
making of the narrow British gates.
As I feared, there was too much of that zele that
somebody (I think he was French) advised somebody
else (I expect he must have been English) not to have,
and amid a hubbub of whoas-which is the island
equivalent for our so much more lucid brrr -shouts
from the onlookers, and a scream or two from Edelgard
who could not listen unmoved to the crashings
of our crockery, Menzies-Legh and Jellaby between
them drew the brute so much to one side that it
was only owing to my violent efforts that a terrible
accident was averted. If they had had their way the
whole thing would have charged into the right-hand
gate post-with what a crashing and a parting from
its wheels may be imagined-but thanks to me it was
saved, although the left-hand gate post did scrape
a considerable portion of varnish off the Elsa's left
(so to speak) flank.
" I say," said the Socialist when it was all over,
brushing his bit of hair aside, " you shouldn't have
pulled that rein like that."
The barefaced audacity of putting the blame on to
me left me speechless.
" No," said Menzies-Legh, " you shouldn't have
pulled anything."
He too! Again I was left speechless-left, indeed,
altogether, for they immediately dropped behind to
help (save the mark) Lord Sigismund bring the Ilsa
through.
So the Elsa in her turn heaved away, guided
anxiously by me over the mole heaps, every mole
heap being greeted by our pantry as we passed over
it with a thunderous clapping together of its contents,
as though the very cups, being English, were clapping
their hands, or rather handles, in an ecstasy of spiteful
pleasure, at getting broken and on to my bill.
Little do you who only know cups in their public
capacity, filled with liquids and standing quietly in
rows, realise what they can do once they are let loose
in a caravan. Sometimes I have thought-but no
doubt fancifully-that so-called inanimate objects are
not as inanimate as one might think, but are possessed
of a character like other people, only one of an
unadulterated pettiness and perversity rarely found in
the human. I believe most people who had been in
my place that evening last August guiding the Elsa
across all the irregularities that lay between us and
the willow-field in the distance, and had listened to
what the cups were doing, would have been sure of it.
As for me, I can only say that every time I touch a
cup or other piece of crockery it seems to upset it,
and frequently has such an effect on it that it breaks ;
and it is useless for Edelgard to tell me to be careful,
and to hint (as she does when she is out of spirits)
that I am clumsy, because I am careful ; and as
for being clumsy, everybody knows that I have the
straightest eye and am the best shot in our regiment.
But it is not only cups. If, while I am dressing (or
undressing) I throw any portion of my clothes or
other article I may be using on to a table or a chair,
however carefully I aim it invariably either falls at
once, or after a brief hesitation slips off on to the floor
from which place, in its very helplessness, it seems to
jeer at me. And the more important it is I should not
be delayed the more certainly is this conduct indulged
in. Fanciful ? Perhaps. But let me remind you of
what the English poet Shakespeare says through
the mouth of Hamlet into the ears of Horatio, and
express the wish that you too could have listened to
the really exultant clapping of the cups in our pantry
as I crossed the mole heaps.
Edelgard, feeling guilty, remained behind, so was
not there as she otherwise certainly would have been
making anxious sums, according to her custom, in
what these noises were going to cost us. A man who
has been persuaded to take a holiday because it is
cheap may be pardoned for being preoccupied when
he finds it is likely to be dear. Among other things
I thought some very sharp ones about the owner of
the field, who permitted his ground, in defiance I am
sure (though not being an agriculturist I cannot give
chapter and verse for my belief) of all laws of health
and wholesomeness, to be so much ravaged by moles.
If he had done his duty my cups would not have been
smashed. The heaps of soil thrown up by these
animals were so frequent that during the entire
crossing at least one of the Elsa's wheels was constantly
on the top of a heap, and sometimes two of
her wheels simultaneously on the top of two.
It is a pity people do not know what other people
think of them. Unfortunately it is rude to tell them,
but if only means could be devised-perhaps by some
Marconi of the mind-for letting them know without
telling them, how nice and modest they would all
become. That farmer was probably eating his supper
in his snug parlour in bestial complacency and
ignorance at the very moment that I was labouring
across his field pouring on him, if he had only known
it, a series of as scalding criticisms as ever made a
man, if he were aware of them, shrivel and turn over
a new leaf.
I found Mrs. Menzies-Legh at the further gate,
holding it open. Old James had already got his horse
out, and when he saw me approaching came and laid
hold of the bridle of mine and led him through. He
then drew him up parallel with the Ailsa, the doors of
both caravans being towards the river, and proceeded
with the skill and expedition natural in an old person
who had done nothing else all his life to unharness my
horse and turn him loose.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh lit a cigarette and handed me
her case. She then dropped down on to the long and
very damp-looking grass and motioned to me to sit
beside her ; so we sat together, I much too weary
either to refuse or to converse, while the muddy
river slid sullenly along within a yard of us between
fringes of willows, and myriads of gnats gyrated in
the slanting sunbeams.
" Tired ? " said she, after a silence that no doubt
surprised her by its length.
" Too tired," said I, very shortly.
" Not really ? " said she, turning her head to look
at me, and affecting much surprise about the eyebrows.
This goaded me. The woman was inhuman. For
beneath the affected surprise of the eyebrows I saw
well enough the laughter in the eyes, and it has always
been held since the introduction of Christianity that
to laugh at physical incapacitation is a thing beyond
all others barbarous.
I told her so. I tossed away the barely begun
cigarette she had given me, not choosing to go on
smoking a cigarette of hers, and told her so with as
much Prussian thoroughness as is consistent with
being at the same time a perfect gentleman. No
woman (except of course my wife) shall ever be able
to say I have not behaved to her as a gentleman
should; and my hearers will be more than ever
convinced of the inexplicable toughness of Mrs.
Menzies-Legh's nature, of the surprising impossibility
of producing the least effect upon her, when I tell
them that at the end of quite a long speech on my
part, not I believe ineloquent, and yet as plain spoken
as the speech of a man can be within the framework
which should always surround him, the carved and
gilt and-it must be added-expensive framework of
gentlemanliness, she merely looked at me again and
said-
" Dear Baron, why is it that men, when they have
walked a little further than they want to, or have
gone hungry a little longer than they like to, are
always so dreadfully cross ? "
The lumbering into the field of the Ilsa with the
rest of the party made an immediate reply impossible.
" Hullo ? " said Jellaby, on seeing us apparently
at rest in the grass. " Enjoying yourselves ? "
I fancy this must be a socialistic formula, for short
as the period of my acquaintance with him had been
he had already used it to me three times. Perhaps it
is the way in which his sect reminds those outside it
of the existence of its barren and joyless notions of
other people's obligations. A Socialist, as far as I
can make out, is a person who may never sit down.
If he does, the bleak object he calls the Community
immediately becomes vocal, because it considers that
by sitting down he is cheating it of what he would be
producing by his labour if he did not. Once I (quite
good naturedly) observed to Jellaby that in a
socialistic world the chair-making industry would be the
first to go to the wall (or the dogs-I cannot quite
recollect which I said it would go to) for want of
suitable sitters, and he angrily retorted-but this
occurred later in the tour, and no doubt I shall refer
to it in its proper place.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh got up at once on his asking if
we were enjoying ourselves, as though her conscience
reproached her, and went over to the larder of her
caravan and busily began pulling out pots; and I
too seeing that it was expected of me prepared to rise
(for English society is conducted on such artificial
lines that immediately a woman begins to do anything
a man must at least pretend to do something too)
but found that my short stay on the grass had stiffened
my over-tired limbs to such an extent that I could not.
The two nondescripts, who were passing, lingered
to look.
" Can I help you ? " said the one they called Jumps,
as I made a second ineffectual effort, advancing and
holding out a knuckly hand.
" Will you take my arm ? " said the other one,
Jane, crooking a bony elbow.
" Thank you, thank you, dear children," I said,
with the bland heartiness one assumes-for no known
reason-towards the offspring of strangers ; and
obliged to avail myself of their assistance (for want of
practice makes it at all times difficult for me to get
up from a flat surface, and my stiffness on this occasion
turned the difficult into the impossible), I somehow
was pulled on to my feet.
" Thank you, thank you," I said again, adding
jestingly, " I expect I am too old to sit on the
ground."
" Yes," said Jane.
This was so unexpected that I could not repress
a slight sensation of annoyance, which found its expression in sarcasm.
" I am extremely obliged to you young ladies," I
said, sweeping off my Panama, " for extending your
charitable support and assistance to such a poor old
gentleman."
" Oh," said Jumps earnestly, too thick-skinned to
feel sarcasm, " I'm used to it. I have to help Papa
about. He's very old too."
" Yet surely," said I, tingeing my sarcasm with
playfulness (but they were too thick-skinned even for
playfulness), " surely not so old as I ? "
" About the same," said Jumps, considering me
gravely.
"And how old," said I, inquiring of Jane, for
Jumps annoyed me too much, " may your friend's
excellent parent be ? "
" Oh, about sixty, or seventy, or eighty," said she,
indifferently.
VIII
" THE children of England-" I remarked, when they
had gone their way their arms linked together, to
Lord Sigismund who was hurrying past to the river
with a bucket-but he interrupted me by shouting
over his shoulder-
" Will you stay and light the fire, or come with us
and forage for food ? "
Light the fire ? Why, what are women for ? Even
Hermann, my servant, would rebel if he instead of
Clothilde had to light fires. But, on the other hand,
forage ? Go back across that immense field and walk
from shop to shop on feet that had for some time past
been unable to walk at all ? And then return weighed
down with the results ?
" Do you understand fires, Baron ? " said Mrs.
Menzies-Legh, appearing suddenly behind me.
" As much, I suppose, as intelligence unaided by
experience does," said I unwillingly.
" Oh, but of course you do," said she, putting a
box of matches-one of those enormous English boxes
that never failed to arouse my amused contempt, for
they did not light a single fire or candle more than
their handy little continental brethren-into my right
hand, and the red handkerchief-full of sticks bought
that morning into my left, " of course you do. You
must have got quite used to them in the wars."
" What wars ? " I asked sharply. " You surely do
not imagine that I-"
" Oh, were you too young for Sedan and all that ? "
she asked, as she crossed over the very long and very
green grass towards a distant ditch and I found that
I was expected to cross with her.
" I was so young," I said, more nettled than my
hearers will perhaps understand, but then I was tired
out and no longer able to bear much, " so young that
I had not even reached the stage of being born."
" Not really ? " said she.
" Yes," said I. " I was still spending my birthdays
among the angels."
This, of course, was not strictly true, but one likes
to take off a few years in the presence of a woman who
has left her Gotha Almanach at home, and it was, I
felt, a picturesque notion-I mean about the birthdays
and the angels.
" Not really ? " said she again.
And what, I thought, as we walked on together, is
all this talk about young and not young ? If a man
is not young in the forties when will he be ? I have
never concealed my age, which is about five or six
and forty, with perhaps a year or two added on, but
as I take little notice of birthdays it is just as likely
the year or two ought to be added off, and the forties
are universally acknowledged by all persons who are
in them to be the very flower and prime of life, or
rather the beginning of the very flower and prime, the
beginning of the final unfolding of the last crumple in
the last petal.
I should have thought this state of things was
visible enough in me, plain enough to any ordinary
onlooker. I have neither a grey hair nor a wrinkle.
My moustache is as uninterruptedly blond as ever.
My face is perfectly smooth. And when my hat is
on there is no difference whatever between me and
a person of thirty. Of course I am not a narrow man,
weedy in the way in which Jellaby is weedy, and
unable as he is unable to fill out my clothes; but it is
laughable that just breadth should have made those
two fledglings place me in the same category as an
exceedingly venerable and obviously crippled old
gentleman.
I expect the truth is that in England children
are ill-trained and educated, and their perceptions are
allowed to remain rudimentary. It must be so, for
so few of them wear spectacles. Clearly education
is not carried on with anything like our systematic
rigor, for except on Lord Sigismund I had up to then
nowhere seen these artificial aids to eyesight, and in
Germany at least two-thirds of our young people, as
a result of their application, wear either spectacles or
pince-nez. They may well be proud of them. They are
the visible proof of a youth spent entirely at its books,
the hoisted standard of an ordered and studious life.
" The children of England-" I began vigorously
to Mrs. Menzies-Legh, desirous of expressing a few
of my objections to them to a lady who could not be
supposed to mind, she being one of my own country-
women-but she too interrupted me.
" This is the most sheltered place," she said,
pointing to the dry ditch. " You'll find more sticks
in that little wood. You will want heaps more."
And she left me.
Well, I had never made a fire in my life. I stood
there for a moment in great hesitation as to how to
begin. They should not say I was unwilling, those
ant-like groups over by the caravans so feverishiy
hurrying hither and thither, but to do a thing one
must begin it, and as there are no doubt several
ways of lighting a fire, even as there are several ways
of doing anything else in life, I stood uncertain while
I asked myself which of the several ways (all of them,
I must concede, unknown to me) I ought to choose.
The ditch had a hedge on its further side, and
through a gap in it I saw the wood, cleared in places
and overgrown between the remaining stumps by
bracken and brambles, wherein. I was, as Mrs. Menzies-
Legh said, to find more sticks. The first thing to be
done, then, was to find the sticks, for the handkerchief
contained the merest handful; and this was a
hard task among brambles at the end of a dinnerless
day, and likely, besides, to prove ruinous to my
stockings.
The groups at the caravans were peeling the
potatoes and other vegetables we had bought at the
farm near Grip's Common that morning, and were
doing it with an expedition that showed how hunger
was triumphing over fatigue. Jellaby hurried to and
fro to a small spring among the bracken fetching
water. Menzies-Legh and Lord Sigismund had
disappeared in the distance that led to the shops. Old
James was feeding the horses. I could see the two
fledglings sitting on the grass with bowed heads and
flushed cheeks absorbed in the shredding of cabbages.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh had begun, with immense energy,
to peel potatoes. Her gentle sister-I deplored it-
was engaged on an onion. Nowhere, look as I might
(for I needed her assistance) could I see my wife.
Then Mrs. Menzies-Legh, raising her eyes from her
potatoes, saw me standing motionless and called out
that the vegetables would soon be ready for the fire,
but she feared if I were not quick the fire would not
soon be ready for the vegetables; and thus urged,
and contrary to my first intention, I hastily emptied
the sticks out of the handkerchief into the ditch and
began to endeavour to light them.
But they would not light. Match after match
flared an instant, then went out. It was a windy
evening, and I saw no reason for supposing that any
match would stay alight long enough to get even one
stick to catch fire. I went down on my knees and
interposed my person between the sticks and the wind,
but though the matches then burned to the end
(where were my fingers) the sticks took no more
notice than if they had been of iron. Losing patience
I said something aloud and not, I am afraid, quite
complimentary, about wives who neglect their duties
and kick in shortened skirts over the traces of
matrimony; and Edelgard's voice immediately responded
from the other side of the hedge. " But, lieber Otto,"
it said, " is it then my fault that you have forgotten
the paper ? "
I straightened myself and looked at her. She had
already been on the search for sticks, for as she
advanced to the gap and stood in it I saw she had an
apronful of them. I must say I was surprised at her
courage in confronting me thus alone, when she was
aware I must be gravely displeased with her and
could only be waiting for an opportunity to tell her so.
She, however, with the cunning common to wives, called
me lieber Otto as though nothing had happened, did
not allude to my overheard exclamation, and sought
to soften me with sticks.
I looked at her therefore very coldly. " No," I
said, " I had not forgotten the paper."
And this was true, because to forget paper (or
indeed anything else) you must first of all have thought
of it, and I had not.
" Perhaps," I went on, my coldness descending as
I spoke below zero, which is the point in our well-
arranged thermometers (either Celsius or Reaumur,
but none of their foolish Fahrenheits) where freezing
begins, " perhaps since you are so clever you will have
the goodness to light the fire yourself. Any one," I
continued with emphasis, " can criticise. We will now,
if you please, change places, and you shall bring your
unquestioned gifts to bear on this matter, while I
assume the role suited to lesser capacity, and merely
criticise."
This, of course, was bitter ; but was it not a
justified bitterness ? Unfortunately I shall have to
suppress the passage I suppose at the reading aloud,
so shall never hear the verdict of my friends ; but
even without that verdict (and I well know what it
would be, for they all have wives), even without it I
can honestly call my bitterness justified. Besides,
it was very well put.
She listened in silence, and then just said, " Oh
Otto," and came down at once into the ditch, and
bending over the sticks began to arrange them quickly
on some stones she picked up.
I did not like to sit down and smoke, which is
what I would have done at home (supposing such
a situation as the Ottringels lighting a fire out of
doors in Storchwerder were conceivable), because Mrs.
Menzies-Legh would probably have immediately left
off peeling her potatoes to exclaim, and Jellaby would,
I dare say, have put down his buckets and come
over to inquire if I were enjoying myself. Not that
I care ten pfennings for their opinions, and I also
passionately disapprove of the whole English attitude
towards women; but I am a fair-minded man, and
believe in going as far as is reasonable with the well-
known maxim of behaving in Rome as the Romans
behave.
I therefore just stood with my back to the caravans
and watched Edelgard. In less time than I take to
write it she had piled up the sticks, stuffed a bit of
newspaper she drew from her apron underneath
them, lit them by means (as I noted) of a single match,
and behold the fire, crackling and blazing and leaping
upwards or outwards as the wind drove it.
No proof, if anything further in that way were
needed, could be more convincing as to the position
women are intended by nature to fill. Their instincts
are all of the fire-lighting order, the order that serves
and tends; while to man, the noble dreamer, is
reserved the place in life where there is room, dignity,
and uninterruption. Else how can he dream ? And
without his dreams there would be no subsequent
crystallisation of dreams; and all that we see of good
and great and wealth-bringing was once some undisturbed man's dream.
But this is philosophy; and you, my friends, who
breathe the very air handed down to you by our
Hegels and our Kants, who are born into it and absorb
it whether you want to or not through each one of
your infancy's pores, you do not need to hear the
Ottringel echo of your own familiar thoughts. We
in Storchwerder speak seldom on these subjects for
we take them for granted ; and I will not in this place
describe too minutely all that passed through my
mind as I watched, in that grassy solitude, at the hour
when the sun in setting lights up everything with
extra splendour, my wife piling sticks on the fire.
Indeed, what did pass through it was of a mixed
nature. It seemed so strange to be there ; so strange
that that meadow, in all its dampness, its high hedge
round three sides of it, its row of willows brooding
over the sulky river, its wood on the one hand, its
barren expanse of mole-ridden field on the other,
and for all view another meadow of exact similarity
behind another row of exactly similar willows across
the Medway, it seemed so strange that all this had
been lying there silent and empty for heaven knows
how many years, the exact spot on which Edelgard
and I were standing waiting, as it were, for its prey
throughout the entire period of our married life in
Storchwerder and of my other married life previous
to that, while we, all unconscious, went through the
series of actions and thoughts that had at length
landed us on it. Strange fruition of years. Stranger
the elaborate leading up to it. Strangest the inability
of man to escape such a destiny. Regarded as the
fruition of years it was certainly paltry, it was
certainly a disproportionate destiny. I had been led
from Pomerania, a most remote place if measured by
its distance from the Medway, in order to stand at
evening with damp feet on this exact spot. A
believer, you will cry, in predestination ? Perhaps.
Anyhow, filled with these reflections (and others of
the same character) and watching my wife doing in
silence that for which she is fitted and intended, my
feeling towards her became softer ; I began to excuse ;
to relent; to forgive. Indeed I have tried to do my
duty. I am not hard, unless she forces me to be. I
feel that no one can guide and help a wife except a
husband. And I am older than she is; and am I not
experienced in wives, who have had two, and one of
them for the enormous (sometimes it used to seem
endless) period of twenty years ?
I said nothing to her at the moment of a softer
nature, being well aware of the advantage of allowing
time, before proceeding to forgiveness, for the firmer
attitude to sink in; and Jellaby bringing the iron
stew-pot Mrs. Menzies-Legh had bought that morning
-or rather dragging it, for he is, as I haave said, a
weedy creature-across to us, spilling much of the
water it contained on the way, I was obliged to help
him get it on to the fire, fetching at his direction stones
to support it and then considerably scorching my
hands in the efforts to settle the thing safely on
the stones.
" Please don't bother, Baroness," said Jellaby to
Edelgard when she began to replenish the fire with
more sticks. " We'll do that. You'll get the smoke
in your eyes."
But would we not get the smoke in our eyes too ?
And would not eyes unused to kitchen work smart
far more than eyes that did the kind of thing at home
every day ? For I suppose the fires in the kitchens
of Storchwerder smoke sometimes, and Edelgard must
have been perfectly inured to it.
" Oh," said Edelgard, in the pleasant little voice
she manages to have when speaking to persons who
are not her husband, " it is no bother. I do not mind
the smoke."
" Why, what are we here for ? " said Jellaby. And
he took the sticks she was still holding from her hands.
Again the thought crossed my mind that Jellaby
must be attracted by Edelgard ; indeed, all three
gentlemen. This is an example of the sort of attention
that had been lavished on her ever since we
started. Inconceivable as it seemed, there it was;
and the most inconceivable part of it was that it
was boldly done in the very presence of her husband.
I, however, knowing that one should never trust a
foreigner, determined to bring round the talk, as I had
decided the day before, to the number of Edelgard's
birthdays that very evening at supper.
But when supper, after an hour and a half's
waiting, came, I was too much exhausted to care.
We all were very silent. Our remaining strength had
gone out of us like a flickering candle in a wind when we
became aware of the really endless time potatoes take
to boil. Everything had gone into the pot together.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh had declared that was the shortest,
and indeed the only way, for the oil-stoves in the
caravans and their small saucepans had sufficiently
proved their inadequacy the previous night.
Henceforth, said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, our hope was to be in
the stew-pot ; and as she said it she threw in the
potatoes, the cabbages, the onion sliced by her tender
sister, a piece of butter, a handful of salt, and the
bacon her husband and Lord Sigismund had brought
back with them from the village. It all went in
together ; but it did not all come out together, for
we discovered after savoury fragrances had teased
our nostrils for some time that the cabbage and the
bacon were cooked, while the potatoes, in response
to the proddings of divers anxious forks, remained
obstinately hard.
We held a short council, gathered round the stewpot,
as to the best course to pursue. If we left the
bacon and the cabbage in the pot they would be boiled
certainly to a pulp, and perhaps-awful thought-
altogether away, before the potatoes were ready. On
the other hand, to relinquish the potatoes, the chief
feature of our supper, would be impossible. We
therefore after much anxious argument decided to
take out that which was already cooked, put it
carefully on plates, and at the last moment return it to
the pot to be warmed up again.
This was done, and we sat round on the grass to
wait. Now was the moment, now that we were all
assembled silent in a circle, to direct the conversation
into the birthday channel, but I found myself so much
enfeebled and the rest so unresponsive that after a
faltering beginning, which had no effect except to
draw a few languid gazes upon me, I was obliged
perforce to put it off. Indeed, our thoughts were
wholly concentrated on food; and looking back it is
almost incredible to me that that meagre supper
should have roused so eager an interest.
We all sat without speaking, listening to the
bubbling of the pot. Now and then one of the young
men thrust more sticks beneath it. The sun had set
long since, and the wind had dropped. The meadow
seemed to grow much damper, and while our faces
were being scorched by the fire our backs were becoming
steadily more chilly. The ladies drew their
wraps about them. The gentlemen did that for
their comfort which they would not do for politeness,
and put on their coats. I, whose coat had never left
me, fetched my mackintosh and hung it over my
shoulders, careful to keep it as much as possible out
of reach of the fire-glow in case it should begin to melt.
Long before, the ladies had spread the tables and
cut piles of bread and butter, and one of them-I
expect it was Frau von Eckthum-had concocted an
uncooked pudding out of some cakes they alluded to
as sponge, with some cream and raspberry jam and
brandy, which, together with the bacon and excepting
the brandy, were the result of the foraging expedition.
Towards these tables our glances often wandered.
We were but human, and presently, overcome, our
bodies wandered thither too.
We ate the bread and butter.
Then we ate the bacon and cabbage, agreeing that
it was a pity to let it get any cooler.
Then we ate the pudding they spoke of-for after
this they began to be able to speak-as a trifle.
And then-and it is as strange to relate as it is
difficult to believe-we returned to the stew-pot and
ate every one of the now ready and steaming hot
potatoes; and never, I can safely say, was there
anything so excellent.
Later on, on entering our caravan much softened
by these various experiences and by a cup of
extremely good coffee made by Edelgard, but feeling
justified in withdrawing, now that darkness had set
in, from the confusions of the washing up, I found my
wife searching in the depths of the yellow box for
dish cloths.
I stood in the narrow gangway lighting a cigar, and
when I had done lighting it I realised that I was close
to her and alone. One is never at any time far from
anything in these vehicles, but on this occasion the
nearness combined with the privacy suggested that
the moment had arrived for the words I had decided
she must hear-kind words, not hard as I had at first
intended, but needful.
I put out my arm, therefore, and proposed to draw
her towards me as a preliminary to peace.
She would not, however, come.
Greatly surprised-for resentment had not till
then been one of her failings-I opened my mouth to
speak, but she, before I could do so, said, " Do you
mind not smoking inside the caravan ? "
Still more surprised, and indeed amazed (for this
was petty) but determined not to be shaken out of my
kindness, I gently began, " Dear wife-" and was
going on when she interrupted me.
" Dear husband," she said, actually imitating me,
" I know what you are going to say. I always know
what you are going to say. I know all the things you
ever can or ever do say."
She paused a moment, and then added in a firm
voice, looking me straight in the eyes, " By heart."
And before I could in any way recover my presence
of mind she was through the curtain and down the
ladder and had vanished with the dish cloths into
the darkness.
IX
THIS was rebellion.
But unconsciousness supervened before I had had
time to consider how best to meet it, the unconsciousness
of the profound and prolonged sleep which
is the portion of caravaners. I fell into it almost
immediately after her departure, dropping into my
berth, a mere worn out collection of aching and
presently oblivious bones, and remaining in that
condition till she had left the Elsa next morning.
Therefore I had little time for reflection on the
new side of her nature the English atmosphere was
bringing out, nor did I all that day find either the
leisure or the privacy necessary for it. I felt, indeed,
as I walked by my horse along roads broad and roads
narrow, roads straight and roads winding, roads flat
and convenient and roads hilly and tiresome, my eyes
fixed principally on the ground for if I looked up
there were only hedges and in front of me only the
broad back of the Ailsa blocking up any view there
might be, I felt a numb sensation stealing over me, a
kind of dull patience, such as I have observed (for I
see most things) to be the leading characteristic of a
team of oxen, a tendency becoming more marked with
every mile towards the merely bovine.
The weather that day was disagreeable. There
was a high wind and a leaden sky and the dust blew
hard and gritty. When, on rising, I peeped out
between the window curtains, it all looked very cold
and wretched, the Medway-a most surly river-
muddier than ever, the leaves of the willow trees
wildly fluttering and showing their grey undersides.
It seemed difficult to believe that one was really there,
really about to go out into that gloom to breakfast
instead of into a normal dining-room with a stove and
a newspaper. But, on emerging, I found that though
it looked so cold it was not intolerably so, and no rain
in the night had, by drenching the long grass, added
to our agonies.
They were all at breakfast beneath the willows,
holding on their hats with one hand and endeavouring
to eat with the other, and they all seemed very cheerful.
Edelgard, who had taken the coffee under her
management, was going round replenishing the cups,
and was actually laughing when I came out at something
some one had just said. Remembering how we
had parted this struck me as at least strange.
I made a point of at once asking for porridge, but
luckily old James had not brought the milk in time, so
there was none. Spared, I ate corned beef and jam,
but my feet were still sore from the previous day's
march, and I was unable to enjoy it very much. The
tablecloth flapped in my face, and my mackintosh
blew almost into the river when I let it go for an
instant in order to grasp the milk jug, and I must say
I could not quite understand why they should all be
so happy. I trust I am as willing to be amused as any
man, but what is there amusing in breakfasting in
a draughty meadow with everything flapping and
fluttering, and the coffee cold before it reaches one's
mouth? Yet they were happy. Even Menzies-
Legh, a grey-haired, badly-preserved man, older a
good deal, I should say, than I am, was joking and
then laughing at his jokes with the fledglings, and
Lord Sigismund and Jellaby were describing almost
with exultation how brisk they had felt after a bath
they had taken at five in the morning in the Medway.
What a place to be in at five in the morning. I
shivered only to hear of it. Well, that which makes
one man brisk is the undoing of another, and a bath
in that cold unfriendly stream would undoubtedly
have undone me. I could only conclude that, pasty
and loosely put together as they outwardly were, they
must be of a very great secret leatheriness.
This surprised me. Not that Jellaby should be
leathery, for if he were not neither would he be a
Socialist ; but that the son of so noble a house as
the house of Hereford should have anything but the
thinnest, most sensitive of skins, really was astonishing.
No doubt, however, Lord Sigismund combined,
like the racehorse of purest breed, a skin thin as a
woman's with a mettle and spirit nothing could daunt.
Nothing was daunting him that morning, that was
very clear, for he sat at the end of the table shedding
such contented beams through his spectacles on the
company and on the food that it was as if,
unconsciously true to his future calling, he was saying a
continual grace.
I think they must all have been up very early, for
except the cups and plates actually in use everything
was already stowed away. Even the tent and its
furniture was neatly rolled up preparatory to being
distributed among the three caravans. Such activity,
after the previous day, was surprising ; and still more
so was the circumstance that I had heard nothing of
the attendant inevitable bustle.
" How do you feel this morning ? " I asked
solicitously of Fran von Eckthum on meeting her a moment
alone behind her larder; I hoped she, at least, had
not been working too hard.
" Oh, very well," said she.
" Not too weary ? "
" Not weary at all."
" Ah-youth, youth," said I, shaking my head
playfully, for indeed she looked singularly attractive
that morning.
She smiled, and mounting the steps into her caravan
began to do things with a duster and to sing.
For a moment I wondered whether she too had
been made brisk by early contact with the Medway
(of course in some remoter pool or bay), so unusual
in her was this flow of language ; but the idea of
such delicacy being enveloped and perhaps buffeted
by that rude volume of muddy water was, I felt, an
impossible one. Still, why should she feel brisk ?
Had she not walked the day before the entire distance
in the dust ? Was it possible that she too, in spite
of her poetic exterior, was really inwardly leathery ?
I have my ideals about women, and believe there is
much of the poet concealed somewhere about me ;
and there is a moonlight intangibleness about this
lady, an etherealism amounting at times almost to
indistinctness, that made the application to her of
such an adjective as leathery one from which I
shrank. Yet if she were not, how could she-but I
put these thoughts resolutely aside, and began to
prepare for our departure, moving about mechanically
as one in a bleak and chilly dream.
That is a hideous bridge, that one the English have
built themselves across the Medway. A great grey-
painted iron structure, with the dusty highroad
running over it and the dirty river running under it.
I hope never to see it again, unless officially at the
head of my battalion. On the other side was a place
called Paddock Wood, also, it seemed to me, a dreary
thing as I walked through it that morning at my
horse's side. The sun came out just there, and the
wind with its consequent dust increased. What an
August, thought I ; what a climate; what a place. An
August and a climate and a place only to be found in
the British Isles. In Storchwerder at that moment
a proper harvest mellowness prevailed. No doubt
also in Switzerland, whither we so nearly went, and
certainly in Italy. Was this a reasonable way of
celebrating one's silver wedding, plodding through
Paddock Wood with no one taking any notice of me,
not even she who was the lawful partner of the celebration ?
The only answer I got as I put the question
to myself was a mouthful of dust.
Nobody came to walk with me, and unless some
one did my position was a very isolated one, wedged
in between the Ailsa and the Ilsa, unable to leave the
Elsa, who, like a wife, immediately strayed from the
proper road if I did. The back of the Ailsa prevented
my seeing who was with whom in front, but once at
a sharp turning I did see, and what I saw was Frau
von Eckthum walking with Jellaby, and Edelgard-if
you please on his other side. The young Socialist
was slouching along with his hands in his pockets and
his bony shoulders up to his ears listening, apparently,
to Frau von Eckthum who actually seemed to be
talking, for he kept on looking at her, and laughing as
though at the things she said. Edelgard, I noticed,
joined in the laughter as unconcernedly as if she had
nothing in the world to reproach herself with. Then
the Elsa followed round the corner and the scene in
front was blotted out; but glancing back over my
shoulder I saw how respectably Lord Sigismund, true
to his lineage, remained by the Ilsa's horse's head,
reflectively smoking his pipe and accompanied only
by his dog.
Beyond Paddock Wood and its flat and dreary
purlieus the road began to ascend and to wind,
growing narrower and less draughty, with glimpses
of a greener country and a hillier distance, in fact
improving visibly as we neared Sussex. All this time
I had walked by myself, and I was still too tired after
the long march the day before to have any but dull
objections. It would have been natural to be acutely
indignant at Edelgard's persistent defiance, natural
to be infuriated at the cleverness with which she
shifted the entire charge of our caravan on to me
while she, on the horizon, gesticulated with Jellaby.
I realised, it is true, that the others would not have let
her lead the horse even had she offered to, but she
ought at least to have walked beside me and hear me,
if that were my mood, grumble.
However, a reasonable man knows how to wait. He does not, not being
a woman, hasten and perhaps spoil a crisis by rushing
at it. And if no opportunity should present itself
for weeks, would there not be years in our flat in
Storchwerder consisting solely of opportunities ?
Besides, my feet ached. I think there must have
been some clumsy darning of Edelgard's in my socks
that pressed on my toes and made them feel as if the
shoes were too short for them. And small stones kept
on getting inside them, finding out the one place they
could get in at and leaping through it with the greatest
dexterity, dropping gradually by unpleasant stages
down to underneath my socks, where they remained
causing me discomfort till the next camp. These
physical conditions, to which the endless mechanical
trudging behind the Ailsa's varnished back must be
added, reduced me as I said before to a condition
of dull and bovine acquiescence. I ceased to make
objections. I hardly thought. I just trudged.
At the top of the ascent, at a junction of four
roads called Four Winds (why, when they were four
roads, the English themselves I suppose best know),
we met a motor.
It came scorching round a corner with an insolent
shriek of its tooting apparatus, but the shriek died
away as it were on its lips when it saw what was
filling up the way. It hesitated, stopped, and then
began respectfully to back. Pass us it could not at
that point, and charge into such vast objects as
the caravans was a task before which even blood-
thirstiness quailed. I record this as the one pleasing
incident that morning, and when it was my turn to
walk by the thing I did so with squared shoulders and
held-up head and a muttered (yet perfectly distinct)
" Road hogs "-which is the term Menzies-Legh had
applied to them the day before when relating how one
had run over a woman near where he lives, and had
continued its career leaving her to suffer in the road,
which she did for the space of two hours before the
next passer-by passed in time to see her die. And
she was a quite young woman, and a pretty one into
the bargain-
(" I don't see what that has to do with it," said
the foolish Jellaby when, in answer to my questions,
I extracted this information from Menzies-Legh.)
Therefore, remembering this shocking affair, and
being as well a great personal detester of these
conveyances, the property invariably of the insolent rich,
who with us are chiefly Jews, I took care to be distinct
as I muttered " Road hogs." The two occupants in
goggles undoubtedly heard me, for they started and
even their goggles seemed to shrink back and be
ashamed of themselves, and I continued my way with
a slight reviving of my spirits, the slight reviving
of which he is generally conscious who has had the
courage to say what he thinks of a bad thing.
The post whose finger we were following had
Dundale inscribed on it, and as we wound downwards
the scenery considerably improved. Woods on our
left sheltered us from the wind, and on our right were
a number of pretty hills. At the bottom-a bottom
only reached after care and exertion, for loose stones
imperilled the safety of my horse's knees, and I had
besides to spring about applying and regulating the
brake - we found a farm with a hop-kiln in the
hollow on the left, and opposite it a convenient,
indeed attractive, field.
No other house was near. No populace. No iron
bridge. No donkeys. No barrel organ. Stretches
of corn, so ripe that though the sky had clouded over
they looked as if the sun were shining on them,
alternated very pleasantly with the green of the
hop-fields, and portions of woods climbed up between
the folds of the hills. It was a sheltered spot, with
a farm capable no doubt of supplying food, but I
feared that because it was only one o'clock my
pedantic companions, in defiance of the previous
day's experience; would decline to camp. Taking
therefore the law into my own hands I pulled up my
caravan in front of the farm gate. The Ilsa behind
me was forced to pull up too; and the Ailsa, in the
very act of lumbering round the next corner, was
arrested by my loud and masterful Brrr.
" Anything wrong ? " asked Lord Sigismund,
running up from the back.
" What is it ? " asked Menzies-Legh, coming
towards me from the front.
Strange to say they listened to reason ; and yet
not strange, for I have observed that whenever one
makes up one's mind beforehand and unshakably
other people give in. One must know what one
wants-that is the whole secret; and in a world of
flux and shilly-shally the infrequent rock is the only
person who really gets it.
Jellaby (who seemed to think he was irresistible)
volunteered to go to the farmer and get permission
to camp in the field, and I was pleased to see that he
made so doubtful an impression that the man came
back with him before granting anything, to find out
whether the party belonging to this odd emissary
were respectable. I daresay he would have decided
that we were not had he only seen the others, for
the gentlemen were in their shirt sleeves again; but
when he saw me, well and completely dressed, he had
no further hesitations. Readily he let us use the
field, recommending a certain lower portion of it on
account of the nearness of water, and then he prepared
to go back and, as he said, finish his dinner.
But we, who wanted dinner too, could not be
content with nothing more filling than a field, and
began almost with one voice to talk to him of poultry.
He said he had none.
Of eggs.
He said he had none.
Of (anxiously) butter.
He said he had none. And he scratched his head
and looked unintelligent for a space, and then repeating
that about finishing his dinner turned away.
I went with him.
"Take the caravans into the field and I will
forage," I called back, waving my hand; for the idea
of accompanying a man who was going to finish his
dinner exhilarated me into further masterfulness.
My rapid calculation was, as I kept step with bim,
he looking at me sideways, that though it was very
likely true he had not enough for ten it was equally
probable that he had plenty for one. Besides, he
might be glad to let an interesting stranger share the
finishing of his no doubt lonely meal.
In the short transit from the lane to his back door
(the front door was choked with grass and weeds) I
chatted agreeably and fluently about the butter and
eggs we desired to buy, adopting the " Come, come,
my dear fellow " tone, perhaps better described as
the man to man form of appeal.
" Foreign ? " said he, after I had thus flowed on,
pausing on his doorstep as though intending to part
from me at that point.
" Yes, and proud of it," said I, lifting my hat to
my distant Fatherland.
" Ah," said he. " No accountin' for tastes."
This was disappointing after I had thought we
were getting on. Also it was characteristically
British. I would at once have resented it if with
the opening of the door the unfinished dinner had
not, in the form of a most appetising odour, issued
forth to within reach of my nostrils. To sit in a
room with shut windows at a table and dine, without
preliminary labours, on food that did not get cold
between the plate and one's mouth, seemed to me
at that moment a lot so blessed that tears almost
came into my eyes.
" Do you never have-guests ? " I asked, faltering
but hurried, for he was about to shut the door
with me still on the wrong side of it.
He stared. Redfaced and over stout his very
personal safety demanded that he should not by
himself finish that dinner.
" Guests ? " he repeated stupidly. " No, I don't
have no guests."
" Poor fellow," said I.
" I don't know about poor fellow," said he, getting
redder.
" Yes. Poor fellow. And poor fellow inasmuch as
I suppose in this secluded spot there are none to be
had, and so you are prevented from exercising the
most privileged and noble of rites."
" Oh, you're one of them Social Democrats ? "
"Social Democrats ? " I echoed.
" Them chaps that go about talkin' to us of rights,
and wrongs too, till we get all mad and discontented
-which is pretty well all we ever do get,"" he added
with a chuckle that was at the same time scornful.
And he shut the door.
Filled with the certitude that I had been misunderstood,
and that if only he could be made aware
that he had one of the aristocracy of the first nation
in the world on his step willing to be his guest and
that such a chance would never in all human
probability occur again he would be too delighted to
welcome me, I knocked vigorously.
" Let me in. I am hungry. You do not know
who I am," I called out.
" Well," said he, opening the door a few inches
after a period during which I had continued knocking
and he, as I could hear, had moved about
the room inside, " here's a quarter of a pound of
butter for you. I ain't got no more. It's salt. I
ain't got no fresh. I send it away to the market
as soon as it's made. It'll be fourpence. Tell
your party they can pay when they settle for the
field."
And he thrust a bit of soft and oily butter lying
on a piece of paper into my hand and shut the
door.
" Man," I cried in desperation, rattling the handle,
" you do not know who I am. I am a gentleman-
an officer-a nobleman-"
He bolted the door.
When I got back I found them encamped in a
corner at the far end of the field, as close into the
shelter of a hedge as they could get, and my butter
was greeted with a shout (led by Jellaby) of laughter.
He and the fledglings at once started off on a fresh
foraging expedition, on my advice in another
direction, but all they bore back with them was the
promise, from another farmer, of chickens next
morning at six, and what is the good of chickens
next morning at six ? It was my turn to shout, and
so I did, but I seemed to have little luck with my
merriment, for the others were never merry at the
moment that I was, and I shouted alone.
Jellaby, pretending he did not know why I should,
looked surprised and said as usual, " Hullo Baron,
enjoying yourself ? "
" Of course," said I, smartly-" is not that what
I have come to England for ? "
We dined that day on what was left of our bacon
and some potatoes we had over. An attempt which
failed was made to fry the potatoes-" as a pleasant
change," said Lord Sigismund good humouredly-
but the wind was so high that the fire could not be
brought to frying pitch, so about three o'clock we
gave it up, and boiled them and ate them with butter
and the bacon, which was for some reason nobody
understood half raw.
That was a bad day. I hope never to revisit Dundale.
The field, which began dry and short-grassed
at the top of the slope, was every bit as deep and
damp by the time it got down to the corner we were
obliged to camp in because of the wind as the meadow
by the Medway had been. We had the hedge between
us (theoretically) and the wind, but the wind took
no notice of the hedge. Also we had a black-looking
brook of sluggish movement sunk deep below some
alders and brambles at our side, and infested, it
appeared, with a virulent species of fly or other
animal, for while we were wondering (at least I was)
what we were going to do to pass the hours before bed
time, and what (if any) supper there would be, and
reflecting (at least I was) on the depressing size and
greenness of the field and on the way the threatening
clouds hung lower and lower over our heads, the
fledgling Jumps appeared, struggling up from the
brook through the blackberry bushes, and crying that
she had been stung by some beast or beasts unknown,
flung herself down on the grass and immediately
began to swell.
Everybody was in consternation, and I must say
so was I, for I have never seen anything to equal the
rapidity of her swelling. Her face and hands even
as she lay there became covered with large red raised
blotches, and judging from her incoherent remarks the
same thing was happening over the rest of her. It
occurred to me that if she could not soon be stopped
from further swelling the very worst might be
anticipated, and I expressed my fears to Menzies-
Legh.
" Nonsense," said he, quite sharply;
but I overlooked it because he was obviously in his heart
thinking the same thing.
They got her into the Ilsa and put her, I was
informed, to bed; and presently, just as I was
expecting to be scattered with the other gentlemen
in all directions in search of a doctor, Mrs. Menzies-
Legh appeared in the doorway and said that Jumps
had been able to gasp out, between her wild
scratchings, that when anything stung her she always
swelled, and the only thing to do was to let her
scratch undisturbed until such time as she should
contract to her ordinary size again.
Immensely relieved, for a search for a doctor in
hedges and ditches would surely have been a thing
of little profit and much fatigue, I sat down in one
of the only three chairs that were at all comfortable
and spent the rest of the afternoon in fitful argument
with Jellaby as he came and went, and in sustained,
and not, I trust, unsuccessful efforts to establish my
friendship with Lord Sigismund on such a footing
that an invitation to meet his Serene Aunt, the
Princess of Grossburg-Niederhausen, would be the
harmonious result.
The ladies were busied devising methods for the
more rapid relief of the unhappy and still obstinately
swollen fledgling.
There was no supper except ginger-biscuits.
" You can't expect it," said Edelgard, when I
asked her (very distantly) about it, " with sickness
in the house."
" What house ? " I retorted, pardonably snappy.
I hope never to revisit Dundale.
X
LET me earnestly urge any of my hearers who may
be fired by my example to follow it, never to go to
Dundale. It is a desolate place, and a hungry place;
and a place, moreover, greatly subject to becoming
enveloped in a sort of universal grey cloud, emitting
a steady though fine drizzle and accounted for-which
made it none the less wet-by persons who knew
everything, like Jellaby, as being a sea-mist.
I am no doubt very stupid, and therefore was
unable to understand why there should be a sea-mist
when there was no sea.
" Well, we're in Sussex now you know," said
Jellaby, on my saying something of the sort to him.
" Indeed," said I politely, as though that explained
it ; but of course it did not.
Up to this point we had at least, since the first
night, been dry. Now the rain began, and caravaning
in rain is an experience that must be met with one's
entire stock of fortitude and philosophy. This stock,
however large originally, has a tendency to give out
after drops have trickled down inside one's collar for
some hours. At the other end, too, the wet ascends
higher and higher, for is not one wading about in long
and soaking grass, trying to perform one's (so to
speak) household duties ? And if, when the ascending
wet and the descending wet meet, and the whole man
is a mere and very unhappy sponge, he still can use
such words as healthy and jolly, then I say that that
man is either a philosopher indeed, worthy of and
ripe for an immediate tub, or he is a liar and a hypocrite.
I heard both those adjectives often that day,
and silently divided their users into the proper categories.
For myself I preferred to say nothing, thus
producing private flowers of Stoicism in response to
the action of the rain.
For the first time I was glad to walk, glad to
move on, glad of anything that was not helping
dripping ladies to pack up dripping breakfast things
beneath the dripping umbrella that with studious
gallantry I endeavoured to hold the while over my
and their dripping heads. However healthy and
jolly the wet might be it undoubtedly made the
company more silent than the dry, and our resumed
march was almost entirely without conversation. We
moved on in a south-westerly direction, the diseased
fledgling still in bed and still, I was credibly informed,
scratching, through pine-woods full of wet bracken
and deep gloom and drizzle, till at a place called
Frant we turned off due south in response to some
unaccountable impulse of Mrs. Menzies-Legh's, whose
unaccountable impulses were the capricious rudder
which swayed us hither and thither during the entire
tour.
She used to study maps, and walk with one under
her arm out of which she read aloud the names of the
places we were supposed to be at ; and just as we
had settled down to believe it we would come to some
flatly contradictory signpost which talked of quite
different places, places we had been told were remote
and in an altogether different direction.
" It doesn't matter," she would say, with a smile
in which I, at least, never joined, for I have my own
opinions of petticoat government-" the great thing
is to go on."
So we went on; and it was she who made us
suddenly turn off southwards after Frant, leaving a
fairly comfortable highroad for the vicissitudes of
narrow and hilly lanes.
" Lanes," said she, " are infinitely prettier."
I dare say. They are also generally hillier, and
so narrow that once a caravan is in one on it has to
go whatever happens, trusting to luck not to meet
anything else on wheels till it reaches, after many
anxieties, the haven of another highroad. This lane
ran deep between towering hedges and did not leave
off again for five miles, and none of you would believe
how long it took us to do those five miles because
none of you know-how should you?-what the
getting of caravans up hills by means of tracing is.
We had, thanks to Mrs. Menzies-Legh's desire for the
pretty (unsatisfied I am glad to say on that occasion,
because the so called sea-mist clung close around us
like a wet grey cloak), we had got into an almost
mountainous lane. We were tracing the whole time,
dragging each caravan up each hill in turn, leaving it
solitary at the top and returning with all three horses
for the next one left meanwhile at the bottom. I
never saw such an endless succession of hills. If
tracing does not teach a man patience what, I would
like to know, will ?
At first, on finding my horse removed and harnessed
on to the Ailsa, I thought I would get inside
the Elsa and stretch myself on the yellow box and
wait there quietly smoking till the horse came back
again; but I found Edelgard inside, blocking it up
and preparing to mend her stockings.
This was unpleasant, for I had hardly spoken to
her, and then only with the chilliest politeness, since
her behaviour on the evening by the Medway; yet,
determined to be master in my own (so to speak)
house, I would have carried out my intention if
Menzies-Legh's voice, which I thought had gone up
the hill, had not been heard quite close outside asking
where I was.
I warned my wife by means of a hasty enjoining
finger to keep silence.
Will it be believed that she looked at me, said
" Why should you not help? " opened the window,
and called out that I was there ?
" Come and give us a hand, Baron," said Menzies-
Legh from outside. " It's a very stiff pull-we'll
have to push behind as well, and want what help
we've got."
" Certainly," said I, all apparent ready bustle;
but I shot a very expressive brief glance at Edelgard
as I went out.
She, however, pretended to be absorbed in her
sewing.
" You Socialists," said I to Jellaby, next to whom
I found I was expected to push, " do not believe in
marriage, do you ? "
"We -don't-believe-in-tyrants," he panted, so
short of breath that I stared at him, I myself having
quite a quantity of it; besides, what an answer.
I shrugged the shoulder nearest him and continued
up in silence. At the top of the hill he was so warm
and breathless that he could not speak, and so were
the others, while I was perfectly cool and chatty.
" Why, gentlemen," I remarked banteringly, as
I stood in the midst of these panters watching them
wipe their heated brows, " you are scarcely what is
known as in training."
" But you Baron-undoubtedly are-" gasped
Menzies-Legh. " You are-absolutely unruffled."
" Oh yes," I agreed modestly, " I am in good
condition. We always are in our army. Ready at
any moment to-"
I stopped, for I had been on the verge of saying
" eat the English," when I recollected that we may
not inform the future mouthfuls of their fate.
" Ready to go in and win," finished Lord Sigismund.
" To blow up Europe," said Jellaby.
" To mobilise," said Menzies-Legh. " And very
right and proper."
" Very wrong and improper," said Jellaby. " You
know," he said, turning on his host with all the
combativeness of these men of peace (the only really
calm person is your thoroughly trained and equipped
warrior), "you know very well you agree with me that
war is the most unnecessary-"
" Come, come, my young gentleman," I interposed,
broadening my chest, " do not forget that you
are in the presence of one of its representatives-"
" Let us fetch up the next caravan," interrupted
Menzies-Legh, thrusting my horse's bridle into my
hand; and as I led it down the hill again my anxiety
to prevent its stumbling and costing me heaven knows
how much in the matter of mending its knees rendered
me unable for the moment to continue the crushing
of Jellaby.
About four o'clock in the afternoon we found
ourselves, drenched and hungry, on the outskirts of
a place called Wadhurst. It seemed wise to go no
nearer unless we were prepared to continue on through
it, for already the laurels of its villa residence dropped
their rain on us over neat railings as we passed. We
therefore, too worn out to attempt to get right
through the place to the country beyond, selected
the first possible field on the left of the brown and
puddle-strewn road, a field of yellow stubble which,
soaking as it was, was yet a degree less soaking than
long grass, and though it had nothing but a treeless
hedge to divide us from the eyes of wanderers along
the road it had an unusually conveniently placed
gate. The importance now of fields and gates!
The importance, indeed, of everything usually
unimportant-which is, in brief, the tragedy of caravaning.
This time the Menzies-Legh couple went to find
the owner and crave permission. So reduced were
we-and could reduction go further? -that to
crave, hat in hand, for permission to occupy some
wretched field for a few hours, and to crave it often
of illiterate, selfish, and grossly greedy persons like
my friend at Dundale, was not beneath any of our
prides, while to obtain it seemed the one boon worth
having.
While they were gone we waited, a melancholy
string of vehicles and people in a world made up of
mist and mud. Frau von Eckthum, who might have
cheered me, had been invisible nearly the whole day,
ministering (no doubt angelically) to the afflicted
fledgling. Edelgard and the child Jane got into the
Elsa during the pause and began to teach each other
languages. I leaned against the gate, staring before
me. Old James, a figure of dripping patience,
remained at his horse's head. And Lord Sigismund
and Jellaby, as though they had not had enough
exercise, walked up and down the road talking.
Except the sound of their receding and advancing
footsteps the stillness was broken by nothing at all.
It was a noiseless rain. It did not patter. And yet,
fine though it was, it streamed down the flanks of
the horses, the sides of the caravans, and actually
penetrated, as I later on discovered, through the green
arras lining of the Elsa, making a long black streak
from roof to floor.
I wonder what my friends at home would have
said could they have seen me then. No shelter; no
refuge ; no rest. These three negatives, I take it,
sum up fairly accurately a holiday in a caravan. You
cannot get in, for if you do either you find it full
already of your wife, or, if it is moving, Jellaby
immediately springs up from nowhere and inquires
at the window whether you have noticed how your
horse is sweating. At every camp there is nothing
but work,-and oh my friends, such work! Work
undreamed of in your ordered lives, and nothing,
nothing but it, for must you not eat ? And without
it there is no eating. And then when you have eaten,
without the least pause, the least interval for the
meditation so good after meals, there begins that
frightful and accursed form of activity, most frightful
and accursed of all known forms, the washing up.
How it came about that it was not from the first left
to the women I cannot understand ; they are fitted
by nature for such labour, and do not feel it ; but I,
being in a minority, was powerless to interfere. Nor
did I always succeed in evading it. If we camped
early, the daylight exposed my movements; and by
the time it was done bed seemed the only place to
go to. Now an intelligent man does not desire to go
to bed at eight; yet in that cold weather-we were,
they said, unusually unfortunate in the weather-
even if it was dry, what pleasure was there in sitting
out of doors ? I had had enough during the day of
out of doors: by the time evening came, out of doors
and fresh air were things abhorrent to me. And
there were only three comfortable chairs, low and
easy, in which a man might stretch himself and
smoke, and these, without so much as a preliminary
offering of them to anybody else, were sat in by the
ladies. It did seem a turning of good old customs
upside down when I saw Edelgard get into one as a
matter of course, so indifferent to what I might be
thinking that she did not even look my way. How
vividly on such occasions did I remember my easy
chair at Storchwerder and how sacred it was, and
how she never dared, if I were in the house, approach
it, nor I firmly believe ever dared, so good was her
training and so great her respect, approach it when
I was out.
Well, our proverb-descriptive of a German gentleman
about to start on his (no doubt) well-deserved
holiday travels-" He who loves his wife leaves her
at home," is as wise now as the day it was written,
and about this time I began to see that by having
made my bed in a manner that disregarded it I was
going to have to lie on it.
The Menzies-Leghs returned wreathed in smiles-
I beg you to note the reason, and all of wretchedness
that it implies-because the owner of the field's wife
had not been rude, and had together with the desired
permission sold them two pounds of sausages, the
cold potatoes left from her dinner, a jug of milk, a
piece of butter, and some firewood. Also they had
met a baker's cart and had bought loaves.
This, of course, as far as it went was satisfactory,
especially the potatoes that neither wanted peeling
nor patience while they grew soft, but I submit that
it was only a further proof of our extreme lowness in
the scale of well-cared-for humanity. Here in my
own home, with these events in what Menzies-Legh
and Jellaby would have called the blue distance,
how strange it seems that just sausages and cold
potatoes should ever have been able to move me to
exultation.
We at once got into the field, hugging the hedge,
and in the shelter of the Ilsa (which entered last) made
our fire. I was deputed (owing to the unfortunate
circumstance of my being the only person who had
brought one) to hold my umbrella over the frying pan
while Jellaby fried the sausages on one of the stoves.
It was not what I would have chosen, for while
protecting the sausages I was also, in spite of every
effort to the contrary, protecting Jellaby ; and what
an anomalous position for a gentleman of birth and
breeding and filled with the aristocratic opinions, and
perhaps (for I am a fair man) prejudices, incident to
being born and bred--well born of course I mean, not
recognising any other form of birth-what a position,
to stand there keeping the back of a British Socialist
dry!
But there is no escaping these anomalies if you
caravan; they crop up continually; and however
much you try to dam them out, the waters of awkwardly
familiar situations constantly break through
and set all your finer feelings on edge. Fain would I
have let the rain work its will on Jellaby's back,
but what about the sausages ? As they turned and
twisted in the pan, obedient to his guiding fork, I
could not find it in me to let a drop of rain mar that
melodious fizzling. So I stood there doing my best,
glad that at least I was spared being compromised
owing to the absence of my friends, while the two
other gentlemen warmed up the potatoes over the
fire preparatory to converting them into puree, and
the ladies in the caravans were employed, judging by
the fragrance, in making coffee.
In spite of the rain a small crowd had collected and
was leaning on the gate. Their faces were divided
between wonder and pity; but this was an expression
we had now got used to, for except on fine days every
face we met at once assumed it, unless the face belonged
to a little boy, when it was covered instead with what
seemed to be glee and was certainly animation, the
animation being apparently not infrequently inspired
by a train of thought which led up to, after we had
passed, a calling out and a throwing of stones.
" You'll see these turn brown soon," said Jellaby,
crouching over his sausages and pursuing them untiringly
round and round the pan with a fork.
" Yes," said I ; " and a pleasant sight too when
one is hungry."
" By Jove, yes," said he; " caravaning makes one
appreciate things, doesn't it ? "
" Yes," said I, " whenever there are any."
In silence he continued to pursue with his fork.
" They are very pink," said I, after some minutes.
" Yes," said he.
" Do you think so much-such unceasing-exercise
is good for them ? "
" Well, but I must get them brown all round."
" They are, however, still altogether pink."
" Patience, my dear Baron. You'll soon see."
I watched him in a further silence of some minutes.
" Do you, Jellaby," I then inquired,
" really understand how best to treat a sausage ? "
" Oh yes; they're bound to turn brown soon."
" But see how obstinately they continue pink.
Would it not be wise, considering the lateness, to call
my wife and desire her to cook them ? "
" What! The Baroness in this wet stubble? "
said he, with such energy that I deemed the moment
come for the striking of the blow that had been so
long impending.
" When a lady," I said with great distinctness,
" has cooked for fourteen years without interruption
-ever since, that is, she was sixteen-one may safely
at thirty leave it always in her hands."
" Monstrous," said he.
At first I thought he was in some way alluding to
her age, and to the fact that he had been deceived into
supposing her young.
" What is monstrous ? " I inquired, as he did not
add anything.
" Why should she cook for us ? Why should she
come out in the wet to cook for us ? Why should any
woman cook for fourteen years without interruption ? "
" She did it joyfully, Jellaby, for the comfort and
sustenance of her husband, as every virtuous woman
ought."
" I think," said he, " it would choke me."
" What would choke you ? "
" Food produced by the unceasing labour of my
wife. Why should she be treated as a servant when
she gets neither wages nor the privilege of giving
notice and going away ? "
" No wages ? Her wages, young gentleman, are
the knowledge that she has done her duty to her
husband."
" Thin, thin," he murmured, digging his fork into
the nearest sausage.
" And as for going away, I must say I am surprised
you should connect such a thought with any respectable lady."
Indeed, what he said was so ridiculous, and so
young, and so on the face of it unmarried that in my
displeasure I moved the umbrella for a moment far
enough to one side to allow the larger drops collected
on its metal tips to fall on to his bent and practically
collarless (he wore a flannel shirt with some loose
apology for a collar of the same material) neck.
" Hullo," he said, " you're letting the sausages
get wet."
" You talk, Jellaby," I resumed, obliged to hold
the umbrella in its original position again and forcing
myself to speak calmly, " in great ignorance. What
can you know of marriage ? Whereas I am very fully
qualified to speak, for I have had, as you may not
perhaps know, the families scheduled in the Gotha
Almanach being unlikely to come within the range of
your acquaintance, two wives."
I must of course have been mistaken, but I did
fancy I heard him say, partly concealing it under his
breath, " God help them," and naturally greatly
startled I said very stiffly, " I beg your pardon ? "
But he only mumbled unintelligibly over his pan,
so that no doubt I had done him an injustice ; and
the sausages being, as he said (not without a note of
defiance in his voice), ready, which meant that for
some reason or other they had one and all come out
of their skins (which lay still pink in limp and lifeless
groups about the pan), and were now mere masses of
minced meat, he rose up from his crouching attitude,
ladled them by means of a spoon into a dish, requested
my umbrella's continued company, and proceeded to
make the round of the caravans, holding them up at
each window in turn while the ladies helped themselves
from within.
" And us ? " I said at last, for when he had been
to the third he began to return once more to the first-
" and us ? "
" Us will get some presently," he replied-I cannot
think grammatically-holding up the already sadly
reduced dish at the Ilsa's window.
Frau von Eckthum, however, smiled and shook her
head, and very luckily the sick fledgling, so it appeared,
still turned with loathing from all nourishment. Lord
Sigismund was following us round with the potato
puree, and in return for being waited on in this manner,
a manner that can only be described as hand and
foot, Edelgard deigned to give us cups of coffee
through her window and Mrs. Menzies-Legh slices of
buttered bread through hers.
Perhaps my friends will have noted the curious
insistence and patience with which we drank coffee.
I can hear them say, " Why this continuous coffee ? "
I can hear them also inquire, "Where was the
wine, then, that beverage for gentlemen, or the
beer, that beverage for the man of muscle and
marrow ? "
The answer to that is, Nowhere. None of them
drank anything more convivial than water or that
strange liquid, seemingly so alert and full of promise,
ginger-beer, and to drink alone was not quite what
I cared for. There was Frau von Eckthum, for
instance, looking on, and she had very early in the
tour expressed surprise that anybody should ever
want to drink what she called intoxicants.
" My dear lady," I had protested-tenderly, though
-" you would not have a man drink milk ? ""
" Why not? " said she; but even when she is stupid
she does not for an instant cease to be attractive.
On the march I often could make up for abstinences
in between by going inside the inns outside which
the gritless others lunched on bananas and milk, and
privately drinking an honest mug of beer.
You, my friends, will naturally inquire, " Why
privately ? "
Well, I was in the minority, a position that tends
to take the kick, at least the open kick, out of a man,
-in fact, since my wife's desertion I occuupied the
entire minority all by myself ; then I am a considerate
man, and do not like to go against the grain (other
people's grain), remembering how much I feel it when
other people go against mine; and finally (and this
you will not understand, for I know you do not like
her), there was always Fran von Eckthum looking on.
XI
THAT night the rain changed its character, threw off
the pretence of being only a mist, and poured in loud
cracking drops on to the roof of the caravan. It made
such a noise that it actually woke me, and lighting a
match I discovered that it was three o'clock and that
why I had had an unpleasant dream-I thought I
was having a bath-was that the wet was coming
through the boarding and descending in slow and
regular splashings on my head.
This was melancholy. At three o'clock a man has
little initiative, and I was unable to think of putting
my pillow at the bottom of the bed where there was
no wet, though in the morning, when I found Edelgard had done so,
it instantly occurred to me. But
after all if I had thought of it one of my ends was
bound in any case to get wet, and though my head
would have been dry my feet (if doctors are to be
believed far more sensitive organs) would have got
the splashings. Besides, I was not altogether helpless
in the face of this new calamity : after shouting to
Edelgard to tell her I was awake and, although
presumably indoors, yet somehow in the rain-for
indeed it surprised me-and receiving no answer,
either because she did not hear owing to the terrific
noise on the roof, or because she would not hear, or
because she was asleep, I rose and fetched my sponge
bag (a new and roomy one), emptied it of its contents,
and placed my head inside it in their stead.
I submit this was resourcefulness. A sponge bag
is but a little thing, and to remember it is also but
a little thing, but it is little things such as these that
have won the decisive battles of the world and are
the finger-posts to the qualities in a man that would
win more decisive battles if only he were given a
chance. Many a great general, many a great victory,
have been lost to our Empire owing to its inability
to see the promise contained in some of its majors
and its consequent dilatoriness in properly promoting
them.
How the rain rattled. Even through the muffling
sponge bag I could hear it. The thought of Jellaby
in his watery tent on such a night, gradually, as the
hours went on, ceasing to lie and beginning to float,
would have amused me if it had not been that poor
Lord Sigismund, nolens volens, must needs float too.
From this thought I somehow got back to my
previous ones, and the longer I lay wakeful the more
pronouncedly stern did they become. I am as loyal
and loving a son of the Fatherland as it will ever in all
human probability beget, but what son after a proper
period of probation does not like the ring on the
finger, the finer raiment, the paternal embrace, and
the invitation to dinner ? In other words
(and quitting parable), what son after having served his time
among such husks as majors does not like promotion
to the fatted calves of colonels ? For some time past
I have been expecting it every day, and if it is not soon
granted it is possible that my patience may so be
changed to anger that I shall refuse to remain at my
post and shall send in my resignation ; though I must
say I should like a hit at the English first.
Once embarked on these reflections I could not
again close my eyes, and lay awake for the remaining
hours of the night with as great a din going on as ever
I heard in my life. I have described this-the effect
of heavy rain when you are in a caravan-in that
portion of the narrative dealing with the night on
Grip's Common, so need only repeat that it resembles
nothing so much as a sharp pelting with unusually
hard stones. Edelgard, if she did indeed sleep, must
be of an almost terrifying toughness, for the roof on
which this pelting was going on was but a few inches
from her head.
As the cold dawn crept in between the folds of
our window-curtains and the noise had in no way
abated, I began very seriously to wonder how I
could possibly get up and go out and eat breakfast
under such conditions. There was my mackintosh,
and I also had galoshes, but I could not appear before
Frau von Eckthum in the sponge bag, and yet that
was the only sensible covering for my head. But
what after all could galoshes avail in such a flood ?
The stubble field, I felt, could be nothing by then but
a lake; no fire could live in it; no stove but would be
swamped. Were it not better, if such was to be the
weather, to return to London, take rooms in some
water-tight boarding-house, and frequent the dryness
of museums ? Of course it would be better. Better ?
Must not anything in the world be better than that
which is the worst ?
But alas, I had been made to pay beforehand for
the Elsa and had taken the entire responsibility for
her and her horse's safe return, and even if I could
bring myself to throw away such a sum as I had
disbursed one cannot leave a caravan lying about as
though it were what our neighbours across the Vosges
call a mere bagatelle. It is not a bagatelle. On the
contrary, it is a huge and complicated mechanism
that must go with you like the shell on the poor snail's
back wherever you go. There is no escape from it,
once you have started, day or night. Where was
Panthers by now, Panthers with its kind and helpful
little lady ? Heaven alone knew, after all our zigzagging.
Find it by myself I certainly could not, for
not only had we zigzagged in obedience to the caprices
of Mrs. Menzies-Legh, but I had walked most of the
time as a man in a dream, heeding nothing particularly
except my growing desire to sit down.
I wondered grimly as six o'clock drew near, the
hour at which the rest of the company usually burst
into activity, whether there would be many exclamations
of healthy and jolly that day. There is a point,
I should say, at which a thing or a condition becomes
so excessively healthy and jolly that it ceases to be
either. I drew the curtains of my bunk together-
for a great upheaval over my head,warned me that
my wife was going to descend and dress-and feigned
slumber. Sleep seemed to me such a safe thing. You
cannot make a man rise and do what you consider
his duty if he will not wake up. The only free man,
I reflected with my eyes tightly shut, is the man
who is asleep. Pushing my reflection a little further
I saw with a slight start that real freedom and
independence are only, then, to be found in the
unconscious,-a race (or sect; call it what you will) of
persons untouched by and above the law. And one
step further and I saw with another slight start that
perfect freedom, perfect liberty, perfect deliverance
from trammels, are only to be found in a person who
is not merely unconscious but also dead.
These, of course, as I need not tell my hearers, are
metaphysics. I do not often embark on their upsetting
billows for I am, principally, a practical man. But
on this occasion they were not as fruitless as usual,
for the thought of a person dead suggested at once the
thought of a person engaged in going through the
sickness preliminary to being dead, and a sick man is
also to a certain extent free,-nobody, that is, can
make him get up and go out into the rain and hold
his umbrella over Jellaby's back while he concocts
his terrible porridge. I decided that I would slightly
exaggerate the feelings of discomfort which I
undoubtedly felt, and take a day off in the haven of my
bed. Let them see to it that the horse was led : a
man in bed cannot lead a horse. Nor would it even
be an exaggeration, for one who has been wakeful
half the night cannot be said to be in normal health.
Besides, if you come to that, who is in normal health ?
I should say no one. Certainly hardly any one. And
if you appeal to youth as an instance, what could
be younger and yet more convulsed with apparent
torment than the newly born infant ? Hardly any
one, I maintain, is well without stopping during a
single whole day. One forgets, by means of the
anodynes of work or society or other excitement;
but cut off a person's means of doing anything or
seeing any one and he will soon find out that at least
his head is aching.
When, therefore, Edelgard had reached the stage
of tidying the caravan, arranging my clothes, and
emptying the water out of the window preparatory
to my dressing, I put the curtains aside and beckoned
to her and made her understand by dint of much
shouting (for the rain still pelted on the roof) that I
was feeling very weak and could not get up.
She looked at me anxiously, and pushing up the
sponge bag-at which she stared rather stupidly-
laid her hand on my forehead. I thought her hand
seemed hot, and hoped we were not both going to be
ill at the same time. Then she felt my pulse. Then
she looked down at me with a worried expression and
said-I could not hear it, but knew the protesting
shape her mouth assumed-" But Otto-"
I just shook my head and closed my eyes. You
cannot make a man open his eyes. Shut them, and
you shut out the whole worrying, hurrying world,
and enter into a calm cave of peace from which, so
long as you keep them shut, no one can possibly pull
you. I felt she stood there awhile longer looking down
at me before putting on her cloak and preparing to
face the elements; then the door was unbolted, a gust
of wet air came in, the caravan gave a lurch, and
Edelgard had jumped into the stubble.
Only for a short time was I able to reflect on her
growing agility, and how four days back she could no
more jump into stubble or anything else than can
other German ladies of good family, and how the
costume she had bought in Berlin and which had
fitted her not only without a wrinkle but also with
difficulty, seemed gradually to be turning into a misfit,
to be widening, to be loosening, and those parts of
it which had before been smooth were changing every
day into a greater bagginess-I was unable, I say, to
think about these things because, worn out, I at last
fell asleep.
How long I slept I do not know, but I was very
roughly awakened by violent tossings and heavings,
and looking hastily through my curtains saw a wet
hedge moving past the window.
So we were on the march.
I lay back on my pillow and wondered who was
leading my horse. They might at least have brought
me some breakfast. Also the motion was extremely
disagreeable, and likely to give me a headache. But
presently, after a dizzy swoop round, a pause and much
talking showed me we had come to a gate, and I
understood that we had been getting over the stubble
and were now about to rejoin the road. Once on
that the motion was not unbearable-not nearly
so unbearable, I said to myself, as tramping in the
rain; but I could not help thinking it very strange
that none of them had thought to give me breakfast,
and in my wife the omission was more than strange,
it was positively illegal. If love did not bring her to
my bedside with hot coffee and perhaps a couple of
(lightly boiled) eggs, why did not duty ? A fasting
man does not mind which brings her so long as one of
them does.
My impulse was to ring the bell angrily, but it died
away on my recollecting that there was no bell. The
rain, I could see, had now lightened and thinned into
a drizzle, and I could hear cheerful talk going on
between some persons evidently walking just outside.
One voice seemed to be Jellaby's, but how could it
be he who was cheerful after the night he must have
had? And the other was a woman's-no doubt, I
thought bitterly, Edelgard's, who warmed herself and
invigorated by a proper morning meal, cared nothing
that her husband should be lying there within a stone's
throw like a cold neglected tomb.
Presently, instead of the hedge, the walls and gates
of gardens passed the window, and then came houses,
singly at first but soon joining on to each other in an
uninterrupted string, and raising myself on my elbow
and putting two and two together I decided that this
must be Wadhurst.
It was. To my surprise about the middle of the
village the caravan stopped, and raising myself once
more on my elbow I was forced immediately to sink
back again, for I encountered a row of eager faces
pressed against the pane with eyes rudely staring at
the contents of the caravan, which of course included
myself as soon as I came into view from between the
curtains of the berth.
This was very disagreeable. Again I instinctively
and frantically sought the bell that was not there.
How long was I to be left thus in the street of a village
with my window-curtains unclosed and the entire
population looking in ? I could not get out and close
them myself, for I am staunch to the night attire,
abruptly terminating, that is still thank heaven
characteristic during the hours of darkness of every
honest German gentleman: in other words I do not
dress myself, as the English do, in a coat and trousers
in order to go to bed. But on this occasion I wished
that I did, for then I could have leaped out of my
berth and drawn the curtains in an instant myself,
and the German attire allows no margin for the leaping
out of berths. As it was, all I could do was to lie
there holding the berth-curtains carefully together
until such time as it should please my dear wife to
honour me with a visit.
This she did after, I should say, at least half an
hour had passed, with the completely composed face
of one who has no reproaches to make herself, and a
cup of weak tea in one hand and a small slice of dry
toast on a plate in the other, though she knows I
never touch tea and that it is absurd to offer a large-
framed fine man one piece of toast with no butter on
it for his breakfast.
" What are we stopping for ? " I at once asked on
her appearing.
" For breakfast," said she.
"What?"
" We are having it in the inn to-day because of
the wet. It is so nice, Otto. Table-napkins and
everything. And flowers in the middle. And nothing
to wash up afterwards. What a pity you can't be
there. Are you better ? "
" Better ? " I repeated, with a note of justified
wrath in my voice, for the thought of the others all
enjoying themselves, sitting at a good meal on proper
chairs in a room out of the reach of fresh air, naturally
upset me. Why had they not told me ? Why, in
the name of all that was dutiful, had she not told me ?
" I thought you were asleep," said she, when I
inquired what grounds she had for the omission.
" So I was, but that-"
" And I know you don't like being disturbed when
you are," said she, lamely I considered, for naturally
it depends what one is disturbed for-of course I
would have got up if I had known.
" I will not drink such stuff," I said, pushing the
cup away. " Why should I live on tepid water and
butterless toast ? "
" But-didn't you say you were ill ? " she asked,
pretending to be surprised. " I thought when one is
ill-"
" Kindly draw those curtains," I said, for the
crowd was straining every nerve to see and hear,
" and remove this stuff. You had better," I added
when the faces had been shut out, " return to your
own breakfast. Do not trouble about me. Leave me
here to be ill or not. It does not matter. You are
my wife, and bound by law to love me, but I will
make no demands on you. Leave me here alone, and
return to your breakfast."
" But Otto, I couldn't stay in here with you before.
The poor horse would never-"
" I know, I know. Put the horse before your
husband. Put anything and anybody before your
husband. Leave him here alone. Do not trouble.
Go back to your own no doubt excellent breakfast."
" But Otto, why are you so cross ? "
" Cross ? When a man is ill and neglected, if he
dare say a word he is cross. Take this stuff away.
Go back to your breakfast. I, at least, am considerate,
and do not desire your omelettes and other luxuries
to become cold."
" It isn't omelettes," said Edelgard. " Why are
you so unreasonable ? Won't you really drink this ? "
And again she held out the cup of straw-coloured tea.
Then I turned my face to the wall, determined that
nothing she could say or do should make me lose my
temper. " Leave me," was all I said, with a backward
wave of the hand.
She lingered a moment as she had done in the
morning, then went out. Somebody outside took the
cup from her and helped her down the ladder, and a
conviction that it was Jellaby caused such a wave of
just anger to pass over me that, being now invisible
to the crowd, I leaped out of my berth and began
quickly and wrathfully to dress. Besides, as she
opened the door a most attractive odour of I do not
know what, but undoubtedly something to do with
breakfast in the inn, had penetrated into my sick
chamber.
"'Ere 'e is," said one of the many children in the
crowd when I emerged dressed from the caravan and
prepared to descend the steps, " 'ere's 'im out of
the bed."
I frowned.
" Don't 'e get up late," said another.
I frowned again.
" Don't 'e look different now," said a third.
I deepened my frown.
" Takes it easy 'e do, don't 'e," said a fourth, " in
spite of pretenden' to be a poor gipsy."
I got down the steps and elbowed my way sternly
through them to the door of the inn. There I paused
an instant on the threshold and faced them, frowning
at them as individually as I could.
" I have been ill," I said briefly.
But in England they have neither reverence nor
respect for an officer. In my own country if any one
dared to speak to me or of me in that manner in the
street I would immediately draw my sword and punish
him, for he would in my person have insulted the
Emperor's Majesty, whose uniform I wore; and it
would be useless for him to complain, for no
magistrate would listen to him. But in England if anybody
wants to make a target of you a target you become
for so long as his stock of wit (heaven save the mark)
lasts. Of course the crowd in Wadhurst must have
known. However much my mackintosh disguised me
it was evident that I was an officer, for there is no
mistaking the military bearing; but for their own
purposes they pretended they did not, and when
therefore turning to them with severe dignity I said,
" I have been ill," what do you think they said ?
They said, " Yah."
For a moment I supposed, with some surprise I
confess, that they were acquainted with the German
tongue, but a glance at their faces showed me that
the expression must be English and rude. I turned
abruptly and left these boors : it is not part of my
business to teach a foreign nation manners.
My frowns, however, were smoothed when I entered
the comfortable breakfast-room and was greeted with
a pleasant chorus of welcome and inquiries.
Frau von Eckthum made room for me beside her,
and herself ministered to my wants. Mrs. Menzies-
Legh laughed and praised me for my sensibleness in
getting up instead of giving way. The breakfast was
abundant and excellent. And I discovered that it
was the ever kind and thoughtful Lord Sigismund
who had helped Edelgard out of the caravan, Jellaby
being harmlessly occupied writing picture postcards
to (I suppose) his constituents.
By the time I had had my third cup of coffee-
so beneficial is the effect of that blessed bean-I was
able silently to forgive Edelgard and be ready to
overlook all her conduct since the camp by the Medway
and start fresh again; and when towards eleven o'clock
we resumed the march, a united and harmonious
band (for the child Jumps was also that day restored
to health and her friends) we found the rain gone
and the roads being dried up with all the efficiency
and celerity of an unclouded August sun.
That was a pleasant march. The best we had had.
It may have been the weather, which was also the
best we had had, or it may have been the country
which was undeniably pretty in its homely unassuming
way-nothing of course to be compared with what
we would have gazed at from the topmost peak of
the Rigi or from a boat on the bosom of an Italian
lake, but very nice in its way-or it may have been
because Frau von Eckthum walked with me, or because
Lord Sigismund told me that next day being
Sunday we were going to rest in the camp we got to
that night till Monday and dine on Sunday at the
nearest inn, or perhaps it was all this mingled together
that made me feel so pleasant.
Take away annoyances and worry, and I am as
good-natured a man as you will find. More, I can
enjoy anything, and am ready with a jest about
almost anything. It is the knowledge that I am
really so good-humoured that principally upsets me
when Edelgard or other circumstances force me into
a condition of vexation unnatural to me. I do not
wish to be vexed. I do not wish ever to be disagreeable.
And it is, I think, downright wrong of
people to force a human being who does not wish it
to be so. That is one of the reasons why I enjoyed
the company of Frau von Eckthum. She brought out
what was best in me, what I may be pardoned for
calling the perfume of my better self, because though
it contains the suggestion that my better self is a
flower-like object, it also implies that she was the
warming and vivifying and scent-extracting sun.
There is a dew-pond at the top of one of the hills
we walked up that day (at least Mrs. Menzies-Legh
said it was a dew-pond, and that the water in it was
not water at all but dew, though naturally I did not
believe her-what sensible man would ?) and by its
side in the shade of an oak tree Frau von Eckthum
and I sat while the three horses went down to fetch
up the third caravan, nominally taking care of those
already up but really resting in that pretty nook
without bothering about them, for of all things in the world
a horseless caravan is surely most likely to keep quiet.
So we rested, and I amused her. I really do not know
about what in particular, but I know I succeeded, for
her ohs became quite animated, and were placed with
such dexterous intelligence that each one contained
volumes.
She was interested in everything, but especially
so in what I said about Jellaby and his doctrines, of
which I made great fun. She listened with the most
earnest attention to my exposure of the fallacies with
which he is riddled, and became at last so evidently
convinced that I almost wished the young gentleman
had been there too to hear me.
Altogether an agreeable, invigorating day; and
when about three o'clock we found a good camping
ground in a wide field sheltered to the north by a
copse and rising ground, and dropping away in front
of us to a most creditable and extensive view, for the
second time since I left Panthers I was able to suspect
that caravaning might not be entirely without its
commendable points.
XII
WE supped that night beneath the stars with the field
dropping downwards from our feet into the misty
purple of the Sussex Weald. What we had for supper
was chicken and rice and onions, and very excellent
it was. The wind had gone, and it was cold. It was
like a night in North Germany, where the wind sighs
all day long and at sunset it suddenly grows coldly
and clearly calm.
These are quotations from a conversation I overheard
between Frau von Eckthum (oddly loquacious
that night) and Jellaby, who both sat near where
I was eating my supper, supposed to be eating theirs
but really letting it spoil while they looked down at
the Sussex Weald (I wish I knew what a Weald is:
Kent had one too) and she described the extremely
flat and notoriously dull country round Storchwerder.
Indeed I would not have recognised it from her
description, and yet I know it every bit as well as she
can. Blue air, blue sky, blue water, and the flash of
white wings-that was how she described it, and poor
Jellaby was completely taken in and murmured
" Beautiful, beautiful " in his foolish slow voice, and
forgot to eat his chicken and rice while it was hot, and
little guessed that she had laughed at him with me a
few hours before.
I listened, amused but tolerant. We must not keep
a pretty lady too exactly to the truth. The first part
of this chapter is a quotation from what I heard her
say (excepting one sentence), but my hearers must
take my word for it that it did not sound anything
like as silly as one might suppose. Everything
depends on the utterer. Frau von Eckthum's quasi-
poetical way of describing the conduct of our climate
had an odd attractiveness about it that I did not find,
for instance, in my dear wife's utterances when she
too, which she at this time began to do with increasing
frequency, indulged in the quasi-poetic. Quasi-
poetic I and other plain men take to be the violent
tearing of such a word as rolling from its natural
place and applying it to the plains and fields round
Storchwerder. A ship rolls, but fields, I am glad to
say, do not. You may also with perfect propriety
talk about a rolling-pin in connection with the kitchen,
or of a rolling stone in connection with moss. Of
course I know that we all on suitable occasions make
use of exclamations of an appreciative nature, such
as colossal and grossartig, but that is brief and business-
like, it is what is expected of us, and it is a duty
quickly performed and almost perfunctory, with one
eye on the waiter and the restaurant behind; but
slow raptures, prolonged ones, raptures beaten out
thin, are not in my way and had not till then been
in Edelgard's way either. The English are flimsier
than we are, thinner blooded, more feminine, more
finicking. There are no restaurants or Bierhalle
wherever there is a good view to drown their admiration in
wholesome floods of beer, and not being provided with
this natural stopper it fizzles on to interminableness.
Why, Jellaby I could see not only let his supper get
stone cold but forgot to eat it at all in his endeavour
to outdo Frau von Eckthum's style in his replies;
and then Edelgard must needs join in too, and say
(I heard her) that life in Storchwerder was a dusty,
narrow life, where you could not see the liebe Gott
because of other people's chimney-pots.
Greatly shocked (for I am a religious man) I saved
her from further excesses by a loud call for more
supper, and she got up mechanically to attend to my
wants.
Jellaby however, whose idea seemed to be that a
woman is never to do anything (I wonder who is to
do anything, then ?) forestalled her with the sudden
nimbleness he displayed on such occasions,
so surprising in combination with his clothes and general
slackness, and procured me a fresh helping.
I thanked him politely, but could not repress some
irony in my bow as I apologised for disturbing him.
" Shall I hold your plate while you eat ? " he said.
" Why, Jellaby ? " I asked, mildly astonished.
" Wouldn't it be even more comfortable if I did ? "
he asked; and then I perceived that he was irritated,
no doubt because I had got most of the cushions, and
he, Quixotic as he is, had given up his to my wife, on
whom it was entirely thrown away for she has always
assured me she actually prefers hard seats.
Well, of course there were few things in the world
quite so unimportant as Jellaby's irritation, so I just
looked pleasant and ate the food he had brought me;
but I did not get another word that evening with
Frau von Eckthum. She sat immovable on the edge
of the slope with my wife and Jellaby, talking in tones
that became more and more subdued as dusk deepened
into night and stars grew hard and shiny.
They all seemed subdued. They even washed up
in whispers. And afterwards the very nondescripts
lay stretched out quite quietly by the glowing embers
of Lord Sigismund's splendid fire listening to Menzies-
Legh's and Lord Sidge's talk, in which I did not join
for it was on the subject they were so fond of, the
amelioration of the condition of those dull and undeserving persons the poor.
I put my plate where somebody would see it and
wash it, and retired to the shelter of a hedge and the
comfort of a cigar. The three figures on the edge
of the hill became gradually almost mute. Not a
leaf in my hedge stirred. It was so still that people
talking at the distant farm where we had procured
our chickens could almost be understood, and a dog
barking somewhere far away down in the Weald
seemed quite threateningly near. It was really
extraordinarily still; and the stillest thing of all was that
strange example of the Englishwoman grafted on
what was originally such excellent German stock, Mrs.
Menzies-Legh, sitting a yard or two away from me,
her hands clasped round her knees, her face turned
up as though she were studying astronomy.
I do not suppose she moved for half an hour. Her
profile seemed to shine white in the dusk with lines
that reminded me somehow of a cameo there is in a
red velvet case lying on the table in our comfortable
drawing-room at Storchwerder, and the remembrance
brought a slight twinge of home-sickness with it. I
shook this off, and fell to watching her, and for the
amusement of an idle hour lazily reconstructed from
the remnants before me what her appearance must
have been ten years before in her prime, when there
were at least undulations, at least suggestions that
here was a woman and not a kind of elongated
boy.
The line of her face is certainly quite passable;
and that night in the half darkness it was quite as
passable as any I have seen on a statue,-objects in
which I have never been able to take much interest.
It is probable she used to be beautiful. Used to be
beautiful ? What is the value of that ? Just a snap
of the fingers, and nothing more. If women would
but realise that once past their first youth their only
chance of pleasing is to be gentle and rare of speech,
tactful, deft-in one word apologetic, they would be
more likely to make a good impression on reasonable
men such as myself. I did not wish to quarrel with
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, and yet her tongue and the way
she used it put my back up (as the British say) to a
height it never attains in the placid pools of feminine
intercourse in Storchwerder.
To see her sit so silent and so motionless was
unusual. Was she regretting, perhaps, her lost youth ?
Was she feeling bitter at her inability to attract me,
a man within two yards of her, sufficiently for me to
take the trouble to engage her in conversation ? No
doubt. Well-poor thing. I am sorry for women, but
there is nothing to be done since Nature has decreed
they shall grow old.
I got up and shook out the folds of my mackintosh
-a most useful garment in those damp placees-and
threw away the end of my cigar. " I am now going
to retire for the night," I explained, as she turned her
head at my rustling, " and if you take my advice you
will not sit here till you get rheumatism."
She looked at me as though she did not hear. In
that light her appearance was certainly quite passable :
quite as passable as that of any of the statues they
make so much fuss about; and then of course with
proper eyes instead of blank spaces, and eyes garnished
with that speciality of hers, the ridiculously long eyelashes.
But I knew what she was like in broad day,
I knew how thin she was, and I was not to be imposed
upon by tricks of light ; so I said in a matter of fact
manner, seizing the opportunity for gentle malice in
order to avenge myself a little for her repeated and
unjustified attacks on me, " You will not be wise to
sit there longer. It is damp, and you and I are hardly
as young as we were, you know."
Any normal woman, gentle as this was, would have
shrivelled. Instead she merely agreed in an absent
way that it was dewy, and turned up her face to the
stars again.
" Looking for the Great Bear, eh ? " I remarked,
following her gaze as I buttoned my wrap.
She continued to gaze, motionless. " No, but-
don't you see ? At Christ Whose glory fills the skies,"
she said,-both profanely and senselessly, her face in
that light exactly like the sort of thing one sees in
the windows of churches, and her voice as though she
were half asleep.
So I hied me (poetry being the fashion) to my bed,
and lay awake in it for some time being sorry for
Menzies-Legh, for really no man can possibly like
having a creepy wife.
But (luckily) autres temps autres moeurs, as our
unbalanced but sometimes felicitous neighbours across
the Vosges say, and next morning the poetry of the
party was, thank heaven, clogged by porridge.
It always was at breakfast. They were strangely
hilarious then, but never poetic. Poetry developed
later in the day as the sun and their spirits sank
together, and flourished at its full growth when there
were stars or a moon. That morning, our first Sunday,
a fresh breeze blew up from the Weald below and a
cloudless sun dazzled us as it fell on the white cloth
of the table set out in the middle of the field by
somebody-I expect it was Mrs. Menzies-Legh-who
wanted to make the most of the sun, and we had to
hold on our hats with one hand and shade our eyes
with the other while we ate.
Uncomfortable ? Of course it was uncomfortable.
Let no one who loves to be comfortable ever caravan.
Neither let any one who loves order and decency do
so. They may take it from me that there is never any
order, and even less frequently is there any decency.
I can give you an example from that Sunday morning.
I was sitting at the table with the ladies, on a seat
(as usual) too low for me, and that (also as usual)
slanted on the uneven ground, with my feet slightly
too cold in the damp grass and my head slightly too
hot in the bright sun, and the general feeling of subtle
discomfort and ruffledness that is one of the principal
characteristics of this form of pleasure-taking, when
I saw (and so did the ladies) Jellaby emerge from his
tent-in his shirt sleeves if you please-and fastening
up a mirror on the roof of his canvas lair proceed
then and there in the middle of the field to lather his
face and then to shave it.
Edelgard, of course, true to her early training at
once cast down her eyes and was careful to keep them
averted during the remainder of the meal, but nobody
else seemed to mind ; indeed, Mrs. Menzies-Legh got
out her camera and focussing him with deliberate care
snap-shotted him.
Were these people getting blunted as the days
passed to the refinements and necessary precautions
of social intercourse ? I had been stirred to much
silent indignation by the habit of the gentlemen of
walking in their shirt-sleeves, and had not yet got
used to that, but to see Jellaby dressing in an open
field was a little more than I could endure in silence.
For if, I asked myself rapidly, Jellaby dresses (shaving
being a part of dressing) out of doors in the morning,
what is to prevent his doing the opposite in the
evening ? Where is the line ? Where is the logical
limit ? We had now been three days out, and we had
already got to this. Where, I thought, should we
have got to in another six ? Where should we be
by, say, the following Sunday ?
I cannot think a promiscuous domesticity desirable,
and am one of those who strongly disapprove of that
worst example of it, the mixed bathing or Familienbad
which blots with practically unclothed Jews of either
sex our otherwise decent coasts. Never have I allowed
Edelgard to indulge in it, nor have I done so myself.
It is a deplorable spectacle. We used to sit and
watch it for hours, in a condition of ever-increasing
horror and disgust, it was quite difficult to find seats
sometimes, so many of our friends were there being
disgusted too.
But these denizens of the deep at the points where
the deep was a Familienbad were, as I have said,
chiefly Jews and their Jewesses, and what can you
expect ? Jellaby however, in spite of his other
infirmities, was not yet a Jew; he was everything
else I think, but that crowning infamy had up to then
been denied him.
But not to be one and yet to behave with the
laxness of one within view of the rest of the party
was very inexcusable. " Are there no hedges to
this field ? " I cried in indignant sarcasm, looking
pointedly at each of its four hedges in turn and
raising my voice so that he could hear.
" Oh Baron dear, it's Sunday," said Mrs. Menzies-
Legh, no longer a rather nice-looking if irreverent
cameo in a velvet case, but full of morning militancy.
" Don't be cross till to-morrow. Save it up, or what
will you do on Monday? "
" Be, I trust, just as capable of distinguishing
between the permitted and the non-permitted as I am
to-day," was my ready retort.
" Oh, oh," said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, shaking her
head and smiling as though she were talking to a child
or a feeble-minded; and turning her camera on to me
she took my photograph.
" Pray why," I inquired with justifiable heat,
" should I be photographed without my consent ? "
" Because," she said, " you look so deliciously
cross. I want to have you in my scrap-book like that.
You looked then exactly like a baby I know."
" Which baby ? " I asked, frowning and at a loss
how to meet this kind of thing conversationally. And
there was Edelgard, all ears ; and if a wife sees her
husband being treated disrespectfully by other women
is it not very likely that she soon will begin to treat
him so herself ? " Which baby ? " I asked; but
knew myself inadequate.
" Oh a perfectly respectable baby," said Mrs.
Menzies-Legh carelessly, putting her camera down
and going on with her breakfast, " but irritable and
exacting about things like bottles."
" But I do not see what I have to do with bottles,"
I said nettled.
" Oh no-you haven't. Only it looks at its nurse
just like you did then if they're late, or not full
enough."
" But I did not look at its nurse," I said angrily,
becoming still more so as they all (including my wife)
laughed.
I rose abruptly. " I will go and smoke," I said.
Of course I saw what she meant about the nurse
the moment I had spoken, but it is inexcusable to
laugh at a man because he does not immediately
follow the sense (or rather the senselessness) of a
childishly skipping conversation. I am as ready as
any one to laugh at really amusing phrases or incidents,
but being neither a phrase nor an incident myself I
do not see why I should be laughed at. Surely it is
unworthy of grown men and women to laugh at each
other in the way silly children do ? It is ruin to
the graces of social intercourse, to the courtliness
that should uninterruptedly distinguish the well-born.
But there was a childish spirit pervading the whole
party (with the exception of myself) that seemed to
increase as the days went by, a spirit of unreasoning
glee and mischievousness which I believe is
characteristic of very young and very healthy children. Even
Edelgard was daily becoming more calf-like as we
say, daily descending nearer to the level occupied at
first only by the two nondescripts, that level at which
you begin to play idiotic and heating games like the
one the English call Blind Man's Buff (an obviously
foolish name, for what is buff ?) and which we so much
more sensibly call Blind Cow. Therefore I, having no
intention at my age and in my position of joining in
puerilities or even of seeming to countenance them
by my presence, said abruptly " I will smoke "-and
strode away to do it.
One of the ladies called after me to inquire if I
were not going to church with them, but I pretended
not to hear and strode on towards the shelter of the
hedge, giving Jellaby as I passed him such a look as
would have caused any one not overgrown with the
leather substitute for skin peculiar to persons who set
order, morals, and religion at defiance, to creep
confounded into his tent and stay there till his face was
ready and his collar on. He, however, called out
with the geniality born of brazenness that it was a
jolly morning; of which, of course, I took no notice.
In the dry ditch beneath the hedge on the east side
of the field sat Lord Sigismund beside his batterie
de cuisine watching over, with unaccountable and
certainly misplaced kindness, the porridge and the
coffee that were presently to be Jellaby's. While he
watched he smoked his pipe, stroked his dog, and
hummed snatches of what I supposed were psalms
with the pleasant humming of the good, the happy,
and the well-born.
Near him lay Menzies-Legh, his dark and sinister
face bent over a book. He nodded briefly in response
to my lifted hat and morning salutation, while Lord
Sigismund, full as ever of the graciousness of noble
birth, asked me if I had had a good night.
" A good night, and an excellent breakfast thanks
to you, Lord Sidge," I replied; the touch of
playfulness contained in the shortened name lightening the
courteous correctness of my bow as I arranged myself
next to him in the ditch.
Menzies-Legh got up and went away. It was
characteristic of him that he seemed always to be
doing that. I hardly ever joined him but he was
reminded by my approach of something he ought to
be doing and went away to do it. I mentioned this
to Edelgard during the calm that divided one
difference of opinion from another, and she said he never
did that when she joined him.
" Dear wife," I explained, " you have less power to
remind him of unperformed duties than I possess."
" I suppose I have," said Edelgard.
" And it is very natural that it should be so.
Power, of whatever sort it may be, is a masculine
attribute. I do not wish to see my little wife with
any."
" Neither do I," said she.
" Ah-there speaks my own good little wife."
" I mean, not if it is that sort."
" What sort, dear wife ? "
" The sort that reminds people whenever I come
that it is time they went."
She looked at me with the odd look that I observed
for the first time during our English holiday. Often
have I seen it since, but I cannot recollect having seen
it before. I, noticing that somehow we did not
understand each other, patted her kindly on the shoulder,
for of course she cannot always quite follow me, though
I must say she manages very creditably as a rule.
"Well, well," I said, patting her, "we will not
quibble. It is a good little wife, is it not." And I
raised her chin by means of my forefinger, and
kissed her.
This, however, is a digression. I suppose it is
because I am unfolding my literary wings for the first
time that I digress so frequently. At least I am
aware of it, which is in itself I should say a sign of
literary instinct. My Muse has been, so to speak,
kept in bed without stopping till middle age, and is
now suddenly called upon to get up and go for a walk.
Such a muse must inevitably stagger a little at first.
I will, however, endeavour to curb these staggerings,
for I perceive that I have already written more than
can be conveniently read aloud in one evening, and
though I am willing the same friends should come on
two, I do not know that I care to see them on as many
as three. Besides, think of all the sandwiches.
(This last portion of the narrative, from " one
evening " to " sandwiches " will of course be omitted
in public.)
I will therefore not describe my conversation with
Lord Sigismund in the ditch beyond saying that it
was extremely interesting, and conducted on his side
(and I hope on mine) with the social skill of a perfect
gentleman.
It was brought to an end by the arrival of Jellaby
and his dog, which was immediately pounced on by
Lord Sigismund's dog who very properly resented his
uninvited approach, and they remained inextricably
mixed together for what seemed an eternity of yells,
the yells rending the Sabbath calm and mingling with
the distant church bells, and all proceeding from
Jellaby's dog, while Lord Sigismund's, a true copy of
his master, did that which he had to do with the silent
self-possession of, if I may so express it, a dog of
the world.
The entire company of caravaners including old
James ran up with cries and whistling to try to separate
them, and at last Jellaby, urged on I suppose to deeds
of valour by knowing the eyes of the ladies upon
him, made a mighty effort and tore them asunder,
himself getting torn along his hand as the result.
Menzies-Legh helped Lord Sigismund to drag
away the naturally infuriated bull-terrier, and Jellaby,
looking round, asked me to hold his dog while he went
and washed his hand. I thought this a fair instance
of the brutal indifference to other people's tastes that
characterises the British nation. Why did he not ask
old James, who was standing there doing nothing ?
Yet what was I to do ? There were the ladies looking
on, among them Edelgard, motionless, leaving me to
my fate, though if either of us knows anything about
dogs it is she who does. Jellaby had got the beast by
the collar, so I thought perhaps holding him by the
tail would do. It was true it was the merest stump,
but at least it was at the other end. I therefore
grasped it, though with no little trouble, for for some
unknown reason just as my hand approached it, it
began to wag.
" No, no-catch hold of the collar. He's all right,
he won't do anything to you," said Jellaby, grinning
and keeping his wounded hand well away from him
while the nondescripts ran to fetch water.
The brute was quiet for a moment, and under the
circumstances I do think Edelgard might have helped.
She knows I cannot bear dogs. If she had held his
head I would not have minded going on holding his
tail, and at home she would have made herself useful
as a matter of course. Here, however, she did nothing
of the sort, but stood tearing up a perfectly good clean
handkerchief into strips in order, forsooth, to render
that assistance to Jellaby which she denied her own
husband. I did take the dog by the collar, there being
no other course open to me, and was thankful to find
that he was too tired and too much hurt to do
anything to me. But I have never been a dog lover,
carefully excluding them from my flat in Storchwerder
and selling the one Edelgard had had as a girl and
wanted to saddle me with on her marriage. I
remember how long it took, she being then still
composed of very raw material, to make her
understand I had married her and not her Dachshund.
Will it be believed that her only answer to any
arguments was a repeated parrot-like cry of " But
he is so sweet " ? A feeble plea indeed to set against
the logic of my reasons. She shed tears, I remember,
in quantities more suited to fourteen than twenty-
four (as I pointed out to her), but later on did
acknowledge, in answer to my repeated inquiries, that the
furniture and carpets were no doubt the better for it,
though for a long time she had a tendency which I
found some difficulty in repressing to make tiresomely
plaintive allusions to the fact that the buyer
(I sold the dog by auction) had chanced to be a maker
of sausages and she had not happened to meet the
dog since in the streets. Also, until I spoke very
seriously to her about it, for months she would not
touch anything potted, after always having been
particularly fond of this type of food.
I soon found myself alone and unheeded with
Jellaby's dog, while Jellaby himself, the flattered
centre of the entire body of ladies, was having his
wound dressed. My wife washed it, Jumps held the
bucket, Mrs. Menzies-Legh bound it up, Frau von
Eckthum provided one of her own safety pins (I saw
her take it out of her blouse), and Jane lent her sash
for a sling. As for Lord Sigismund, after having seen
to his own dog's wounds (all made by Jellaby's dog)
he came back and with truly Christian goodness
offered to wash and doctor Jellaby's dog. His
attitude, indeed, during these dog-fights was only one
possible to a person of the very highest breeding.
Never a word of reproach, yet it was clear that if
Jellaby's dog had not been there there would have
been no fighting. And he exhibited a real distress
over Jellaby's wound, while Jellaby, thoroughly
thick-skinned, laughed and declared he did not feel
it; which no doubt was true, for that sort of person
does not I am convinced feel anything like the same
amount we others do.
The end of this pleasant Sabbath morning episode
was that Jellaby took his dog to the nearest village
containing a veterinary surgeon, and Menzies-Legh
was found in the ditch almost as green as the
surrounding leaves because-will it be believed?-he
could never stand the sight of blood.
My hearers will I am sure be amused at this. Of
course many Britons must be the same, for it is unlikely
that I should have chanced in those few days to
meet the solitary instance, and I could hardly repress
a hearty laugh at the spectacle of this specimen of
England's manhood in a half fainting condition
because he had seen a scratch that produced blood.
What will he and his kind do on that battle-field of,
no doubt, the near future, when the finest army in
the world will face them ? It will not be scratches
that poor Menzies-Legh will have to look at then, and
I greatly fear for his complexion.
Everybody ran in different directions in search of
brandy. Never have I seen a man so green. He was
at least ashamed of himself, and finding I was a
moment alone with him and he not in a condition to
get up and go away, I spoke an earnest word or two
about the inevitably effeminating effect on a man of
so much poetry-reading and art-admiring and dabbling
in the concerns of the poor. Not thus, I explained,
did the Spartans spend their time. Not thus did the
ancient Romans, during their greatest period, behave.
" You feel the situation of the poor, for instance,
far more than the poor feel it themselves," I said,
" and allow yourself to be worried into alleviating a
wretchedness that they are used to and do not notice.
And what, after all, is art ? And what, after all, is
poetry ? And what, if you come to that, is wretchedness ?
Do not weaken the muscles of your mind by
feeding it so constantly on the pap of either your own
sentimentality or the sentimentality of others. Pull
down these artificial screens. Be robust. Accustom
yourself to look at facts without flinching. Imitate
the conduct of the modern Japanese, who take their
children as part of their training to gaze on executions,
and on their return cause the rice for their dinner to
be served mixed with the crimson juices of the cherry,
so that they shall imagine-"
But Menzies-Legh turned yet greener, and fainted
away.
XIII
I AM accustomed punctually to discharge my obligations
in what may be called celestial directions,
holding it to be every man's duty not to put a
millstone round a weaker vessel's neck by omitting to set
a good example. Also, in the best sense of the word,
I am a religious man. Did not Bismarck say, and has
not the saying become part and parcel of the marrow
of the nation, " We Germans fear God and nothing
else in the world " ? In exactly I should say the same
way and degree as Bismarck was, am I religious. At
Storchwerder, where I am known, I go to church every
alternate Sunday and allow myself to be advised and
cautioned by the pastor, willing to admit it is his turn
to speak and recognising that he is paid to do so, but
reserving to myself the right to put him and keep him
in his proper place during the fourteen secular days
that divide these pious oases. Before our daily dinner
also I say grace, a rare thing in households where
there are no children to look on ; and if I do not, as
a few of the stricter households do, conduct family
prayers every day, it is because I do not like them.
There is, after all, a limit at which duty must retire
before a man's personal tastes. We are not solely
machines for discharging obligations. I see perfectly
clearly that it is most good and essential that one's
cook and wife should pray together, and even one's
orderly, but I do not see that they require the assistance
and countenance of the gentleman of the house
while they do it.
I am religious in the best and highest sense of the
word, a sense that soars far above family prayers, a
sense in no way to be explained, any more than other
high things are explainable. The higher you get in
the regions of thought the more dumb you become.
Also the more quiescent. Doing, as all persons of
intellect know, is a very inferior business to thinking,
and much more likely to make one hot. But these
cool excursions of the intellect are not to be talked
about to women and the lower classes. What would
happen if they too decided to prefer quiescence ?
For them creeds and churches are positive necessities,
and the plainer and more definite they are the better.
The devout poor, the devout mothers of families, how
essential they are to the freedom and comfort of the
rest. The less you have the more it is necessary that
you should be contented, and nothing does this so
thoroughly as the doctrine of resignation. It would
indeed be an unthinkable calamity if all the
uneducated and the feeble-minded, the lower classes and
the women, should lose their piety enough to want
things. Women it is true are fairly safe so long as
they have a child once a year, which is Nature's way
of keeping them quiet; but it fills me with nothing
short of horror when I hear of any discontent among
the male portion of the proletariat.
That these people should have a vote is the one
mistake that great and peculiarly typical German,
the ever-to-be-lamented Bismarck, made. To reflect
that power is in the hands of such persons, any power,
even the smallest shred of it, alarms me so seriously
that if I think of it on a Sunday morning, when perhaps
I had decided to omit going to church for once and
rest at home while my wife went, I hastily seize my
parade helmet and hurry off in a fever of anxiety to
help uphold the pillars of society.
Indeed it is of paramount necessity that we should
cling to the Church and its teaching; that we should
see that our wives cling; that we should insist on the
clinging of our servants; and these Sunday morning
reflections occurring to me as I look back through the
months to that first Sunday out of our Fatherland, I
seem to feel as I write (though it is now December and
sleeting) the summer breeze blowing over the grass on
to my cheek, to hear the small birds (I do not know
their names) twittering, and to see Frau von Eckthum
coming across the field in the sun and standing before
me with her pretty smile and telling me she is going to
church and asking whether I will go too. Of course I
went too. She really was (and is, in spite of Storchwerder)
a most attractive lady.
We went, then, together, Jellaby safely away at
the veterinary surgeon's, Edelgard following behind
with the two fledglings, who had achieved an unusually
clean appearance and had more of the budding maiden
about them than I had yet observed, and Lord
Sigismund and Mrs. Menzies-Legh remaining with
our patient, who had recovered enough to sit in a low
chair in the shade and be read aloud to. Let us hope
the book was virile. But I greatly doubt it, for his
wife's voice in the peculiar sing-song that seems to
afflict the voice of him who reads verses, zigzagged
behind us some way across the field.
After our vagrant life of the last few days it
seemed odd to be walking respectably along with no
horse to lead, presently joining other respectable
persons bent on the same errand. They seemed to
know we were the dusty caravaners who had trudged
past the afternoon before, and we were well stared at.
In the church, too, an imposing lady in the pew in
front of us sat sideways in her corner and examined us
with calm attention through her eye-glass both before
the service began and during it whenever the sitting
portions of the ritual were reached. She was, we
afterwards discovered, the lady of the manor or chief
lady in the place, and it was in one of her fields we
were camping. We heard that afternoon from the
farmer that she had privately visited our camp the
evening before with her bailiff and his dogs and
observed us, also with the aid of her eye-glass, over
the hedge as we sat absorbed round our supper,
doubtful whether we were not a circus and ought not
instantly to be moved on. I fancy the result of her
scrutiny in church was very satisfactory. She could
not fail to see that here she had to do with a gentleman
of noble birth, and the ladies of the party, in pews
concealing their short skirts but displaying their
earrings, were seen to every advantage. I caught her
eye so repeatedly that at last, quite involuntarily, and
yielding to a natural instinct, I bowed-a little, not
deeply out of considerations of time and place. She
did not return my bow, nor did she after that look
again, but attended during the rest of the service to
her somewhat neglected devotions.
My hearers will be as much surprised as I was,
though not half so tired, when I tell them that during
the greater part of the service I was expected to
remain on my knees. We Germans are not accustomed
to our knees. I had certainly never used mine
for praying purposes before; and inquiry later on
elicited the information that the singular nation
kneels every night by its beds before getting into
them, and says prayers there too.
But it was not only the kneeling that shocked me
(for if you ache and stiffen how can you properly pray ?
As Satan no doubt very well knew when he first put it
into their heads to do it)-it was the extraordinary
speed at which the service was run through. We
began at eleven, and by a quarter to twelve we were,
so to speak, ejected shriven. No flock can fatten on
such a diet. How differently are the flocks of the
Fatherland fed! There they grow fat indeed on the
ample extemporisations of their pastor, or have every
opportunity of doing so if they want to. Does he
not address them for the best part of an hour ? Which
is not a moment too long for a meal that is to last
seven days.
The English pastor, arrayed in white with two
meaningless red ribbons down his back, preached for
seven minutes, providing as I rapidly calculated
exactly one minute's edification for each day of the
week until the following Sunday. Alas for the
sheep of England ! That is to say, alas from the
mere generally humane point of view, but not
otherwise alas, for their disadvantage must always be our
gain, and a British sheep starved into socialism and
civil war is almost more valuable to us than a German
sheep which shall be fat with faith.
The pastor, evidently a militant man, preached
against the sin of bigotry, which would have been
all very well as far as it went and listened to by me
with the tolerance I am accustomed to bring to bear
on pulpit utterances if he had not in the same breath
-there was hardly time for more than one-ccalled
down heaven's wrath on all who attend the meetings
or services of forms of faith other than the Anglican.
These other forms include, as I need not point out,
the Lutheran. Really I found it difficult to suppress
a smile at the poor man's folly. I longed for Luther
(a thing I cannot remember ever to have done before)
to rise up and scatter the blinded gentleman out of
his pulpit. But hardly had I got as far as this in
my thoughts than a hurried benediction, a hasty
hymn, a rapid passing round of the English equivalent
for what we call God's box, ended the service.
Genuinely shocked at this breathlessness-and you,
my hearers, who know no other worship than that
leisurely one in Storchwerder and throughout our
beloved Prussian land (I do not allude to Roman
Catholics beyond saying, in a spirit of tolerant
humanity, Poor things), that worship which fills the
entire morning, that composed and comfortable
worship during which you sit almost the whole time
so that no fatigue of the feet or knees shall distract
your thoughts from the matter in hand, you who
join sitting in our chorales, slow and dignified settings
of ancient sentiments with ample spaces between
the verses for the thinking of appropriate thoughts
in which you are assisted by the meditative organ,
and stand, as men should who are not slaves, to
pray, you will, I am sure, be shocked too-I decided
that here no doubt was one of the keys to the manifest
decadence of the British character. Reverence and
speed can never go together. Irreverence in the
treatment of its creeds is an inevitable sign that a
nation is well on that downward plane which jerks
it at last into the jaws of (say) Germany. Well, so
be it. Though irreverence is undoubtedly an evil,
and I am the first to deplore it, I cannot deplore it as
much as I would if it were not going to be the cause
of that ultimate jerking. And what a green and
fruitful land it is ! Es wird gut schmecken, as we
men of healthy appetite say.
We walked home-an expression that used to
strike me as strangely ironical when home was only
grass and hedges-discussing these things. That is,
I discussed and Frau von Eckthum said Oh? But
the sympathy of the voice, the implied agreement
with my views, the appreciation of the way I put
them, the perfect mutual understanding expressed,
all this I cannot describe even if I would to you
prejudiced critics.
Edelgard went on ahead with the two young girls.
She and I did not at this point see much of each other,
but quite enough. Being human I got tired sometimes
of being patient, and yet it was impossible to
be anything else inside a caravan with walls so thin
that the whole camp would have to hear. Nor can
you be impatient in the middle of a field : to be so
comfortably you must be on the other side of at least
a hedge; so that on the whole it was best we should
seldom be together.
With Frau von Eckthum, on the other hand, I
never had the least desire to be anything but the
mildest of men, and we walked home as harmoniously
as usual to find when we arrived that, though we
had in no way lingered, the active pastor was there
before us.
With what haste he must have stripped off his
ribbons and by what short cuts across ditches he had
reached the camp so quickly I cannot say, but there
he was, ensconced in one of the low chairs talking to
the Menzies-Leghs as though he had known them all
his life.
This want of ceremony, this immediate familiarity
prevailing in British circles, was a thing I never got
used to. With us, first of all the pastor would not
have come at all, and secondly, once come, he would
still have been in the stage of ceremonious preface
when we arrived, and only emerged from his preliminary
apologies to enter into the series of prayers
for forgiveness which would round off his visit. Thus
there would be no time so much as to reach the ice,
far less to break it, and I am conservative enough and
aristocratic enough to like ice : it is such an excellent
preservative.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh was feeding her invalid with
biscuits and milk. " Have some ? " said she to the
pastor, holding out a cup of this attractive beverage
without the least preliminary grace of speech.
He took it, for his part, without the least
preliminary ceremony of polite refusal which would call
forth equally polite pressure on her side and end
with a tactful final yielding on his ; he took it without
even interrupting his talk to Menzies-Legh, and
stretching out his hand helped himself to a biscuit,
though nobody had offered him one.
Now what can be the possible future of a nation
deliberately discarding all the barriers of good manners
that keep the natural brute in us suppressed ? Ought
a man to be allowed to let this animal loose on
somebody else's biscuit-plate ? It seems to me the
hedge of ceremony is very necessary if you would
keep it out, and it dwells in us all alike whatever
country we may belong to. In Germany, feeling
how near the surface it really is, we are particular
and careful down to the smallest detail. Experience
having taught us that the only way to circumvent
it is to make the wire-netting, so to speak, of etiquette
very thick, we do make it thick. And how anxiously
we safeguard our honour, keeping it first of all inside
these high and thick nets of rules, and then holding
ourselves ready on the least approach to it to rise up
and shed either our own or (preferably) somebody
else's blood in its defence. And apart from other
animals, the rabbit of Socialism, with its two eldest
children Division of Property and Free Love, is kept
out most effectually by this netting. Jellabies and
their like, tolerated so openly in Britain, find it
difficult to burrow beneath the careful and far-
reaching insistence on forms and ceremonies observed
in other countries. Their horrid doctrines have little
effect on such an armour. Not that I am not modern
enough and large minded enough to be very willing
to divide my property if I may choose the person to
divide it with. All those Jewish bankers in Berlin and
Hamburg, for instance,-when I think of a division
with them I see little harm and some comfort; but
to divide with my orderly Hermann, or with the
man who hangs our breakfast rolls in a bag on the
handle of our back door every morning, is another
matter. As for Free Love, it is not to be denied that
there are various things to be said for that too, but
not in this place. Let me return. Let me return
from a subject which, though legitimate enough for
men to discuss, is yet of a somewhat slippery complexion,
to the English pastor helping himself to our
biscuits, and describe shortly how the same scene
would have unrolled itself in a field in the vicinity
of Storchwerder, supposing it possible that a party of
well-born Germans should be camping in one, that
the municipal authorities had not long ago turned
them out after punishing them with fines, and that
the pastor of the nearest church had dared to come,
hot from his pulpit, and intrude on them.
Pastor, approaching Menzies-Legh and his wife
(translated for the nonce into two aristocratic Germans)
with deferential bows from the point at which
he first caught their eyes, and hat in hand
I entreat the Herrschaften to pardon me a
thousand times for thus obtruding myself upon
their notice. I beg them not to take it amiss.
It is in reality an unexampled shamelessness
on my part, but-may I be permitted to introduce myself ? My name is Schultz.
He would here bow twice or thrice each to the
Menzies-Leghs, who after staring at him in some
natural surprise-for what excuse could the man
possibly have?-get up and greet him with solemn dignity,
both bowing, but neither offering to shake hands.
Pastor, bowing again profoundly, and still holding
his hat in his hand, repeats
My name is Schultz.
Menzies-Legh (who it must be remembered is for
the moment a noble German) would probably here
say under his breath
And mine, thank God, is not.
-but probably not quite loud enough
(being extremely correct) for the pastor to hear, and would
then mention his own name, with its title, Furst,
Graf, or Baron, explaining that the lady with him
was his wife.
More bows from the pastor, profounder if possible
than before.
Pastor: I beseech the Herrschaften to forgive my thus
appearing, and fervently hope they will not consider
me obtrusive, or in any way take it amiss.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh (now a Griffin at the least)
Will not the Herr Pastor seat himself ?
Pastor, with every appearance of being overcome
Oh a thousand thanks-the gracious lady is
too good-if I may really be permitted to sit-
an instant---after so shamelessly-
He is waved by Menzies-Legh, as he still hesitates,
with stately courtesy into the third chair, into which
he sinks, but not until he sees the Herrschaften are
in the act of sinking too.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, gracefully explaining Menzies-
Legh's greenness and silence
My husband is not very well to-day.
Pastor, with every sign of liveliest interest and
compassion
Oh, that indeed makes me sorry. Has the
Herr Graf then perhaps been over-exerting
himself ? Has he perhaps contracted a chill ?
Is he suffering from a depressed stomach ?
Menzies-Legh, with a stately wave of the hand,
naturally unwilling to reveal the real reason why he
is so green
No-no.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh : I was about to refresh him
a little with milk. May I be permitted to pour
out a droplet for the Herr Pastor ?
Pastor, again bowing profusely : The gracious one
is much too good. I could not think of permitting myself-
Mrs. Menzies-Legh : But I beg you, Herr Pastor
-will you not drink just a little ?
Pastor: The gracious one is really very amiable.
I would not, however, be the means of depriving
the Herrschaften of their-
Mrs. Menzies-Legh : But Herr Pastor, not at all.
Truly not at all. Will you not allow me to
pour you out even half a glassful ? After the
heat of your walk ? And the exertion of
conducting the church service ?
Pastor, struggling to get up from the low chair,
bow, and take the proffered glass of milk at one and
the same time
Since the gracious one is so gracious-
He takes the glass with a deep bow, having now
reached the stage when, the preliminaries demanded
by perfect courtesy being on each side fulfilled, he
is at liberty to do so, but before drinking its contents
turns bowing to Menzies-Legh.
Pastor : But may I not be permitted to offer it
to the Herr Graf ?
Menzies-Legh, with a stately wave of the hand
No-no.
Pastor, letting himself down again into the chair
with another bow and the necessary caution, the
glass being in his hand
I do not care to think what the Herrschaften's
opinion of me must be for intruding in this
manner. I can only entreat them not to take
it amiss. I am aware it is an unexampled
example of shamelessness-
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, advancing with the plate of
biscuits :
Will the Herr Pastor perhaps eat a biscuit.?
The pastor again shows every sign of being
overcome with gratitude, and is about to embark on a
speech of thanks and protest before permitting
himself to take one when Baron von Ottringel and
party appear on the scene, and we get to the point
at which they really did appear.
Now what could be more proper and graceful than
the whole of the above ? It will be observed that
there has been no time whatever for anything but
politeness, no time to embark on those seas of
discussion, sometimes foolish, often unsuitable, and
always sooner or later angry, on which an otherwise
budding acquaintanceship so frequently comes to
grief. We Germans of the upper classes do not
consider it good form to talk on any subject that is
likely to make us lose our tempers, so what can we
talk about ? There is hardly anything really safe,
except to offer each other chairs. But used as I am
to these gilt limits, elegant frames within which it is
a pleasure to behave like a picture (my friends will
have noticed and pardoned my liking for metaphor),
it will easily be imagined with what disapproval I
stood leaning on my umbrella watching the scene
before me. Frau von Eckthum had gone into her
caravan. Edelgard and the girls had disappeared.
I alone approached the party, not one of which
thought it necessary to introduce me or take other
notice of my arrival.
They were discussing with amusing absorption a
subject they alluded to as the Licensing Bill, which
was, I gathered, something heating to do with beer,
and were weaving into it all sorts of judgments and
opinions that would have inflamed a group of Germans
at once. Menzies-Legh was too much interested, I
suppose, to go on being green, anyhow his greenness
was all gone ; and the pastor sawed up and down
with his hand, in which he clasped the biscuit no one
had suggested he should take. Mrs. Menzies-Legh,
sitting on the grass (a thing no lady should ever do
when a gentleman she sees for the first time is present
-" May she the second time ? " asked Mrs. Menzies-
Legh when I laid this principle down in the course
of a later conversation, to which I very properly
replied that you cannot explain nuances but only
feel them), joined in just as though she were a man
herself-I mean, with her usual air of unchallenged
equality of intelligence, an air that would have
diverted me if it had not annoyed me too much. And
they treated her, too, as though she were an equal,
listening attentively to what she had to say, which
of course inflates a poor woman and makes it difficult
for her to arrive at a right estimate of herself.
This is how that absurd sexlessness the
Suffragette has been able to come into existence. I heard
a good deal about her the first day of the tour, but
on discovering how strongly I felt on the subject
they kept off it, not liking I suppose to have their
views knocked out of recognition by what I said. I
did not, be it understood, deign to argue on such
a topic: I just said a few things which frightened
them off it.
And indeed, who can take a female Suffragette
seriously ? Encouraged, I maintain, to begin with
by being treated too well, she is like the insolent and
pampered menial of a rich and careless master, and
the more she gets the more she demands. Storchwerder
does not possess a single example of the
species, and very few foreigners come that way to
set a bad example to our decent and contented
ladies. Once, I recollect, by some strange chance the
makings of one did get there, an Englishwoman on
some wedding journey expedition or other, a young
creature next to whom I sat at a dinner given by our
Colonel. I was contemplating her with unconcealed
pleasure, for she was quite young and most agreeably
rounded, and was turning over the collection of
amusing trifles I kept stored in my mind for purposes
of conversation with attractive ladies when, before
I had either selected one or finished my soup, she
began to talk to me in breathless German about an
Education Bill our Reichstag was tearing itself to
pieces over.
Her interest could not have been keener if she
had been a deputy herself with the existence of her
party depending on it. She had her own views about
it, all cut and dried; she explained her husband's,
which differed considerably; and she was anxious
to hear mine. So anxious was she that she even
forgot to smile when speaking to me-forgot, that is,
that she was a woman and I a man able, if inclined,
to admire her.
I remember staring at her a moment in unfeigned
astonishment, and then, leaning back in my chair,
giving myself up to uncontrollable mirth.
She watched me with surprise, which made me
laugh still more. When I could speak she inquired
whether anyone at the table had said anything
amusing, and seemed quite struck on my assuring
her that it was she herself who was amusing.
" I am ? " said she; and a faint flush enhanced
her prettiness.
" Yes-you and the Education Bill together,"
said I, again overcome with laughter. " It is indeed
an amusing mixture. It is like," I added, with
happy readiness of compliment, " a rose in an ink-
pot."
" But is that amusing ? " she asked, not in the least
grateful for the flattery, and with a quite serious face.
She had had her little lesson, however, and she
did not again talk politics. Indeed she did not
again talk at all, but turned to the gentleman on her
other side and left me nothing to look at but a sweet
little curl behind a sweet little ear.
Now if she had been properly brought up to devote
herself to the woman's function of pleasing, how
agreeably we could have discoursed together about
that curl and that ear and kindred topics, branching
off into all sorts of flowery and seductive byeways of
compliment and insinuation, such as the well-trained
young woman thoroughly enjoys and understands.
I can only trust the lesson I gave her did her good.
It certainly cured her of talking politics to me.
Listening to the English pastor heating himself
over the Licensing Bill which, with all politics, is
surely as distinctly outside the pastoral province as
it is outside the woman's, I remembered this earlier
success, and not caring to stand there unnoticed any
longer thought I would repeat it. I therefore began
to laugh, gently at first, as though tickled by my
thoughts, then more heartily.
They all stopped to look at me.
" What is the joke, Baron? " asked Menzies-Legh,
scowling up.
" Forgive me, Pastor," said I, taking off my hat
and bowing-he for his part only stared-" but we
are accustomed in my country (which, thank God, is
Germany) never to connect clergymen with politics,
the inevitable wranglings of which make them ill-
suited as a study for men whose calling is purely
that of peace. So firmly is this feeling rooted in our
natures that it is as amusing to me to see a gentleman
of your profession deeply interested in such questions
as it would be to see-to see-"
I cast about for a simile, but nothing occurred to
me at the moment (and they were all sitting waiting)
than the rose and inkpot one, so I had to take that.
And Mrs. Menzies-Legh, just as obtusely as the little
bride of years ago, asked, " But is that amusing? "
Before I could reply Menzies-Legh got up and
said he must write some letters ; the pastor got up
too and said he must hurry off to a class; and Lord
Sigismund, as I approached the vacated chair next
to him and was about to drop into it, said he felt
sure Menzies-Legh had no stamps, and he must go
and lend him some.
Looking up from the grass on which she still sat,
Mrs. Menzies-Legh patted it and said, " Come and
sit on this nice soft stuff, dear Baron. I think men
are tiresome things, don't you ? Always rushing off
somewhere. Tell me about the rose and the inkpot.
I do see, I think, that they're funny. Why
did the vicar remind you of them ? Come and sit on
the grass and tell me."
But I had no desire to sit on grass with Mrs.
Menzies-Legh as though we were a row of turtle doves,
so I merely said I did not like grass, and bowing
slightly walked away.
XIV
THE next day one of those unfortunate incidents
happened which may, of course, happen to anybody,
but really need not have happened just to me.
We left our camp at twelve, after the usual feverish
endeavour to start much earlier, the caravans as
usual nearly capsizing getting out of the field, and
breaking, also as usual, in their plungings several
hitherto unbroken articles, and with the wind and
dust in our faces and grey lowering clouds over our
heads we resumed our daily race after pleasure.
The Sunday had been fine throughout, and there
had been dew and stars at the end of it which,
together with windlessness, made us expect a fine
Monday. But it was nothing of the sort. Monday
provided the conditions I always now associate with
caravaning-a high wind, a threatening sky, clouds
of dust, and a hard white road.
The day began badly and continued badly, so that
even writing about it at this distance I drop
unconsciously into a fretful tone. Perhaps our dinner
at the inn on the Sunday had been more than
constitutions used to starvation could suddenly endure,
or perhaps some of us may have eaten beyond the
limits of discretion, remembering that another week
was to pass before the next real meal, and these,
becoming cross, had infected the rest; anyhow on
Monday troubles seemed to accumulate, beginning
with a bill from the farmer for the field and care of
the horses of a most exorbitant nature, going on to
the losing of various things in the hasty packing up,
continuing with the hurting of Menzies-Legh's foot
owing to his folly in placing it where the advancing
hoof of my horse was bound to go and with his being
in consequence unable to do his proper share of work,
and ending with the unfortunate incident I referred
to above and shall presently relate.
Menzies-Legh, indeed, was strangely irritable.
Perhaps his foot hurt him, but he ought not to
have minded that, considering, as I told him, it was
nobody's fault but his own. I was leading the horse
at the moment, and saw Menzies-Legh's foot but
never dreamed he would not remove it in time, and
you cannot, as I said to him, blame a dumb animal.
" Certainly not," agreed Menzies-Legh ; but with
a singular gloom.
And when I saw the exorbitance of the bill I felt
bound to point out to him that strict honesty did
not seem to be characteristic of his countrymen,
and to enlarge on the difference between them and
my own, and that seemed to irritate him too, though
he said nothing.
Seeing this suppressed irritation I sought to
remove it by reminding him of his wealth, and of
how the rapacity of the various farmers would at
the worst only mean for him one stove the less for
one undeserving old woman the fewer ; but even
that did not cheer him-he was and remained in a
bad temper. So that, vexed as I was myself at the
expense of the holiday that was to have been so
cheap, I could not prevent a temporary good-humour
taking possession of me, which is the invariable effect
produced on me by other people's crossness. Even
then, with his hurt foot, Menzies-Legh was such a
slave to duty that while I was in the very act of
talking the recollection of something he ought to do
made him struggle up from the low chair and rugs in
which his wife had carefully placed him, and limp
away ; and I saw no more of him for a long while
beyond an occasional glimpse of his sallow visage at
the window in front of his van, where he sat all day
in silence driving his horse.
Behold us, then, crawling along an ugly high-road
with our mouths full of dust.
The weather was alternately hot and cold, but
uninterruptedly windy, and rain threatened to
descend on us and actually did as the afternoon wore
on. My hearers must remember that in caravaning
afternoons wear on and mornings merge into them
with no such thing as a real meal throughout their
entire length. Long before this I had realised that
plums were to be my portion: plums, or bananas,
or very green apples, mitigated by a biscuit unless
biscuits chanced to be scarce (in which case the ladies
got them), at a time of day when the rest of Europe
was sitting down comfortably to its luncheon; and
I had learned to acquiesce in this as I acquiesced in
all the other privations, for I saw for myself that
it was impossible to arrange a cooked meal except
before leaving or after arriving in camp. A reasonable
man is silent before the impossible; still, plums are
poor things to march on. March on them however
I had to, and Hunger (a most unpleasant and
reverberating companion) came too, and marched with me
every day.
Well, I was often glad at this time that my poor
Marie-Luise was spared her silver wedding journey,
and that a more robust and far less deserving wife
went through it in her stead. Marie-Luise was a
most wifely wife, with no whalebone (if I may so
express it) either about her clothes or her character.
All was soft, womanly, overflowing. Touch her, and
you left a dimple. Bring pressure, even the slightest,
to bear anywhere on her mind, and it immediately
gave way.
" But do you like that sort of thing ? " asked Mrs.
Menzies-Legh, to whom, as we plodded along that
day, I was talking in this reminiscent strain for want
of a better companion.
Ahead walked Edelgard, visibly slimmer, younger,
moving quickly and easily in her short skirt and new
activity. It was this figure-hardly now at a distance
to be distinguished from the figures of the scanty
sisters-walking before me that made me think with
tenderness of Marie-Luise. Edelgard was behaving
badly, and when I told her so at night in our caravan
she did not answer. At home she used to express
immediate penitence; here she either said nothing,
or said short things that reminded me of Mrs. Menzies-
Legh, little odd sentences quite unlike her usual style
and annoyingly difficult to reply to. And the more
she behaved in this manner the more did my thoughts
go back regretfully to my gentle and yielding first
wife. Sometimes, I recollect, those twenty years
with her had seemed long; but that was because,
firstly, twenty years are long, and secondly, because
we are none of us perfect, and thirdly, because a wife,
unless she is careful, is apt to get on to one's nerves.
But how preferable is gentleness to an aggressive
activity of mind and body. How annoying to see
one's wife striding on ahead with an ease I could not
imitate and therefore in itself a slight on her husband.
A man wants a wife who sits still, and not only still
but on the same chair every day so that he knows
where to find her should he happen to want anything.
Marie-Luise was a very calm sitter ; she never moved,
except to follow the then Clothilde about. Only
her hands moved, in a tireless guiding of the needle
through those of my undergarments which had become
defective.
" But do you like that sort of thing ? " asked Mrs.
Menzies-Legh, unsympathetic as usual. Her gentle
sister would have coo'd an interested Oh ? and I
would have felt soothed and understood.
" Like what ? " I asked rather peevishly, for it
occurred to me at that moment as I watched the
figures in front-my wife and Jellaby and Frau von
Eckthum-that I had not had a word with the latter
since the walk back from church more than twenty-
four hours previously, and that her sister, on the other
hand, seemed never to leave my side.
" Calm sitters," said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, " and
dimples all over one's mind wherever you touch it.
I suppose when you used to remove the pressure they
slowly filled out again. It rather makes one think of
india rubber, doesn't it ? "
" A wife's first duty is to be submissive," said I,
conscious that I had the Prayer-book behind me and
waving side issues, such as india rubber, resolutely
aside.
" Yes, yes," agreed Mrs. Menzies-Legh, " but-"
" And I am thankful to say," I continued quickly,
for she was about to add something that I was sure
was going to be aggressive, " I am thankful to say I
was very fortunate in my Marie-Luise."
" And very fortunate in your Edelgard," said she
-they had got to Christian names the seconnd day.
" Of course," said I.
" She is a person everybody must love," said she.
" Undoubtedly," said I.
" So adaptable and quick," continued the tactless
lady.
" You are very good," said I, raising my Panama
in stiff acknowledgment of these compliments.
" And so unselfish," said she.
I bowed again, more stiffly than before.
" Look how she cuts all the bread and butter."
I bowed again.
" Look how she makes the coffee."
I bowed again.
" Look how cheerful she is."
I bowed again.
" And how clever, dear Baron."
Clever ? That indeed was a new way of looking at
poor Edelgard. I could not at this repress a smile of
amusement. " I am gratified that you should have
so good an opinion of my wife," I said; and wished
much to add, " But what is my wife to you that you
should take it upon yourself to praise her ? Is she
not solely and exclusively my property ? "
Mrs. Menzies-Legh however was absolutely rebuke-
proof, and had so many answers ready that I thought
it better not to bring them upon me in crowds. I
did though rather cleverly turn the tables upon her,
and at the same time bring the conversation to a
point which really interested me, by beginning to
praise her sister.
" It is good of you," I said, "to commend my
family. In return permit me to praise yours."
" What-John? " she asked, with a quick look and
something of a smile. (John was her ill-conditioned
husband.) " Are you-do you like him so much ? "
Now as I thought John a very poor thing indeed
this question would have seemed difficult to answer
to any one less ready.
" Like," said I, with conspicuously careful courtesy,
" is not at all the word that describes my feelings
towards your husband."
She looked at me sideways, then dropped her
eyelashes. " Dear Baron," she murmured, " how
very-"
" I was not, however," I interrupted hastily, for
I felt the ice would not bear much skating on,
" thinking of him. I was referring to your sister."
" Oh ? " said she-almost like the charming
relative herself.
" She is of course, and as you know, delightful.
But of all her delightfulness do you know what strikes
me as most delightful ? "
" No," said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, watching me with
obvious interest.
" Her conversation."
" Yes. She is a good talker," she admitted.
" What I call a perfect talker," said I enthusiastically.
" I know. Everybody says so."
" Never too much," I said, meaningly.
" Oh ? " said she. " You think so ? I rather
imagined-" She stopped.
" So extremely sympathetic," I continued.
" And so amusing," said she.
" Amusing ? " said I, slightly surprised, for I must
say I had not till then considered it possible to be
amusing on one single note, however flute-like.
" Even more-really witty. Don't you think
so?"
" Witty ? " said I, with increased surprise.
She looked at me and smiled. " You evidently
have not found her so," she said.
" No. Nor do I care for wit in ladies. Your sister
has been everything that is perfect-sympathetic, an
interested listener, one who shares one's opinions
completely, and who never says a word more than
is absolutely necessary ; but thank goodness I have
not yet observed her descend to the unwomanliness
of wit."
Mrs. Menzies-Legh looked at me as though I were
being funny. It was a way she had, and one which I
particularly disliked; for surely few things are more
offensive than to be treated as amusing when you are
not. " Evidently," said she, " you have a soothing
and restraining influence over Betti, dear Baron.
Has she, then, never made you laugh ? "
" Certainly not," said I with conviction.
" But look at Mr. Jellaby-do you see how he is
laughing ? "
"At his own dull jokes, I should say," I said,
bestowing a momentary glance on the slouching
figure in front. His face was turned towards Frau von
Eckthum, and he was certainly laughing, and to an
unbecoming extent.
" Oh, not a bit. He is laughing at Betti."
" I have heard your sister," said I emphatically,
" talking in general company-such company, that
is, as this tour affords-and she has done it invariably
seriously, and rather poetically, but never has more
than smiled herself, and never raised that doubtful
tribute, a laugh."
" That," said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, " was because
you were there, dear Baron. I tell you, you soothe
and restrain."
I bowed. " I am glad," I said, " that I exert a
good influence over the party."
" Oh very," said she, her eyelashes cast down.
" But what does Betti talk to you about, then ? The
scenery ? "
" Your tactful sister, my dear lady, does not talk
at all. Or rather what she says consists entirely of
one word, spoken indeed with so great a variety of
expression that it expands into volumes. It is that
that I admire so profoundly in her. If all ladies would
take a lesson-"
" But--what word ? " interrupted Mrs. Menzies-
Legh, who had been listening with a growing astonishment
on her face-astonishment, I suppose, that so
near a relative should be also a person of tact and
delicacy.
" Your sister simply says Oh. It sounds a small
thing, and slightly bald stated in this manner, yet all
I can say is that if every woman-"
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, however, made a little exclamation and bent down hastily.
" Dear Baron," she said, " I've got a thorn or
something in my shoe. I'll wait for our caravan to
come up, and get in and take it out. Auf Wiederschen."
And she fell behind.
This was the first really agreeable conversation I
had with Mrs. Menzies-Legh. I walked on alone
for some miles, turning it over with pleasure. It was
of course pleasant to reflect that I alone of the party
had a beneficial influence over her whom her sister
was entitled to describe as Betti ; and it was also
pleasant (though only what was to be expected) that
I should exercise a good influence over the entire
party. " Soothing " was Mrs. Menzies-Legh's word.
Well, what was happening was that these English
people were being leavened hourly and ceaselessly
with German yeast; and now that it had been put
into so many words I did see that I soothed them, for
I had observed that whenever I approached a knot of
them, however loudly it had been laughing and talking
it sank into a sudden calm-it was soothed, in fact-
and presently dispersed about its various duties.
But nothing occurred after this that day that was
pleasant. I plodded along alone. Rain came down
and mud increased, but still I plodded.
It was pretended to me that we were unusually unlucky in the
weather and that England does not as a rule have a
summer of the sort; I, however, believe that it does,
regularly every year, as a special punishment of
Providence for its being there at all, or how should the
thing be so very green ? Mud and greenness, mud
and greenness, that is all the place is made of thought
I, trudging between the wet hedges after an hour's
rain had set everything dripping.
Stolidly I followed, at my horse's side, whither the
others led. In the rain we passed through villages
which the ladies in every tone of childish enthusiasm
cried out were delightful, Edelgard joining in,
Edelgard indeed loudest, Edelgard in fact falling in love
in the silliest way with every thatched and badly
repaired cottage that happened to have a show of
flowers in its garden, and saying-I heard her with
my own ears-that she would like to live in one.
What new affectation was this, I asked myself ?
Not one of our friends who would not (very properly)
leave off visiting us if we looked as poor as thatch.
To get and to keep friends the very least that you
must have is a handsome sofa-set in a suitably sized
drawing-room. Edelgard till then had been justly
proud of hers, which cost a sum so round that it
seems written in velvet letters all over it. It is made
of the best of everything-wood, stuffing, covers, and
springs, and has a really beautiful walnut-wood table
in the middle, with its curved and shapely legs
resting on a square of carpet so good that many
a guest has exclaimed in tones of envy as her feet
sank into it, " But dearest Baroness, where and how
did you secure so truly glorious a carpet ? It must
have cost- ! " And eyes and hands uplifted
complete the sentence.
To think of Edelgard with this set and all that
it implies in the background of her consciousness
affecting a willingness to leave it, tried my patience
a good deal ; and about three o'clock, having all
collected in a baker's shop in a wet village called
Salehurst for the purpose of eating buns (no camp
being in immediate prospect), I told her in a low tone
how ill enthusiasms about things like thatch sit on a
woman who is going to be thirty next birthday.
" Dear wife," I begged, " do endeavour not to be
so calf-like. If you think these pretences pretty let
me tell you you are mistaken. The others will not
tell you so, because the others are not your husband.
Nobody is taken in, nobody believes you. Everybody
sees you are old enough to be sensible. But, not being
your husband, they are obliged to be polite and feign
to agree and sympathise, while they are really secretly
lamenting your inability to adjust your conversation
to your age."
This I said between two buns ; and would have
said more had not the eternal Jellaby thrust himself
between us. Jellaby was always coming between
man and wife, and this time he did it with a glass of
fizzy lemonade. Edelgard refused it, and Jellaby
(pert Socialist) thanked her earnestly for doing so,
saying he would be wholly unable to respect a woman
who drank fizzy lemonade.
Respect a woman ? What a tone to adopt to a
married lady whose husband is within ear-shot. And
what could Edelgard's tone have been to him before
such a one on his side came within the range of the
possible ?
"And I must warn you," I continued, with a
slightly less pronounced patience, " very seriously
against the consequences likely to accrue if you allow
a person of Jellaby's sex and standing to treat you
with familiarity. Familiarity and disrespect are one
and the same thing. They are inseparable. They are,
in fact, twins. But not ordinary twins,-rather that
undividable sort of which there have been luckily only
a few examples-"
" Dear Otto, do have another bun," said she,
pointing to these articles in a pile on the counter ;
and as I paused to choose (by means of squeezing)
the freshest, she, although aware I had not finished
speaking, slipped away.
I begin to doubt as I proceed with my narrative
whether any but relations had better be admitted
to the readings aloud after all. Friends have certain
Judas-like qualities, and might perhaps, having
listened to these sketches of Edelgard with every
appearance of sympathy, go away and misrepresent
me. Relations on the other hand are very sincere
and never pretend (which is why one prefers friends,
I sometimes think), and they have, besides, the family
feeling which prevents their discussing each other to
the unrelated. It is possible that I may restrict my
invitations solely to them; and yet it seems a pity
not to let my friends in as well. Have they not often
suffered in the same way too ? Have they not wives
themselves ? God help us all.
Continuing our march in the rain we left Salehurst
(where I earnestly but vainly suggested we should
camp in the back-yard of the inn) and went towards
Bodiam,-a ruined castle, explained Lord Sigismund
coming and walking with me, of great interest and
antiquity, rising out of a moat which at that time
of the year would be filled with white and yellow
water lilies.
He knew it well and talked a good deal about it,
its position, its preservation, and especially its lilies.
But I was much too wet to care about lilies. A
tight roof and a shut window would have interested
me far more. However, it was agreeable to converse
with him, and I soon deftly turned the conversation
while at the same time linking it, as it were, on to
the next subject, by remarking that his serene Aunt
in Germany must also be very old. He vaguely said
she was, and showed a tendency to get back to the
ruins nearer at hand, which I dodged by observing
that she must make a perfect picture in her castle
in Thuringia, the background being so harmonious,
such an appropriate setting for an old lady, for, as is
well known, the castle grounds contain the most
magnificent ruins in Europe. " And your august Aunt,
my dear Lord Sigismund," I continued, " is I am
certain not one whit less magnificent than the rest."
" Well, I don't think Aunt Lizzie actually
crumbles yet, you know Baron," said Lord Sigismund
smiling. " You should see her going about in gaiters
looking after things."
" There is nothing I would like better than to see
her," I replied with enthusiasm, for this was surely
almost an invitation.
He, however, made no direct answer but got back
to the Bodiam ruins again, and again I broke the
thread of what threatened to become a narrative
by inquiring how long it took to go by train from
London to his father the Duke's place in Cornwall.
" Oh, it's at the end of the world," said he.
" I know, I know. But my wife and I would not
like to leave England without having journeyed
thither and looked at a place so famous according
to Baedeker both for its size, its splendour, and its
associations. Of course, my dear Lord Sigismund,"
I added with the utmost courtesy, " we expect
nothing. We would be content to go as the merest
tourists. In spite of the length of the journey we
should not hesitate to put up at the inn which is no
doubt not far from the ducal gates. There should be
no trading on what has become, certainly on my side
and I hope and believe on yours, a warm friendship."
" My dear Baron," said Lord Sigismund heartily,
" I agree entirely with you. Friendship should be as
warm as one can possibly make it. Which reminds
me that I haven't asked poor Menzies-Legh how his
foot is getting on. That wasn't very warm of me,
was it? I must go and see how he is."
And he dropped behind.
At this time I was leading the procession (by some
accident of the start from the bun shop) and had
general orders to go straight ahead unless signalled
to from the rear. I went, accordingly, straight
ahead down a road running along a high ridge, the
blank space of rain and mist on either side filled in
no doubt on more propitious days by a good view.
Bodiam lay below somewhere in the flat, and we were
going there; for Mrs. Menzies-Legh, and indeed all
the others including Edelgard, wished (or pretended
to wish) to see the ruins. I must decline to believe
in the genuineness of such a wish when expressed,
as in this case, by the hungry and the wet. Ruins
are very well, no doubt, but they do come last. A
man will not look at a ruin if he is honest until every
other instinct, even the smallest, has been satisfied.
If, not having had his dinner, he yet expresses
eagerness to visit such things, then I say that that man is
a hypocrite. To enjoy looking at the roofless must
you not first have a roof yourself ? To enjoy looking
at the empty must you not first be filled ? For the
roofless and the empty to visit and admire other
roofless and other empties seems to me as barren as
for ghosts to go to tea with ghosts.
Alone I trudged through a dripping world. My
thoughts from ruins and ghosts strayed naturally-
for when you are seventy there must be a good deal
of the ghost about you-once more to Lord Sigismund's
august and aged Aunt in Thuringia, to the almost
invitation (certainly encouragement) he had given me
to go and behold her in princely gaiters, to the many
distinct advantages of having such a lady on our
visiting list, to conjecture as to the extent of the Duke
her brother's hospitality should we go down and take
up our abode very openly at the inn at his gates, to
the pleasantness (apart from every other consideration)
of staying in his castle after staying in a caravan, and
to the interest of Storchwerder when it heard of it.
The hooting of a yet invisible motor interrupted
these musings. It was hidden in the mist at first,
but immediately loomed into view, coming down the
straight road towards me at a terrific pace, coming
along with a rush and a roar, the biggest, swiftest,
and most obviously expensive example I had yet seen.
The road was wide, but sloped away considerably
on either side from the crown of it, and on the crown
of it I walked with my caravan. It was a clay road,
made slippery by the rain; did these insolent vulgarians,
I asked myself, suppose I was going to slide
down one side in order to make room for them ?
Room there was in plenty between me in the middle
and the gutter and hedge at the sides. If there was
to be sliding, why should it not be they who slid ?
The motor, with the effrontery usual to its class,
was right on the top of the road, in the very pick and
middle of it. I perceived that here was my chance.
No motor would dare dash straight on in the face of so
slow and bulky an obstacle as a caravan, and I was
sick of them-sick of their dust, their smell, and their
vulgar ostentation. Also I felt that all the other
members of our party would be on my side, for I have
related their indignant comments on the slaying of a
pretty young woman by one of these goggled demons.
Therefore I kept on immovably, swerving not an inch
from the top of the road.
The motor, seeing this and now very near, shrieked
with childish rage (it had a voice like an angry woman)
at my daring to thwart it. I remained firmly on my
course, though I was obliged to push up the horse
which actually tried of itself to make way. The
motor, still shrieking, saw nothing for it but to
abandon the heights to me, and endeavoured to
pass on the slope. As it did so it skidded violently,
and after a short interval of upheaval and activity
among its occupants subsided into calm and the
gutter.
An old gentleman with a red face struggled into
view from among many wrappers.
I waited till he had finally emerged, and then
addressed him impressively and distinctly from the
top of the road. " Road hog," I said, " let this be a
lesson to you."
I would have said more, he being unable to get
away and I holding, so to speak, the key to the
situation, if the officious Jellaby and the too kind Lord
Sigismund had not come running up from behind
breathlessly eager to render an assistance that was
obviously not required.
The old gentleman, shaking himself free from his
cloak and rising in the car, was in the act of addressing
me in his turn, for his eyes were fixed on me and his
mouth was opening and shutting in the spasms
preliminary to heated conversation (all of which I
observed calmly, leaning against my horse's shaft
and feeling myself to be in the right) when Lord
Sigismund and Jellaby arrived.
" I do hope you've not been hurt-" began Lord
Sigismund with his usual concern for those to whom
anything had happened.
The old gentleman gasped. "What? Sidge ?
It's your lot ? " he exclaimed.
" Hullo Dad ? " was Lord Sigismund's immediate
and astonished response.
It was the Duke.
Now was not that very unfortunate ?
XV
I HAVE observed on frequent occasions in a life now
long enough to have afforded many, a tendency on
the part of Providence to punish the just man because
he has been just. Not one to criticise Providence if
I can avoid it, I do feel that this is to be deplored.
It is also inexplicable. Marie-Luise died, I recollect,
the very day I had had occasion to speak sharply to
her, which almost looked, I remember thinking at the
time, like malice. I was aware, however, that it was
only Providence. My poor wife was being wielded as
the instrument which was to put me in the wrong, and
I need not say to you my friends, who knew her and
know me and were witness of the harmony of our
married life, that her death had nothing to do with my
rebukes. You all remember she was in perfect health
that day, and was snatched from my side late in
the afternoon by means of a passing Droschke. The
Droschke passed over her, and left me, with incredible
suddenness, a widower on the pavement. This might
have happened to anybody, but what was so peculiarly
unfortunate was that I had been forced, if I would do
my duty, to rebuke her during the hours immediately
preceding the occurrence. Of course I could not know
about the Droschke. I could not know about it; I
did my duty ; and by the evening I was the most
crushed of men, a prey to the cruellest regrets and
self-reproaches. Yet had I not acted aright ?
Conscience told me Yes. Alas, how little could Conscience
do for my comfort then! In time I got over it, and
regained the calm balance of mind that saw life would
stand still if we feared to speak out because people
might die. Indeed I saw this so clearly that I not
only married again within the year, but made up my
mind that no past experience should intimidate me
into not doing my duty by my second wife; I assumed,
that is, from the first my proper position in the
household as its guide and censor, and up to now I am glad
to say Providence has left Edelgard alone, and has
not used her (except in minor matters) as a weapon for
making me regret I have done right.
But here, now, was this business with the Duke.
Nothing could have been warmer and more cordial
than my feeling towards him and his family. I
admired and liked his son; I infinitely respected his
sister; and I only asked to be allowed to admire, like,
and respect himself. Such was my attitude towards
him. Towards motors it was equally irreproachable.
I detested their barbarous methods, and was as
anxious as any other decent man to give them a lesson
and help avenge their many unhappy victims. Now
came Providence, stepping in between these two meritorious
intentions, and frustrating both at one blow
by the simple expedient of combining the Duke with
the motor. It confounded me; it punished me; it
put me in the wrong; and for what? For doing
what I knew was right.
" No one, not even a pastor, can expect me to like
that sort of thing," I complained to Mrs. Menzies-
Legh, to whom I had been talking owing to her sister's
being somewhere else.
" No," said she; and looked at me reflectively as
though tempted to say more. But (no doubt
remembering my dislike of talkative women) she
refrained.
I was sitting under one of the ruined arches of
Bodiam Castle (never, my friends, go there, it is a
terribly damp place) with the lean lady, while the
others peered about as well as they could, being too
tired to do anything but sit, and weary, too, of spirit,
for I am a sensitive man and had had a troubled day.
The evening had done that which English people call
drawing in. Lord Sigismund was gone gone with
his unreasonably incensed father in the motor to some
place whose name I did not catch, and was not to be
back till the next day. The others, including myself,
had after a prolonged search found a very miserable
camp with cows in it. It was too late to object to
anything, so there we huddled round our stew-pot in
an exposed field while the wind howled and a fine
rain fell. Our party was oddly silent and cheerless
considering its ordinary spirits. No one said it was
healthy and jolly; even the children did not speak,
and sat buttoned up in mackintoshes, their hands
clasped round their knees, their faces, shining with
rain, set and serious. I think the way the Duke had
behaved after getting out of the gutter had depressed
them. It had been a disagreeable scene-I should say
he was a man of a hot and uncontrolled temper-and
my apologies had been useless. Then the supper took
an unconscionable time preparing. For some reason
the chickens would not boil (they missed Lord
Sigismund's persuasive talent) and the potatoes could
not because the stove on which they stood went out
and nobody noticed it. How bleak and autumnal
that field, bare of trees, with the rain driving over it
looked after the unsatisfactory day I cannot describe
to you. Its dreariness, combined with what had gone
before and with the bad supper, made me dislike it
more than any camp we had had. The thought that
up there on those dank cow-ridden heights we were
to spend the night, while down in Bodiam lights
twinkled and happy cottagers undressed in rooms and
went into normal beds instead of inserting themselves
sideways into what was in reality a shelf, was curiously
depressing. And when after supper our party was
washing up by the flickering lantern-light with the
rain wetting the plates as quickly as they were dried,
I could not refrain from saying as I stood looking down
at them, " So this is what is called pleasure."
Nobody had anything to say to that.
In self-defence we went down later on, dark and
wild though it was, to the ruins. Sit up there in the
wet we could not, and it was too early to go to bed.
Nor could we play at cards in each other's caravans,
because of questions of decorum. Mrs. Menzies-Legh
did indeed suggest it, but on my pointing this out to
her with a severity I was prepared to increase if she
had made the least opposition the suggestion was
dropped. Forced to stay out of doors we were forced
to move, or rheumatism would certainly have claimed
us for its own, so we set out once again along the
muddy lanes, leaving Menzies-Legh (who was sulking
terribly) to mind the camp, and trudged the two miles
down to the castle.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh walked with me. Directly she
saw I was alone, the others hurrying on ahead at a
pace I did not care to keep up with, she loitered
behind till I overtook her and walked with me.
I have made no secret of the fact that this lady
seemed to mark me during the tour for her special
prey. You, my hearers, must have noticed it by now,
for I conceal nothing. I can safely say I was not to
blame, for in no way did I encourage her. Not only
must she have been over thirty, but more than once
she had allowed herself to do that which can only be
described as poking fun at me. Besides, I do not
care for the type. I dislike the least suggestion of
wiriness in woman; and there was nothing of her
bodily (except wire) and far too much intellectually-
I mean so far as a woman can be intellectual, which
of course is not far at all. I therefore feel entirely
conscience-clear, and carefully avoiding any comments
which might give the impression of vanity on my part
merely state the bare facts that the lady was constantly
at my elbow, that my elbow was reluctant, and that no
other member of the party clung to it like that.
There she sat with me, for instance, in the ruins,
pretending she was tired too, though of course she
was not for never was any one more active, and for
want of a better listener-Frau von Eckthum had
from the first melted away among the shadows-I was
obliged to talk to her in the above strain. However, one
cannot really talk to such a woman, not really converse
with her. She soon reminded me of this fact (which
I well knew) by inquiring whether I did not think
people were very apt to call that Providence which
was in reality nothing more nor less than their own
selves,-" Or," she added (profanely), " if they're in
another mood they call it the Devil, but it is always
just themselves."
Well, I had not come through the mud to Bodiam
to be profane, so I gathered my wraps about me and
prepared to go.
" But I do see your point," she said, noticing these
preparations and realising perhaps that she had gone
too far. " Things do sometimes happen very unluckily,
and punishments are out of all proportion to
the offence. I think for instance it was perfectly
terrible for you that you should have been scolding
your wife-"
" Not scolding. Rebuking."
" It's the same thing-"
" Certainly not."
" Rebuking her, then, up to the very moment-
oh, it would have killed me."
And she shivered.
" My dear lady," said I, slightly amused, " a man
has certain duties, and he performs them. Sometimes
they are unpleasant, and he still performs them. If
he allowed himself to be killed each time there would
be a mighty dearth of husbands in the world, and what
would you all do then ?
Women however have no sense of humour, and
she was unable to catch at this straw of it offered her
for the purpose of lightening the conversation. On
the contrary, she turned her head and looking at me
gravely (pretty eyes, wasted) she said, " But how
much better never, never to do your duty."
" Really-" I protested.
" Yes. If it means being unkind."
"Unkind? Is a mother unkind who rebukes
her child ? "
" Oh, call it by its proper name-scolding,
preaching, advising, abusing-it's all unkind, wickedly
unkind."
" Abusing, my dear lady ? "
" Come now, Baron, what you said to the Duke-"
" Ah. That was an unfortunate accident. I did
what under any other circumstances would have been
my duty, and Providence-"
" Oh Baron dear, leave Providence alone. And
leave your duty alone. A tongue doing its duty is
such a terrible instrument of destruction. Why, you
can almost see all the little Loves and Charities
turning paler and paler and weaker and weaker the
longer it wags, and shrivelling up quite at last and
being snuffed out. Really I have been thankful on
my knees every time I have not said what I was going
to say when I've been annoyed."
" Indeed ? " said I, ironically.
I might have added that no great strain could have
been put upon her knees, for I could conceive no
woman less likely to be silent if she wanted to speak.
But, candidly, what did it matter ? I have always
found it quite impossible to take a woman seriously,
even when I am attracted; and heaven knows I had
no desire to sit on stones in that wet place while this
one spread out her little stock of ill-assimilated wisdom
for my (presumable) improvement.
I therefore, began to button up my cloak with an
unmistakable finality, determined to seek the others
and suggest a return to the camp.
" You forget," I said while I buttoned, " that
an outburst of annoyance has nothing whatever to
do with the calm discharge of a reasonable man's
obligations."
" What, you've been quite calm and happy when
you've been doing what you call rebuke ? " said she,
looking up at me. " Oh, Baron." And she shook
her head and smiled.
" Calm, I hope and believe, but not happy. Nor
did I expect to be. Duty has nothing to do with
one's happiness."
" No, nor with the other one's," said she quickly.
Of course I could have scattered her reasoning to
the winds if I had chosen to bring real logic to bear
on it, but it would have taken time, she being very
unconvinceable, and I really could not be bothered.
" Let Menzies-Legh convince her," thought I,
making myself ready for the walk back in the rain,
aware that I had quite enough to do convincing my
own wife.
" Try praising," said Mrs. Menzies-Legh.
Not seeing the point, I buttoned in silence.
" Praising and encouraging. You'd be astonished
at the results."
In silence, for I would not be at the trouble of
asking what it was I was to praise and encourage, I
turned up my collar and fastened the little strap across
the front. She, seeing I had no further intention of
talking, began to get ready too for the plunge out
into the rain.
" You're not angry, Baron dear ? " she asked,
leaning across and looking into as much of my face
as appeared above the collar.
This mode of addressing me was one that I had
never in any way encouraged, but no amount of
stiffening at its use discouraged it. In justice I must
remind you who have met her that her voice is not
disagreeable. You will remember it is low, and so far
removed from shrillness that it lends a spurious air to
everything she says of being more worth listening to
than it is. Edelgard described it fancifully but not
altogether badly as being full of shadows. It vibrated,
not unmusically, up and down among these shadows,
and when she asked me if I were angry it took on a
very fair semblance of sympathetic concern.
I, however, knew very well that the last thing
she really was was sympathetic-all the aptitude for
sympathy the Flitz family had produced was concentrated
in her gentle sister -so I was in no way
hoodwinked.
" My dear lady," I said, shaking out the folds of
my cloak, " I am not a child."
" Sometimes I think," said she, getting up too,
" that you are not enjoying your holiday. That it's
not what you thought it would be. That perhaps we
are not a very-not a very congenial party."
" You are very good," said I, with a stiffness that
relegated her at once to an immense and proper
distance away, for was not this a tending towards the
confidential ? And a man has to be careful.
She looked at me a moment at this, her head
a little on one side, considering me. Her want of
feminine reserve--conceive Edelgard staring at a
living gentleman with the frank attention one brings
to bear on an inanimate object-struck me afresh.
She seemed absolutely without a vestige of that
consciousness of sex, of those arriere-pensees (as our
conquered but still intelligent neighbours say) very
properly called female modesty. A well brought up
German lady soon casts down her eyes when facing a
gentleman. She at once recollects that she is a woman
and he is a man, and continues to recollect it during the
whole time they are together. I am sure in the days
when Mrs. Menzies-Legh was yet a Flitz she did so,
but England had blunted if not completely destroyed
those finer Prussian feelings, and there she stood
considering me with what I can only call a perfectly
sexless detachment. What, I wondered, was she
going to say that would annoy me at the end of it ?
But she said nothing; she just gave her head a little
shake, turned suddenly, and walked away.
Well, I was not going to walk too,-at least, not
with her. The ruins were not my property, and she
was not my guest, so I felt quite justified in letting her
go alone. Chivalry, too, has its limits, and one does
not care to waste any of one's stock of it. No man can
be more chivalrous than I if provided with a proper
object, but I do not consider that objects are proper
once they have reached an age to be able to take
care of themselves neither are they so if Nature has
encrusted them in an armour of unattractiveness;
in this latter case Nature herself may be said to be
chivalrous to them, and they can safely be left to
her protection.
I therefore followed at my leisure in Mrs. Menzies-
Legh's wake, desiring to return to the camp but not
desiring to do it with her. I thought I would search
for Frau von Eckthum and she and I would walk back
happily together; and, passing under the arch leading
into what had been the banqueting hall, I immediately
found the object of my search beneath an umbrella
which was being held over her head by Jellaby.
When I was a child and still in charge of my
mother she, doing her best by me, used to say,'" Otto,
put yourself in his place," if my judgments chanced to
be ill-considered or headlong. I did so ; it became
a habit; and in consequence I arrived at conclusions
I would probably not otherwise have arrived at. So
now, coming across my gentle friend beneath Jellaby's
umbrella, I mechanically carried out my mother's
injunction. At once I began to imagine what my
feelings would be in her place. How, I rapidly asked
myself, would I enjoy such close proximity to the
boring Socialist, to the common man of the people,
if I were a lady of exceptionally refined moral and
physical texture, the fine flower and latest blossom
of an ancient, aristocratic, Conservative, and right-
thinking family? Why, it would be torture; and
so was this that I had providentially chanced upon
torture.
" My dear friend," I cried darting forward, " what
are you doing here in the wet and darkness unprotected ?
Permit me to offer you my arm and
conduct you to your sister, who is, I believe, preparing
to return to camp. Allow me-"
And before Jellaby could frame a sentence I had
drawn her hand through my arm and was leading her
carefully away.
He, I regret to say, quite unable (owing to his thick
skin) to see when his presence was not desired, came
too, making clumsy attempts to hold his umbrella
over her and chiefly succeeding, awkward as he is, in
jerking the rain off its tips down my neck.
Well, I could not be rude to him before a lady and
roundly tell him to take himself off, but I do not think
he enjoyed his walk. To begin with I suddenly
remembered that no members of our party except
Edelgard and myself possessed umbrellas, so that I
was able to say with the mildness that is sometimes so
telling, " Jellaby, what umbrella is this ? "
" The Baroness kindly lent it to me," he replied.
" Oh indeed. Community of goods, eh? And what
is she doing herself without one, may I inquire?"
" I took her home. She said she had some sewing
to do. I think it was to mend a garment of yours."
" Very likely. Then, since it is my wife's umbrella,
and therefore mine as you will hardly deny, for if two
persons become by the marriage law one flesh they
must equally become one everything else, and therefore
also one umbrella, may I request you instead of
inserting it so persistently between my collar and my
neck to hand it over to me and allow its lawful owner
to hold it for this lady ? "
And I took it from him, and looked down at Frau
von Eckthum and laughed, for I knew she would be
amused at Jellaby's being treated as he ought to be.
She, of my own nation and class, must often have
been, I think, scandalised at the way the English
members of the party behaved to him, absolutely as
though he were one of themselves. Her fastidiousness
must often and often have been wounded by
Jellaby's appearance and manner of speech, by his
flannel collar, his untidy clothes, the wisp of hair for
ever being brushed aside from his forehead only for
ever to fall across it again, his slender, almost feminine
frame, his round face, and the ridiculous whiteness of
his skin. Really the only way to treat this person
was as a kind of joke; not to take him seriously, not
to allow oneself to be, as one so often was on the verge
of being, angry with him. So I gave the hand resting
on my arm a slight pressure expressive of mutual
understanding, and looked down at her and laughed.
The dear lady was not, however, invariably quick
of comprehension. As a rule, yes; but once or twice
she gave the last touch to her femininity by being
divinely stupid, and on this occasion, whether it was
because her little feet were wet and therefore cold, or
she was not attending to the conversation, or she had
had such a dose of Jellaby that her brain refused any
new impression, she responded neither to my look nor
to my laugh. Her eyes were fixed on the ground, and
the delicate and serious outline of her nose was all that
I was permitted to see.
Respecting her mood as a tactful man naturally
would, I did not again directly appeal to her but laid
myself out to amuse her on the way up the hill by
talking to Jellaby in a strain of mock solemnity and
endeavouring to draw him out for her entertainment.
Unfortunately he resisted my well-meant efforts, and
was more taciturn than I had yet seen him. He
hardly spoke, and she I fear was very tired, for
only once did she say oh. So that the conversation
ended by being a disquisition on Socialism held
solely by myself, listened to by Frau von Eckthum
with absorbed and silent interest, and by Jellaby
with, I am sure, the greatest rage. Anyhow I made
some very good points, and he did not venture a
single protest. Probably his fallacious theories had
never had such a thorough pulling to pieces before,
for there were two miles to go up hill and I made the
pace as slow as possible. My hearers must also bear
in mind that I exclusively employed that most deadly
weapon for withering purposes, the double-barrelled
syringe of irony and wit. Nothing can stand against
the poison pumped out of these two, and I could
afford to bid Jellaby the cheeriest good night as I
helped the tender lady up the steps of her caravan.
He, it is amusing to relate, barely answered.
But the moment he had gone Frau von Eckthum
found her tongue again, for on my telling her as she
was about to disappear through her doorway how
greatly I had enjoyed being able to be of some slight
service to her, she paused with her hand on the curtain
and looking down at me said, " What service ? "
" Rescuing you from Jellaby." said I.
" Oh," said she; and drew back the curtain and
went in.
XVI
THERE is a place about six hours' march from Bodiam
called Frogs' Hole Farm, a deserted house lying low
among hop-fields, a dank spot in a hollow with the
ground rising abruptly round it on every side, a place
of perpetual shade and astonishing solitude.
To this, led by the wayward Fate that had guided
our vague movements from the beginning, we steadily
journeyed during the whole of the next day. We
were not, of course, aware of it-one never is, as no
doubt my hearers have noticed too-but that that
was the ultimate object of every one of our painful
steps during an exceptionally long march, and that
our little arguments at cross roads and hesitations
as to which we would take were only the triflings
of Fate, contemptuously willing to let us think we
were choosing, dawned upon us at four o'clock exactly,
when we lumbered in single file along a cart track at
the edge of a hop-field and emerged one by one into
the back yard of Frogs' Hole Farm.
The house stood (and very likely still does) on
the other side of a dilapidated fence, in a square
of rank garden. A line of shabby firs with many
branches missing ran along the north side of it;
a pond, green with slime, occupied the middle of
what was once its lawn ; and the last tenant had
left in such an apparent hurry that he had not
cleared up his packing materials, and the path to
the front door was still littered with the straw and
newspapers of his departure.
The house was square with many windows, so
that in whatever corner we camped we were subject
to the glassy and empty stare of two rows of them.
Though it was only four o'clock when we arrived
the sun was already hidden behind the big trees that
crowned the hill to the west, and the place seemed
to have settled down for the night. Ghostly ? Very
ghostly, my friends ; but then even a villa of the
reddest and newest type if it is not lived in is ghostly
in the shiver of twilight ; at least, that is what I
heard Mrs. Menzies-Legh say to Edelgard, who was
standing near the broken fence surveying the forlorn
residence with obvious misgiving.
We had asked no one's permission to camp there,
not deeming it necessary when we heard from a
labourer on the turnpike road that down an obscure
lane and through a hop-field we would find all we
required. Space there was certainly of every kind
empty sheds, empty barns, empty oast-houses, and,
if we had chosen to open one of the rickety windows,
an empty house. Space there was in plenty; but
an inhabited farm with milk and butter in it would
have been more convenient. Besides, there did
undoubtedly lie-as Mrs. Menzies-Legh said-a sort
of shiver over the place, an ominously complete
silence and motionlessness of leaf and bough, and
nowhere round could I see either a roof or a chimney,
no, not so much as a thread of smoke issuing upwards
from between the hills to show me that we were not
alone.
Well, I am not one to mind much if leaves do not
move and a place is silent. A man does not regard
these matters in the way ladies do, but I must say
even I-and my friends will be able to measure
from that the uncanniness of our surroundings-
even I remembered with a certain regret that Lord
Sigismund's very savage and very watchful dog had
gone with his master and was therefore no longer
with us. Nor had we even Jellaby's, which, inferior
as it was, was yet a dog, no doubt with some amount
of practice in barking, for it was still at the veterinary
surgeon's, a gentleman by now left far behind folded
among the embosoming hills.
My hearers must be indulgent if my style from
time to time is tinged with poetic expressions such
as this about the veterinary surgeon and the hills,
for they must not forget that the party I was with
could hardly open any of its mouths without using
words plain men like myself do not as a rule even
recollect. It exuded poetry. Poetry rolled off it as
naturally and as continuously as water off a duck's
back. Mrs: Menzies-Legh was an especial offender
in this respect, but I have heard her gloomy husband,
and Jellaby too, run her very close. After a week
of it I found myself rather inclined also to talk of
things like embosoming hills, and writing now about
the caravan tour I cannot always avoid falling into
a strain so intimately, in my memory, associated
with it. They were a strange set of human beings
gathered together beneath those temporary and
inadequate roofs. I hope my hearers see them.
Our march that day had been more silent than
usual, for the party was greatly subject, as I was
gradually discovering, to ups and downs in its spirits,
and I suppose the dreary influence of Bodiam together
with the defection of Lord Sigismund lay heavily
upon them, for that day was undoubtedly a day
of downs. The weather was autumnal. It did not
rain, but sky and earth were equally leaden, and I
only saw very occasional gleams of sunshine reflected
in the puddles on which my eyes were necessarily
fixed if I would successfully avoid them. At a place
called Brede, a bleak hamlet exposed on the top
of a hill, we were to have met Lord Sigismund, but
instead there was only an emissary from him with
a letter for Mrs. Menzies-Legh, which she read in
silence, handed to her husband in silence, waited
while he read it in silence, and then without any
comment gave the signal to resume the march. How
differently Germans would have behaved I need not
tell you, for news is a thing no German will omit to
share with his neighbours, discussing it thoroughly,
lang und breit, from every possible and impossible
point of view, which is I maintain the human way,
and the other way is inhuman.
"Is not Lord Sigismund coming to-day ? " I
asked Mrs. Menzies-Legh the first moment she came
within earshot.
" I'm afraid not," said she.
" To-morrow ? "
" I'm afraid not."
" What, not again at all ? " I exclaimed, for this
was indeed bad news.
" I'm afraid not."
And, contrary to her practice she dropped behind.
" Why is not Lord Sigismund coming back ? " I
shouted to Menzies-Legh whose caravan was following
mine, mine as usual being in the middle ; and I walked
on backwards through all the puddles so as to face
him, being unable to leave my horse.
" Eh ? " said he.
How like an ill-conditioned carter he looked
trudging gloomily along, his coat off, his battered
hat pushed back from his sullen forehead! Another
week, I thought, and he would be perfectly
indistinguishable from the worst example of a real
one.
" Why is not Lord Sigismund coming back ? " I
repeated, my hands up to my mouth in order to carry
my question right up to his heavy ears.
" He's prevented."
" Prevented ? "
"Eh?"
" Prevented by what ? "
"Eh?"
This was wilfulness : it must have been.
" What-has-prevented-him ? " I roared.
"Look out-your van will be in the ditch."
And turning quickly I was just in time to pull the
tiresome brute of a horse, who never could be left to
himself an instant, straight again.
I walked on shrugging my shoulders. Menzies-
Legh was without any doubt as ill-conditioned a
specimen of manhood as I have ever come across.
At the four cross roads beyond Brede, on the
party's pausing as usual to argue over the sign-post
while Fate, with Frogs' Hole Farm up her sleeve,
laughed in the background, I laid my hand on Jellaby's
arm-its thinness quite made me jump-and said,
" Where is Lord Sigismund ? "
" Gone home, I believe, with his father."
" Why is he not coming back ? "
" He's prevented."
" But by what ? Is he ill ? "
" Oh no. He's just-just prevented, you know."
And Jellaby slipped his arm out of my grasp and
went to stare with the others up at the sign-post.
On the road we finally decided to take while they
were all clustering round the labourer I have mentioned
who directed us to the deserted farm, I approached
Frau von Eckthum who stood on the outer fringe of
the cluster, and said in the gentler voice I instinctively
used when speaking to her, " I hear Lord Sigismund
is not coming back."
Gentle as my voice was, it yet made her start ; she
generally did start when spoken to, being unusually
(it adds to her attractiveness) highly strung.
(" She doesn't when I speak to her," said Edelgard,
on my commenting to her on this characteristic.
" My dear, you are merely another woman," I
replied, somewhat sharply, for Edelgard is really
often unendurably obtuse.)
" I hear Lord Sigismund is not coming back," I
said, then, very gently, to the tender lady.
" Oh ? " said she.
For the first time I could have wished a wider
range of speech.
" He has been prevented, I hear."
"Oh?"
" Do you know what has prevented him ? "
She looked at me and then at the others absorbed
by the labourer with a funny little look (altogether
feminine) of helplessness, though it could not of course
have been that; then, adding another letter but not
unfortunately another word to her vocabulary, she
said " No,"-or rather " N-n-n-o," for she hesitated.
And up bustled Jellaby as I was about to press my
inquiries, and taking me by the elbow (the familiarity
of this sort of person !) led me aside to overwhelm
me with voluble directions as to the turnings to
frogs' Hole Farm.
Well, it was undoubtedly a blow to find by far
the most interesting and amiable member of the party
(with the exception of Frau von Eckthum) gone,
and gone without a word, without an explanation,
a farewell, or a regret. It was Lord Sigismund's
presence, the presence of one so unquestionably of
my own social standing, of one whose relations could
all bear any amount of scrutiny and were not like
Edelgard's Aunt Bockhugel (of whom perhaps more
presently) a dark and doubtful spot round which
conversation had to make careful detours, it was
undoubtedly, I say, Lord Sigismund who had given
the expedition its decent air of being just an
aristocratic whim, stamped it, marked it, raised it altogether
above mere appearances. He was a Christian gentleman;
more, he was the only one of the party who
could cook. Were we, then, to be thrown for future
sustenance entirely on Jellaby's porridge ?
That afternoon, dining in the mud of the deserted
farmyard, we had sausages; a dinner that had only
been served once before, and which was a sign in
itself that the kitchen resources were strained. I
have already described how Jellaby cooked sausages,
goading them round and round the pan, prodding
them, pursuing them, giving them no rest in which
to turn brown quietly, as foolish a way with a
sausage as ever I have seen. For the second time
during the tour we ate them pink, filling up as best
we might with potatoes, a practice we had got quite
used to, though to you, my hearers, who only know
potatoes as an adjunct, it will seem a pitiable state
of things. So it was ; but when one is hungry to
the point of starvation a hot potato is an attractive
object, and two hot potatoes are exactly doubly so.
Anyhow my respect for them has increased tenfold since
my holiday, and I insist now on their being eaten in
much larger quantities than they used to be in our
kitchen, for do I not know how thoroughly they fill?
And servants quarrel if they have too much meat.
" That is poor food for a man like you, Baron,"
said Menzies-Legh, suddenly addressing me from the
other end of the table.
He had been watching me industriously scraping-
picture, my friends, Baron von Ottringel thus reduced
-scraping, I say, the last remnants of thee potatoes
out of the saucepan after the ladies had gone,
accompanied by Jellaby, to begin washing up.
It was so long since he had spoken to me of his
own accord that I paused in my scraping to stare at
him. Then, with my natural readiness at that sort
of thing, I drew his attention to his bad manners
earlier in the afternoon by baldly answering " Eh ? "
" I wonder you stand it," he said, taking no notice
of the little lesson.
" Pray will you tell me how it is to be helped?"
I inquired. " Roast goose does not, I have observed,
grow on the hedges in your country." (This, I felt,
was an excellent retort.)
" But it flourishes in London and other big towns,"
said he,-a foolish thing to say to a man sitting in
the back yard of Frogs' Hole Farm. "Have a
cigarette," he added ; and he pushed his case towards
me.
I lit one, slightly surprised at the change for the
better in his behaviour, and he got up and came and
sat on the vacant camp stool beside me.
" Hunger," said I, continuing the conversation,
" is the best sauce, and as I am constantly hungry
it follows that I cannot complain of not having
enough sauce. In fact I am beginning to feel that
gipsying is a very health-giving pursuit."
" Damp-damp," said Menzies-Legh, shaking his
head and screwing up his mouth in a disapproval
that astonished me.
" What ? " I said. " It may be a little damp
if the weather is damp, but one must get used to
hardships."
" Only to find," said he, " that one's constitution
has been undermined."
" What ? " said I, unable to understand this change
of attitude.
" Undermined for life," said he, impressively.
" My dear sir, I have heard you myself, under the
most adverse circumstances, repeatedly remark that
it was healthy and jolly."
" My dear Baron," said he, " I am not like you.
Neither Jellaby, nor I, nor Browne either for that
matter, has your physique. We are physically,
compared to you-to be quite frank-mere weeds."
" Oh come now, my dear sir, I cannot permit you
-you undervalue-of slighter build, perhapss, but
hardly-"
" It is true. Weeds. Mere weeds. And my point
is that we, accordingly, are not nearly so likely as
you are to suffer in the long run from the privations
and exposure of a bad-weather holiday like this."
" Well now you must pardon me if I entirely fail
to see-"
" Why my dear Baron, it's as plain as daylight.
Our constitutions will not be undermined for the
shatteringly good reason that we have none to
undermine."
My hearers will agree that, logically, the position
was incontrovertible, and yet I doubted.
Observing my silence, and probably guessing its
cause, he took up an empty glass and poured some tea
into it from the teapot at which Frau von Eckthum
had been slaking her thirst in spite of my warnings
(I had, alas, no right to forbid) that so much tea
drinking would make her still more liable to start
when suddenly addressed.
" Look here," said he.
I looked.
" You see this tea."
" Certainly."
" Clear, isn't it ? A beautiful clear brown. A
tribute to the spring water here. You can see the
house and all its windows through it, it is so perfectly
transparent."
And he held it up, and shutting one eye stared
through it with the other.
" Well ? " I inquired.
" Well, now look at this."
And he took another glass and set it beside the
first one, and poured both tea and milk into it.
" Look there," he said.
I looked.
" Jellaby," said he.
I stared.
Then he took another glass, and poured both tea
and milk into it, setting it in a line with the first two.
" Browne," said he.
I stared.
Then he took a fourth glass, and filled it in the
same manner as the second and third and placed it
at the end of the line.
" Myself," said he.
I stared.
" Can you see through either of those three ? " he
asked, tapping them one after the other.
" No," said I.
" Now if I put a little more milk into them "-
he did-" it makes no difference. They were muddy
and thick before, and they remain muddy and thick.
But "-and he held the milk jug impressively over
the first glass-" if I put the least drop into this
one "-he did-" see how visible it is. The admirable
clearness is instantaneously dimmed. The pollution
spreads at once. The entire glass, owing to that
single drop, is altered, muddied, ruined."
" Well? " I inquired, as he paused and stared hard
at me.
" Well ? " said he. " Do you not see ? "
" See what-? " said I.
" My point. It's as clear as the first glass was
before I put milk into it. The first glass, my dear
Baron, is you, with your sound and perfect constitution."
I bowed.
" Your splendid health."
I bowed.
" Your magnificent physique."
I bowed.
" The other three are
Browne."
He paused.
" And the drop of milk," he said slowly, " is the
caravan tour."
I was confounded; and you, my hearers, will
admit that I had every reason to be. Here was an
example of what is rightly called irresistible logic, and
a reasonable man dare not refuse, once he recognises
it, to bow in silence. Yet I felt very well. I said
I did, after a pause during which I was realising
how unassailable Menzies-Legh's position was, and
myself, and Jellaby, and
endeavouring to reconcile its unassailableness with
my own healthful sensations.
" You can't get away from facts," he answered.
" There they are."
And he indicated with his cigarette the four glasses
and the milk jug.
" But," I repeated, " except for a natural foot-
soreness I undoubtedly do feel very well."
" My dear Baron, it is obvious beyond all argument
that the more absolutely well a person is the more
easily he must be affected by the smallest upset, by
the smallest variation in the environment to which
he has got accustomed. Paradox, which plays so
large a part in all truths, is rampant here. Those
in perfect health are nearer than anybody else to
being seriously ill. To keep well you must never be
quite so."
He paused.
" When," he continued, seeing that I said nothing,
" we began caravaning we could not know how
persistently cold and wet it was going to be, but now
that we do I must say I feel the responsibility of
having persuaded you-or of my sister-in-law's having
persuaded you-to join us."
" But I feel very well," I repeated.
" And so you will, up to the moment when you
do not."
Of course that was true.
" Rheumatism, now," he said, shaking his head;
" I greatly fear rheumatism for you in the coming
winter. And rheumatism once it gets hold of a
man doesn't leave him till it has ravaged each
separate organ, including as everybody knows that
principal organ of all, the heart."
This was gloomy talk, and yet the man was right.
The idea that a holiday, a thing planned and looked
forward to with so much pleasure, was to end by
ravaging my organs did not lighten the leaden
atmosphere that surrounded and weighed upon Frogs'
Hole Farm.
" I cannot alter the weather," I said at last,-
irritably, for I felt ruffled.
" No. But I wouldn't risk it for too long if I were
you," said he.
" Why, I have paid for a month," I exclaimed,
surprised that he should overlook this clinching fact.
" That, set against an impaired constitution, is a
very inconsiderable trifle," said he.
" Not inconsiderable at all," said I sharply.
" Money is money, and I am not one to throw it away.
And what about the van ? You cannot abandon
an entire van at a great distance from the place it
belongs to."
" Oh," said he quickly, " we would see to that."
I got up, for the sight of the glasses full of what I
was forced to acknowledge was symbolic truth irritated me.
The one representing myself, into which
he had put but one drop of milk, was miserably discoloured.
I did not like to think of such discolouration
being my probable portion, and yet having paid
for a month's caravaning what could I do ?
The afternoon was chilly and very damp, and I
buttoned my wraps carefully about my throat.
Menzies-Legh watched me.
" Well ? " said he, getting up and looking first at
me and then at the glasses and then at me again.
" What do you think of doing, Baron ? "
" Going for a little stroll," I said.
And I went.
XVII
THIS was a singular conversation.
I passed round the back of the house and along a
footpath I found there, turning it over in my mind.
Less than ever did I like Menzies-Legh. In spite of
the compliments about my physique I liked him less
than ever. And how very annoying it is when a person
you do not like is right ; bad enough if you do like
him, but intolerable if you do not. As I proceeded
along the footpath with my eyes on the ground I saw
at every step those four glasses of tea, particularly
my one, the one that sparkled so brilliantly at first
and was afterwards so easily ruined. Absorbed in
this contemplation I did not notice whither my steps
were tending till I was pulled up suddenly by a church
door. The path had led me to that, and then, as I
saw, skirted along a fringe of tomb-stones to a gate
in a wall beyond which appeared the chimneys of
what was no doubt the parsonage.
The church door was open, and I went in,-for
I was tired, and here were pews; ruffled, and here
was peace. The droning of a voice led me to conclude
(rightly) that a service was in progress, for I had
learned by this time that in England the churches
constantly burst out into services, regardless of the
sort of day it is,-whether, I mean, it is a Sunday or
not. I entered, and selecting a pew with a red cushion
along its seat and a comfortable footstool sat down.
The pastor was reading the Scriptures out of a
Bible supported, according to the unaccountable
British custom, on the back of a Prussian eagle.
This prophetic bird-the first swallow, as it were, of
that summer which I trust will not long be delayed,
when Luther's translation will rest on its back and
be read aloud by a German pastor to a congregation
forced to understand by the simple methods we
bring to bear on our Polish (also acquired) subjects
-eyed me with a human intelligence. We eyeed each
other, in fact, as old friends might who meet after
troublous experiences in an alien land.
Except for this bird, who seemed to me quite
human in his expression of alert sympathy, the pastor
and I were alone in the building ; and I sat there
marvelling at the wasteful folly that pays a man to
read and pray daily to a set of empty pews. Ought
he not rather to stay at home and keep an eye on his
wife ? To do, indeed, anything sooner than conduct
a service which nobody evidently wants ? I call it
heathenism; I call it idolatry; and so would any
other plain man who heard and saw empty pews,
things of wood and cushions, being addressed as
brethren, and dearly beloved ones into the bargain.
When he had done at the eagle he crossed over
to another place and began reciting something else;
but very soon, after only a few words, he stopped
dead and looked at me.
I wondered why, for I had not done anything.
Even however with that innocence of conscience in
the background, it does make a man uncomfortable
when a pastor will not go on but fixes his eyes on you
sitting harmless in your pew, and I found myself
unable to return his gaze. The eagle was staring at
me with a startling expression of comprehension,
almost as if he too were thinking that a pastor
officiating has such an undoubted advantage over
the persons in the pews that it is cowardice to use it.
My discomfort increased considerably when I saw the
pastor descend from his place and bear down on me,
his eyes still fixing me, his white clothing fluttering
out behind him. What, I asked myself greatly perturbed,
could the creature possibly want ? I soon
found out, for thrusting an open Prayer-book towards
me he pointed to a verse of what appeared to be a
poem, and whispered-
" Will you kindly stand up and take your part in
the service ? "
Even had I known how, surely I had no part nor
lot in such a form of worship.
" Sir," I said, not heeding the outstretched book,
but feeling about in my breast-pocket, " permit me
to present you with my card. You will then see-"
He, however, in his turn refused to heed the
outstretched card. He did not so much as look at it.
" I cannot oblige you to," he whispered, as though
our conversation were unfit for the eagle's ears; and
leaving the open book on the little shelf in the front
of the pew he strode back again to his place and
resumed his reading, doing what he called my part as
well as his own with a severity of voice and manner
ill-suited to one presumably addressing the liebe Gott.
Well, being there and very comfortable I did not
see why I should go. I was behaving quite
inoffensively, sitting still and holding my tongue, and the
comfort of being in a building with no fresh air in it
was greater than you, my friends, who only know
fresh air at intervals and in properly limited
quantities, will be able to understand. So I stayed till
the end, till he, after a profusion of prayers, got up
from his knees and walked away into some obscure
portion of the church where I could no longer observe
his movements, and then, not desiring to meet him, I
sought the path that had led me thither and hurriedly
descended the hill to our melancholy camp. Once I
thought I heard footsteps behind me and I hastened
mine, getting as quickly round a bend that would
conceal me from any one following me as a tired man
could manage, and it was not till I had reached and
climbed into the Elsa that I felt really safe.
The three caravans were as usual drawn up in a
parallel line with mine in the middle, and their door
ends facing the farm. To be in the middle is a most
awkward situation, for you cannot speak the least
word of caution (or forgiveness, as the case may be)
to your wife without running grave risk of being overheard.
Often I used carefully to shut all the windows
and draw the door curtain, hoping thus to obtain a
greater freedom of speech, though this was of little
use with the Ilsa and the Ailsa on either side, their
windows open, and perhaps a group of caravaners
sitting on the ground immediately beneath.
My wife was mending, and did not look up when
I came in. How differently she behaved at home.
She not only used to look up when I came in, she got
up, and got up quickly too, hastening at the first
sound of my return to meet me in the passage, and
greeting me with the smiles of a dutiful and accordingly
contented wife.
Shutting the Elsa's windows I drew her attention
to this.
" But there isn't a passage," said she, still with her
head bent over a sock.
Really Edelgard should take care to be specially
feminine, for she certainly will never shine on the
strength of her brains.
" Dear wife," I began-and then the complete
futility of trying to thresh any single subject out in
that airy, sound-carrying dwelling stopped me. I
sat down on the yellow box instead, and remarked
that I was extremely fatigued.
" So am I," said she.
" My feet ache so," I said, " that I fear there may
be something serious the matter with them."
" So do mine," said she.
This, I may observe, was a new and irritating habit
she had got into : whatever I complained of in the
way of unaccountable symptoms in divers portions
of my frame, instead of sympathising and suggesting
remedies she said hers (whatever it was) did it too.
" Your feet cannot possibly," said I, " be in the
terrible condition mine are in. In the first place mine
are bigger, and accordingly afford more scope for
disorders. I have shooting pains in them resembling
neuralgia, and no doubt traceable to some nervous
source."
" So have I," said she.
" I think bathing might do them good," I said,
determined not to become angry. " Will you get me
some hot water please ? "
" Why ? " said she.
She had never said such a thing to me before. I
could only gaze at her in a profound surprise.
" Why ? " I repeated at length, keeping studiously
calm. " What an extraordinary question. I could
give you a thousand reasons if I chose, such as that
I desire to bathe them; that hot water-rather
luckily for itself-has no feet, and therefore has to
be fetched; and that a wife has to do as she is told.
But I will, my dear Edelgard, confine myself to the
counter inquiry, and ask why not ? "
" I too, my dear Otto," said she-and she spoke
with great composure, her head bent over her mending,
"could give you a thousand answers to that if I
chose, such as that I desire to get this sock finished-
yours, by the way-that I have walked exactly as
far as you have, that I see no reason why you should
not as there are no servants here fetch your own hot
water, and that your wishing or not wishing to bathe
your feet has really if you come to think of it nothing
to do with me. But I will confine myself just to saying
that I prefer not to go."
It can be imagined with what feelings-not mixed
but unmitigated-I listened to this. And after five
years! Five years of patience and guidance.
" Is this my Edelgard ? " I managed to say, recovering
speech enough for those four words but
otherwise struck dumb.
" Your Edelgard ? " she repeated musingly as she
continued to mend, and not even looking at me.
" Your boots, your handkerchief, your gloves, your
socks-yes-"
I confess I could not follow, and could only listen
amazed.
" But not your Edelgard. At least;, not more than
you are my Otto."
" But-my boots ? " I repeated, really dazed.
" Yes," she said, folding up the finished sock,
" they really are yours. Your property. But you
should not suppose that I am a kind of living boot,
made to be trodden on. I, my dear Otto, am a human
being, and no human being is another human being's
property."
A flash of light illuminated my brain. " Jellaby ! "
I cried.
" Hullo ? " was the immediate answer from outside. " Want me, Baron ? "
" No, no! No, no! No, NO! " I cried, leaping
up and dragging the door curtain to, as though that
could possibly deaden our conversation. " He has
been infecting you," I continued, in a whisper so
much charged with indignation that it hissed, " with
his poisonous-"
Then I recollected that he could probably hear
every word, and muttering an imprecation on caravans
I relapsed onto the yellow box and said with forced
calm as I scrutinised her face-
" Dear wife, you have no idea how exactly you
resemble your Aunt Bockhugel when you put on that
expression."
For the first time this failed to have an effect.
Up to then to be told she looked like her Aunt
Bockhugel had always brought her back with a jerk to
smiles ; even if she had to wrench a smile into position
she did so, for the Aunt Bockhugel is the sore point
in Edelgard's family, the spot, the smudge across its
brightness, the excrescence on its tree, the canker in
its bud, the worm destroying its fruit, the night frost
paralysing its blossoms. She cannot be suppressed.
She cannot be explained. Everybody knows she is
there. She was one of the reasons that made me walk
about my room the whole of the night before I proposed
marriage to Edelgard, a prey to doubts as to
how far a man may go in recklessness in the matter of
the aunts he fastens upon his possible children. The
Ottringels can show no such relatives; at least there
is one, but she looms almost equal to the rest owing
to the mirage created by fogs of antiquity and distance.
But Edelgard's aunt is contemporary and
conspicuous. Of a vulgar soul at her very birth, as
soon as she came of age she deliberately left the
ranks of the nobility and united herself to a dentist.
We go there to be treated for toothache, because
they take us (owing to the relationship) on unusually
favourable terms: otherwise we do not know them.
There is however an undoubted resemblance to
Edelgard in her less pleasant moods, a thickened,
heavier, and older Edelgard, and my wife, well aware
of it (for I help her to check it as much as possible by
pointing it out whenever it occurs), has been on each
occasion eager to readjust her features without loss
of time. On this one she was not. Nay, she relaxed
still more, and into a profounder likeness.
" It's true," she said, not even looking at me but
staring out of the window ; "it's true about the
boots."
" Aunt Bockhugel ! Aunt Bockhugel ! " I cried
softly, clapping my hands.
She actually took no notice, but continued to stare
abstractedly out of the window; and feeling how
impossible it was to talk really naturally to her with
Jellaby just outside, I chose the better part and with
a movement I could not wholly suppress of impatience
got up and left her.
Jellaby, as I suspected, was sitting on the ground
leaning against one of our wheels as though it were a
wheel belonging to his precious community and not
ours, hired and paid for. Was it possible that he
selected this wheel out of the twelve he could have
chosen from because it was my wife's wheel ?
" Do you want anything? " he asked, looking up
and taking his pipe out of his mouth; and I just had
enough self-control to shake my head and hurry on,
for I felt if I had stopped I would have fallen upon him
and rattled him about as a terrier rattles a rat.
But what terrible things caravans are when you
have to share one with a person with whom you have
reason to be angry! Of all their sides this is beyond
doubt the worst; worse than when the rain comes in
on to your bed, worse than when the wind threatens
to blow them over during the night, or half of them
sinks into the mud and has to be dug out laboriously
in the morning. It may be imagined with what
feelings I wandered forth into the chill evening,
homeless, bearing as I felt a strong resemblance to
that Biblical dove which was driven forth from the
shelter of the ark and had no idea what to do next.
Of course I was not going to fetch the hot water and
return with it, as it were (to pursue my simile), in
my beak. Every husband throughout Germany will
understand the impossibility of doing that-picture
Edelgard's triumph if I had ! Yet I could not at
the end of a laborious day wander indefinitely out of
doors; besides, I might meet the pastor.
The rest of the party were apparently in their
caravans, judging from the streams of conversation
issuing forth, and there was no one but old James
reclining on a sack in the corner of a distant shed to
offer me the solace of companionship. With a sudden
mounting to my head of a mighty wave of indignation
and determination not to be shut out of my own
caravan, I turned and quickly retraced my steps.
" Hullo Baron ? " said Jellaby, still propped against
my wheel. " Had enough of it already ? "
" More than enough of some things," I said, eyeing
him meaningly as I made my way, much impeded by
my mackintosh, up the ladder at an oblique angle (it
never could or would stand straight) against our door.
" For instance ? " he inquired.
" I am unwell," I answered shortly, evading a
quarrel-for why should I allow myself to be angered
by a wisp like that ?-and entering the Elsa drew the
curtain sharply to on his expressions of conventional
regret.
Edelgard had not changed her position. She did
not look up.
I pulled off my outer garments and flung them
on the floor, and sitting down with emphasis on the
yellow box unlaced and kicked off my boots and pulled
off my stockings.
Edelgard raised her head and fixed her eyes on me
with a careful imitation of surprise.
" What is it, Otto she said. " Have you been
invited out to dine ? "
I suppose she considered this amusing, but of
course it was not, and I jerked myself free of my
braces without answering.
" Won't you tell me what it is? " she asked
again.
For all answer I crawled into my berth and pulled
the coverings up to my ears and turned my face to the
wall; for indeed I was at the end both of my patience
and my strength. I had had two days running full of
disagreeable incidents, and Menzies-Legh's fatal drop
of milk seemed at last to have fallen into the brightness
of my original strong tea. I ached enough to
make his prophesied rheumatism a very near peril,
and was not at all sure as I lay there that it had not
already begun its work upon me, beginning it with
an alarming promise of system and thoroughness at
the very beginning, i.e. my feet.
" Poor Otto," said Edelgard, getting up and laying
her hand on my forehead; adding, after a moment,
" It is nice and cool."
"Cool? I should think so," said I shivering.
" I am frozen."
She got a rug out of the yellow box and laid it over
me, tucking in the side.
" So tired ? " she said presently, as she tidied up
my clothes.
" Ill," I murmured.
" What is it ? "
" Oh leave me, leave me. You do not really care.
Leave me."
At this she paused in her occupation to gaze, I
fancy, at my back as I lay resolutely turned away.
" It is very early to go to bed," she said after a
while.
" Not when a man is ill."
" It isn't seven yet."
" Oh do not, I beg you, argue with me. If you
cannot have sympathy you can at least leave me. It
is all I ask."
This silenced her, and she moved about the van
more careful not to sway it, so that presently I was
able to fall into an exhausted sleep.
How long this lasted I could not on suddenly
waking tell, but everything had grown dark and
Edelgard, as I could hear, was asleep above me.
Something had wrenched me out of the depths of
slumber in which I was sunk and had brought me up
again with a jerk to that surface known to us as
sentient life. You are aware, my friends, being also
living beings with all the experiences connected with
such a condition behind you, you are aware what
such a jerking is. It seems to be a series of flashes.
The first flash reminds you (with an immense shock)
that you are not as you for one comfortable instant
supposed in your own safe familiar bed at home ;
the second brings back the impression of the loneliness
and weirdness of Frogs' Hole Farm (or its, in your case,
local equivalent) that you received while yet it was
day; the third makes you realise with a clutching at
your heart that something happened before you woke
up,- and that something is presently going to happen
again. You lie awake waiting for it, and the entire
surface of your body becomes as you wait uniformly
damp. The sound of a person breathing regularly in
the apartment does but emphasise your loneliness.
I confess I was unable to reach out for matches and
strike a light, unable to do anything under that strong
impression that something had happened except
remain motionless beneath the bed-coverings. This
was no shame to me, my friends. Face me with
cannon, and I have the courage of any man living,
but place me on the edge of the supernatural and I
can only stay beneath the bedclothes and grow most
lamentably damp. Such a thin skin of wood divided
me from the night outside. Any one could push back
the window standing out there; any one ordinarily
tall would then have his head and shoulders practically
inside the caravan. And there was no dog to
warn us or to frighten such a wretch away. And
all my money was beneath my mattress, the worst
place possible to put it in if what you want is not to
be personally disturbed. What was it I had heard ?
What was it that called me up from the depths of
unconsciousness? As the moments passed, and except
for Edelgard's regular breathing there was only an
awful emptiness and absence of sound, I tried to
persuade myself it was just the sausages having been
so pink at dinner ; and the tenseness of my terror
had begun slowly to relax when I was smitten stark
again-and by what, my friends ? By the tuning of
a violin.
Now consider, you who frequent concerts and see
nothing disturbing in this sound, consider our situation.
Consider the remoteness from the highway of
Frogs' Hole Farm ; how you had, in order to reach
it, to follow the prolonged convolutions of a lane ;
how you must then come by a cart track along the
edge of a hop-field ; how the house lay alone and empty
in a hollow, deserted, forlorn, untidy, out of repair.
Consider further that none of our party had brought
a violin and none, to judge from the absence in their
conversation of any allusions to such an instrument,
played on it. No one knows who has not heard one
tuned under the above conditions the blankness of
the horror it can strike into one's heart. I listened,
stiff with fear. It was tuned with a care and at a
length that convinced me that the spirit turning its
knobs must be of a quite unusual musical talent,
possessed of an acutely sensitive ear. How came it
that no one else heard it ? Was it possible-I curdled
at the thought-that only myself of the party had
been chosen by the powers at work for this ghastly
privilege ? When the thing broke into a wild dance,
and a great and rhythmical stamping of feet began
apparently quite near and yet equally apparently on
boards, I was seized with a panic that relaxed my
stiffness into action and enabled me to thump the
underneath of Edelgard's mattress with both my
fists, and thump and thump with a desperate vigour
that did at last rouse her.
Being half asleep she was more true to my careful
training than when perfectly awake, and on hearing
my shouts she unhesitatingly tumbled out of her
berth and leaning into mine asked me with some
anxiety what the matter was.
" The matter ? Do you not hear ? " I said,
clutching her arm with one hand and holding up the
other to enjoin silence.
She woke up entirely.
"Why, what in the world-" she said. Then
pulling a window curtain aside she peeped out.
" There's only the Ailsa there," she said, " dark and
quiet. And only the Ilsa here," she added, peeping
through the opposite curtain, " dark and quiet."
I looked at her, marvelling at the want of imagination
in women that renders it possible for them to
go on being stolid in the presence of what seemed
undoubtedly the supernatural. Unconsciously this
stolidity, however, made me feel more like myself;
but when on her going to the door and unbolting it
and looking out she made an exclamation and hastily
shut it again, I sank back on my pillow once more
hors de combat, so great was the shock. Face me, I
say, with cannon, and I can do anything, but expect
nothing of me if it is ghosts.
" Otto," she whispered, holding the door, " come
and look."
I could not speak.
" Get up and come and look," she whispered again.
Well my friends I had to, or lose for ever my moral
hold of and headship over her. Besides, I was drawn
somehow to the fatal door. How I got out of my
berth and along the cold floor of the caravan to the
end I cannot conceive. I was obliged to help myself
along, I remember, by sliding my hand over the
surface of the yellow box. I muttered I remember
" I am ill-I am ill," and truly never did a man feel
more so. And when I got to the door and looked
through the crack she opened, what did I see ?
I saw the whole of the lower windows of the farmhouse ablaze with candles.
XVIII
MY hearers will I hope appreciate the frankness
with which I show them all my sides, good and bad.
I do so with my eyes open, aware that some of you
may very possibly think less well of me for having
been, for instance, such a prey to supernatural dread.
Allow me, however, to point out that if you do you
are wrong. You suffer from a confusion of thought.
And I will show you why. My wife, you will have
noticed, had on the occasion described few or no fears.
Did this prove courage ? Certainly not. It merely
proved the thicker spiritual skin of women. Quite
without that finer sensibility that has made men able
to produce works of genius while women have been
able only to produce (a merely mechanical process)
young, she felt nothing apparently but a bovine
surprise. Clearly, if you have no imagination neither
can you have any fears. A dead man is not frightened.
An almost dead man does not care much either. The
less dead a man is the more do possible combinations
suggest themselves to him. It is imagination and
sensibility or the want of them that removes you
further or brings you nearer to the animals.
Consequently (I trust I am being followed ?)
when imagination and sensibility are busiest, as they were during
those moments I lay waiting and listening in my
berth, you reach the highest point of aloofness from
and superiority to the brute creation ; your vitality
is at its greatest ; you are in a word, if I may be
permitted to coin an epigram, least dead. Therefore,
my friends, it is plain that at the very moment when
you (possibly) may have thought I was showing my
weakest side I was doing the exact opposite, and you
will not, having intelligently followed the argument,
say at the end of it as my poor little wife did, " But
how ? "
I do not wish however to leave you longer under
the impression that the deserted farmhouse was
haunted. It may have been of course, but it was not
on that night of last August. What was happening
was that a party from the parsonage-a holiday party
of young and rather inclined to be noisy people, which
had overflowed the bounds of the accommodation
there-was utilising the long empty front room as an
impromptu (I believe that is the expression) ball-room.
The farm belonged to the pastor-observe the fatness
of these British ecclesiastics-and it was the practice
of his family during the holidays to come down
sometimes in the evening and dance in it. All this I found
out after Edelgard had dressed and gone across to see
for herself what the lights and stamping meant. She
insisted on doing so in spite of my warnings, and came
back after a long interval to tell me the above, her
face flushed and her eyes bright, for she had seized
the opportunity, regardless of what I might be feeling
waiting alone, to dance too.
" You danced too ? " I exclaimed.
" Do come, Otto. It is such fun," said she.
" With whom did you dance, may I inquire? " I
asked, for the thought of the Baroness von Ottringel
dancing with the first comer in a foreign farm was of
course most disagreeable to me.
" Mr. Jellaby," said she. " Do come."
" Jellaby ? What is he doing there ? "
" Dancing. And so is everybody. They are all
there. That's why their caravans were so quiet.
Do come."
And she ran out again, a childishly eager expression
on her face, into the night.
" Edelgard ! " I called.
But though she must have heard me she did not
come back.
Relieved, puzzled, vexed, and curious together, I
did get up and dress, and on lighting a candle and
looking at my watch I was astonished to find that it
was only a quarter to ten. For a moment I could not
credit my eyes, and I shook the watch and held it to
my ears, but it was going as steadily as usual, and
all I could do was to reflect as I dressed on what
may happen to you if you go to bed and to sleep at
seven o'clock.
And how soundly I must have done it. But of
course I was unusually weary, and not feeling at all
well. Two hours' excellent sleep, however, had done
wonders for me so great are my recuperative powers,
and I must say I could not help smiling as I crossed
the yard and went up to the house at the remembrance
of Menzies-Legh's glass of tea. He would not see
much milk about me now, thought I, as I strode,
giving my moustache ends a final upward push and
guided by the music, into the room in which they
were dancing.
The dance came to an end as I entered, and a
sudden hush seemed to fall upon the company. It
was composed of boys and young girls attired in
evening garments next to which the clothes of the
caravaners, weather-beaten children of the road,
looked odd and grimy indeed. The tender lady it is
true had put on a white and cobwebby kind of blouse,
which together with her short walking skirt and the
innocent droop of her fair hair about her little ears
made her look at the most eighteen, and Mrs. Menzies-
Legh had tricked herself out in white too, producing
indeed for our admiration a white skirt as well as
a white blouse, and achieving at the most by these
efforts an air of (no doubt spurious) cleanliness; but
the others were still all spattered and disfigured by
the muddy accumulations of the past day.
Though they stopped dancing as I came in I had
time to receive a photograph on my mind's eye of
the various members of our party: of Jellaby, loose-
collared and wispy-haired, gyrating with poor Frau
von Eckthum, of Edelgard, flushed with childish
enjoyment, in the grip of a boy who might very well
have been her own if I had married her a few years
sooner and if it were conceivable that I could ever
have produced anything so undeveloped and half-
grown, and of, if you please, Menzies-Legh in all his
elderliness, dancing with an object the short
voluminousness of whose clothing proclaimed a condition of
unripeness even greater than that of the two fledglings
-dancing, in a word, with a child.
That he should dance at all was, you will agree,
sufficiently unworthy, but at least if he must make
himself publicly foolish he might have done it with
some one more suited to his years, some one of the
age of the lady, for instance-singularly unlike one's
idea of a ghost-standing at the upper end of the
room playing the violin that had half an hour
previously been so incomprehensible to me.
On seeing me enter he stopped dead, and his face
resumed the familiar look of lowering gloom. The
other couples followed his example, and the violin,
after a brief hesitation, whined away into passivity.
" Capital," said I heartily to Menzies-Legh, who
happened to have been in the act of dancing past the
door I came in by. " Capital. Enjoy yourself, my
friend. You are doing admirably well for what you
told me is a weed. In a German ball-room you would,
I assure you, create an immense sensation, for it is not
the custom there for gentlemen over thirty-which,"
I amended, bowing, " I may be entirely wrong in
presuming that you are-for gentlemen over thirty-"
But he interrupted me to remark with the
intelligence that characterised him (after all what ailed the
man was, I believe, principally stupidity) that this
was not a German ball-room.
" Ah," said I, " you are right there, my friend.
That indeed is what you English call a different pair
of shoes. If it were, do you know where the gentlemen
over thirty would be ? "
He spoiled the neat answer I had all ready of
" Not there " by, instead of seeking information,
observing with his customary boorishness, "Confound
the gentlemen over thirty," and walking his long-
stockinged partner away.
" Otto," whispered my wife hurrying up, "you
must come and be introduced to the people who are
kindly letting us dance here."
"Not unless they are of decent birth," I said firmly.
" Whether they are or not you must come," said
she. " The lady who is playing is-"
" I know, I know, she is a ghost," said I, unable
to forbear smiling at my own jest; and I think my
hearers will agree that a man who can make fun of
himself may certainly be said to be at least fairly
equipped with a sense of humour.
Edelgard stared. " She is the pastor's wife," she
said. " It is her party. It is so kind of her to let us
in. You must come and be introduced."
" She is a ghost," I persisted greatly diverted by
the notion, for I felt a reaction of cheerfulness, and
never was a lady more substantial than the one with
the violin, " she is a ghost, and a highly unattractive
specimen of the sect. Dear wife, only ghosts should
be introduced to other ghosts. I am flesh and blood,
and will therefore go instead and release the little
Eckthum from the flesh and blood persistencies
of Jellaby."
" But Otto, you must come," said Edelgard, laying
her hand on my arm as I prepared to move in the
direction of the charming victim, " you can't be rude.
She is your hostess-"
" She is my ghostess," said I, very divertingly I
thought; so divertingly that I was seized by a barely
controllable desire to indulge in open mirth.
Edelgard however, with the blank incomprehension
of the droll so often to be observed in women,
did not so much as smile.
" Otto," said she, " you absolutely must-"
" Must, dear wife," said I with returning gravity,
" is a word no woman of tact ever lets her husband
hear. I see no must why I, being who I am, should
request an introduction to a Frau Pastor. I would
not in Storchwerder. Still less will I at Frogs'
Hole Farm."
" But you are her guest-"
" I am not. I came."
" But it is so nice of her to allow you to come."
" It is not niceness. She is delighted at the
honour."
" But Otto, you simply can't-"
I was about to move off definitely to the corner
where Frau von Eckthum sat helpless in the talons of
Jellaby when who should enter the door just in front
of which Edelgard was wrangling but the creature
I had last parted from on unfriendly terms in the
church a few hours before.
Attired this time from chin to boots in a long and
narrow buttoned down black garment suggestive of
that of the Pope's priests, with a gold cross dangling
on his chest, his eye immediately caught mine and the
genial smile of the party-giver with which he had
come in died away. Evidently he had been there
earlier, for Edelgard as though she were well acquainted
with him darted forward (where, alas, remained the
dignity of the well-born ?) and very officiously
introduced me to him. Me to him, observe.
" Let me," said my wife, " introduce my husband,
Baron Ottringel."
And she did.
It was of course the pastor who ought to have
been introduced to me on such neutral ground as
an impromptu ball-room, but Edelgard had, as the
caravan tour lengthened, acquired the habit of using
the presence of a third person in order to do as
she chose, with no reference whatever to my known
wishes. This is a habit specially annoying to a man
of my disposition, peppery perhaps, but essentially
bon enfant, who likes to get his cautions and
reprimands over and done with and forgotten, rather than
be forced to allow them to accumulate and brood
over them indefinitely.
Rendered helpless by my own good breeding-a
quality which leads to many a discomfort in life-I
was accordingly introduced for all the world as though
I were the inferior, and could only show my
sensibility of the fact by a conspicuous stiffening.
" Otto thinks it so very kind of you to let us come
in," said Edelgard, all smiles and with an augmentation
of officiousness and defiance of me that was
incredible.
" I am glad you were able to," replied the pastor
looking at me, politeness in his voice and chill in his
eye. It was plain the creature was still angry because,
in church, I would not pray.
" You are very good," said I, bowing with at least
an equal chill.
" Otto wishes," continued the shameless Edelgard,
reckless of the private hours with me ahead, " to be
introduced to your-to Mrs.-Mrs.-"
" Raggett," supplied the pastor.
And I would certainly have been dragged up then
and there to the round red ghost at the top of the
room while Edelgard, no doubt, triumphed in the
background, if it had not itself come to the rescue
by striking up another tune on its fiddle.
" Presently," said the pastor, now become
crystallised for me into Raggett. " Presently. Then, with
pleasure."
And his glassy eye, fixed on mine, had little of
pleasure in it.
At this point Edelgard danced away with Jellaby
from under my very nose. I made an instinctive
movement towards the slender figure alone in the
corner, but even as I moved a half-grown boy secured
her and hurried her off among the dancers. Looking
round, I saw no one else I could go and talk to ;
even Mrs. Menzies-Legh was not available. There
was nothing for it therefore but unadulterated
Raggett.
" It is nice," observed this person, watching the
dancers-he had a hooky profile as well as a glassy
eye-" to see young people enjoying themselves."
I bowed, determined to keep within the limits of
strict iciness ; but as Jellaby and my wife whirled
past I could not forbear adding-
" Especially when the young people are so mature
that they are fully aware of the extent of their own
enjoyment."
" Yes," said he; without, however, any real
responsiveness.
" It is only," said I, " when a woman is mature,
and more than mature, that she begins to enjoy
being young."
" Yes," said he; still with no real responsiveness.
" You may possibly," said I, nettled by this
indifference, " regard that as a paradox."
" No," said he.
" It is, however," said I more loudly, " not one."
" No," said he.
" It is on the contrary," said I still louder, " a
rather subtle but undeniable truth."
" Yes," said he; and I then perceived that he was
not listening.
I do not know what my hearers feel, but I fancy
they feel with me that when a gentleman of birth and
position is amiable enough to talk to a person of
neither it is particularly galling to discover that that
person is so unable to grasp the true aspect of the
situation as to neglect even to follow the conversation.
Good breeding (as I have before remarked, a great
hinderer) prevents one's explaining who one is and
emphasising who the other person is and doing then
and there a sum of subtraction between one's own
value and his and offering him the result for his closer
inspection, so what is one to do ? Stiffen and go
dumb, I suppose. Good breeding allows no more.
Alas, there are many and heavy drawbacks to being
a gentleman.
Raggett had evidently not been listening to a
word I said, for after his last abstracted " Yes,"
he suddenly turned the glassiness of his eye full
upon me.
" I did not know," he said, "when I saw you
in church-"
Really the breeding that could go back to the
church and what happened there was too bad for
words. My impulse was to stop him by saying
" Shall we dance ? " but I was too uncertain of the
extent, nay of the existence, of his powers of seeing
fun to venture.
" -that you were not English, or I should not
have asked-"
" Sir," I interrupted, endeavouring to get him at all
costs out of the church, " who, after all, is English ? "
He looked surprised. "Well," said he, " I am."
" Why, you do not know. You cannot possibly
be certain. Go back a thousand years and, as I lately
read in an ingenious but none the less probably right
book, the whole of Europe was filled with your fathers
and mothers. Starting with your two parents and
four grandparents and going backwards multiplying
as you go, the sixteen great-grandparents are already
almost unmanageable, and a century or two further
back you find them irrepressibly overflowing your
little island and spreading themselves across Europe
as thickly and as adhesively as so much jam, until in
days a trifle more remote not a person living of white
skin but was your father, unless he was your mother.
Take," I continued, as he showed signs of wanting to
interrupt, " take any example you choose, you will
find the same inextricable confusion everywhere.
And not only physically-spiritually. Take any
example. Anything at random. Take our late
lamented Kaiser Friedrich, who married a daughter
of your royal house. It is our custom to regard and
even to call our Kaiser and Kaiserin the Father and
Mother of the Nation. The entire nation therefore
is, in a spiritual sense, half English. So, accordingly,
am I. So, accordingly, to push the point a step
further, you become their nephew, and therefore a
quarter German-a spiritual German quarter, even
as I am a spiritual English half. There is no end
to the confusion. Have you observed, sir, that the
moment one begins to think everything does become
confused ? "
" Are you not dancing ? " said he, fidgeting and
looking about him.
I think one is often angry with people because,
having assumed on first acquaintance that they are
on one's own level of intelligence, their speech and
actions presently prove that they are not. This is
unjust; but, like most unjust things, natural. I,
however, as a reasonable man do my best to fight
against it, and on Raggett's asking this question for
all response to the opportunity I gave him of embarking
on an interesting discussion, I checked my natural
annoyance by realising that he was what Menzies-
Legh probably was, merely stupid. Stupidity, my
hearers will agree, is of various kinds, and one kind is
want of interest in what is interesting. Of course
this particular stupid was hopelessly ill-bred besides,
for what can be more so than meeting a series of, to
put them at their lowest, suggestive remarks by
inquiring if one is not dancing ?
" My dear sir," I said, preserving my own manners
at least, " in my country it is not the custom for
married gentlemen over thirty to dance. Perhaps
you are paying me the compliment (often, I must
say, paid me before) of supposing I am not yet that
age, but I assure you that I am. Nor do ladies
continue to dance in our country once their early
youth is past and their outlines become-shall we
say bolder ? Seats are then provided for them round
the walls, and on them they remain in suitable
passivity until the oasis afforded by the Lancers is
reached, when the elder gentlemen pour gallantly
out of the room in which they play cards all the
evening and lead them through its intricacies with the
ceremony that satisfies Society's sense of the becoming.
In this country, on the contrary-"
" Really," he interrupted, his habit of fidgeting
more pronounced than ever, " you talk English with
such a flow and volume that after all you very well
might have joined-"
I now saw that the man was a fanatic, a type of
unbalanced person I have always particularly disliked.
Good breeding is little if at all appreciated by
fanatics, and I might have been excused if, at this
point, I had flung mine to the winds. I did not do so
however, but merely interrupted him in my turn by
informing him with cold courteousness that I was
a Lutheran.
" And Lutherans," I added, " do not pray. At
least, not audibly, and certainly never in duets.
More," I continued, putting up my hand as he opened
his mouth to speak, " more. I am a philosopher,
and the prayers of a philosopher cannot be confined
within the limits of any formula. Formulas are for
the undeveloped. You tie a child into its chair lest,
untied, it should fall disastrously to the floor. You
tie the undeveloped adult to a creed lest, untied, he
should fall goodness really knows where. The grown
man, of full stature in mind as well as body, requires
no tying. His whole life is his creed. Nothing cut
and dried, nothing blatant, nothing gaudily apparent
to the outside world, but a subtle saturation, a continual soaking-"
" Excuse me," said he, " one of those candles is
guttering."
And he hurried across the room with an expedition
I would not have thought possible in a man so grey
and glassy to where, in the windows, the illuminating
rows of candles had been placed.
Nor did he come back I am glad to say, for I
found him terribly fatiguing; and I remained alone,
leaning against the wall by the door.
Down at the further end of the room danced my
gentle friend, and also her sister ; also all the other
members of our party except Menzies-Legh who,
recalled to decency by my good-natured shafts,
spent the rest of his time soberly either helping the
pastor pinch off candle-wicks or turning over the
ghost's music for it.
Desiring to watch Frau von Eckthum more conveniently
(for I assure you it was a pretty sight to
see her grace, and how the same tune that made my
wife whirl moved her to nothing more ruffling than
an appearance of being wafted) and also in order to
be at hand should Jellaby become too tactless, I
went down to where our party seemed to be gathered
in a knot and took up my position near them against
another portion of the wall.
I had hardly done so before they seemed to have
melted away to the upper end.
As they did not come back I presently strolled
after them. They then appeared to melt back again
to the bottom.
It was very odd. It was almost like an optical
illusion. When I went up, they went down; when
I went down, they went up. I felt at last as one
may feel who plays at see-saw, and began to doubt
whether I were really on firm ground-on terra cotta,
as I (amusingly, I thought) called it to Edelgard
when we alighted from the steamer at Queenboro',
endeavouring to restore her spirits and make her
laugh. (Quite in vain I may add, which inclined me
to wonder, I remember, whether the illiteracy which
is one of the leading characteristics of people's wives
had made it impossible for her to understand even so
simple a classical play on words as that. In the train
I realised that it was not illiteracy but the crossing;
and I will say for Edelgard that up to the time the
English spirit of criticism got, like a devasting
microbe, hold of her German womanliness, she had
invariably laughed when I chose to jest.)
But gradually the profitless see-sawing began to
tire me. The dance ended, another began, and still
my little white-bloused friend had not once been
within reach. I made a determined effort to get to
her in the pauses between the dances in order to
offer to break the German rule on her behalf and give
her one dance (for I fancy she was vexed that I did
not) and also to help her out of the clutches of Jellaby,
but I might as well have tried to dance with and help
a moonbeam. She was here, she was there, she was
everywhere, except where I happened to be. Once
I had almost achieved success when, just as I was
sure of her, she ran up to the ghost resting at that
moment from its labours and embarked in an
apparently endless and absorbing discussion with it, deaf
and blind to all beside ; and as I had made up my
mind that nothing would induce me to extend my
Raggett acquaintance by causing myself to be
introduced to the psychical phenomenon bearing
that name, I was forced to retreat.
Moodily, though. My first hilarity was extinguished.
Bon enfant though I am I cannot go
on being bon enfant for ever, -I must have, so to
speak, the encouragement of a bottle at intervals ;
and I was thinking of taking Edelgard away and
giving her, before the others returned to their caravans,
a brief description of what maturity combined
with calf-like enjoyment looks like to bystanders,
when Mrs. Menzies-Legh passing on the arm of a
partner caught sight of my face, let her partner go,
and came up to me.
" I suppose," she said (and she had at least the
grace to hesitate), " it would be no good asking-
asking you to--dance ? " `
I stared at her in undisguised astonishment.
" Are you not dreadfully bored, standing there
alone ? " she said, as I did not answer. " Won't
hesitate)-
" won't you-dance ? "
Pointedly, and still staring amazed, I inquired of
her with whom, for really I could hardly believe-
" With me, if-if you will," said she, a rather
lame attempt at a smile and a distinctly anxious
look in her eyes showing that at least it was only a
momentary aberration.
Momentary or not, however, I am not the man to
smile with feigned gratification when what is needed
is rebuke, especially in the case of this lady who of
all others needed one so often and so badly.
" Why," I exclaimed, not caring to conceal my
opinion, " why,-this is matriarchy!"
And turning on my heel I made my way at once
to my wife, stopped her whirlings, drew her away
from her partner's arm (Jellaby's, by the way), made
her take her Husband's, and without a word led her
out of the room.
But, as I passed the door I saw the look of (I should
think pretended) astonishment of Mrs. Menzies-
Legh's face give way to the appearance of the dimple,
to a sudden screwing together of the upper and
lower eyelashes, and my friends will be able to form
a notion of how complete was the havoc England
had wrought in all she had been taught to understand
and reverence in her youth when I tell them that
what she was manifestly trying not to do was to
laugh.
XIX
ESSENTIALLY, as I have already pointed out, bon
enfant, I seldom let a bad yesterday spoil a promising
to-day; and when on peeping through my curtains
next morning I saw the sun had turned our forbidding
camp of the night before into a bland warm place
across which birds darted singing, a cheery whistle
formed itself on my lips and I became aware of
that inward satisfaction our neighbours (to whom we
owe, I frankly acknowledge, much besides Alsace and
Lorraine) have aptly named the joie de vivre.
Left to myself this joie would undoubtedly always
continue uninterruptedly throughout the day. The
greater then, say I, the responsibility of those who
damp it. Indeed, the responsibility resting on the
shoulders of the people who cross one's path during
the day is far more tremendous than they in the
thickness of their skins imagine. I will not however
at present go into that, having gradually in the course
of writing this become aware that what I shall
probably do next will be to collect and embody all my
more metaphysical side into a volume to itself with
plenty of room in it, and will here, then, merely ask
my hearers to behold me whistling in my caravan on
that bright August morning, whistling, and ready, as
every sound man should be, to leave the annoyances
of yesterday beneath their own dust and begin the
new day in the spirit of " Who knows but before
nightfall I shall have conquered the world ? "
My mother (a remarkable woman) used to tell me
it was a good plan to start like that, and indeed I
believe the results by nightfall would be surprisingly
encouraging if only other people would leave one
alone. For, as they meet you, each one by his
behaviour takes away a further portion of that which
in the morning was so undimmed. Why, sometimes
just Edelgard at breakfast has by herself torn off
the whole stock of it at once ; and generally by
dinner there is but little left. It is true that
occasionally after dinner a fresh wave of it sets in, but
sleep absorbs that before it has had time, as the
colloquialists would say, so much as to turn round.
My hearers, then, without my going further into
this, must conceive me whistling and full of French
joie in the subdued sunlight of the Elsa's curtained
interior on that bright summer morning at Frogs'
Hole Farm.
The floor sloped, for during the night the Elsa's
left hind wheel had sunk into an uncobbled portion
of the yard where the soft mud offered no resistance,
but even the prospect of having to dig this out before
we could start did not depress me. I thought I had
noticed my head sinking lower and lower during my
dreams, and after having, half asleep, endeavoured to
correct this impression by means of rolling up my
day clothes and putting them beneath my pillow and
finding that it made no difference, I decided it must
be a nightmare and let well alone. In the morning,
on waking after Edelgard's departure, I realised what
had happened, and if any of you ever caravan you
had better see when you go to bed that all four of
your wheels are on that which I called at Queenboro'
terra cotta (you will remember I explained why it was
my wife was unable to be amused) or you will have
some pretty work cut out for you next morning.
Even this prospect, however, did not as I say
depress me. Dumb objects like caravans have no
such power, and as nobody not dumb had yet crossed
my path I was still, so to speak, untarnished. I had
even made up my mind to forget the half-hour with
Edelgard the previous night after the ball, and since
a willingness to forget is the same thing as a
willingness to forgive I think you will all agree that I began
that day very well.
Descending to breakfast, I experienced a slight
shock (the first breath of tarnish) on finding no one
but Mrs. Menzies-Legh and the nondescripts there.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh however, though no doubt feeling
privately awkward managed to behave as though
nothing had happened, hoped I had slept well, and
brought my coffee. She did not talk as much as
usual, but attended to my wants with an
assiduousness that pointed to her being, after all, ashamed.
I inquired of her with the dignity that means
determined distance where the others were, and she
said gone for a walk.
She remarked on the beauty of the day, and I
replied " It is indeed."
She then said, slightly sighing, that if only the
weather had been like that from the first the tour
would have been so much more enjoyable.
On which I observed, with reserved yet easy
conversation, that the greater part still lay before us,
and who knew but that from then on it was not
going to be fine ?
At this she looked at me in silence, her head
poised slightly on one side, seriously and pensively,
as she had done among the Bodiam ruins ; then
opened her mouth as though to speak, but thinking
better of it got up instead and fetched me more food.
At last, thought I, she was learning the right way
to set about pleasing ; and I could not prevent a
feeling of gratification at the success of my method
with her. There was an unusually good breakfast
too, which increased this feeling,-eggs and bacon,
a combined luxury not before seen on our table.
The fledglings hung over the stove with heated cheeks
preparing relays of it under Mrs. Menzies-Legh's
directions, who, while she directed, held the coffee-pot
in her arms to keep it warm. She explained she did
so for my second cup. I might and indeed I would
have suspected that she did so not to keep the coffee
but her arms warm, if it had not been such a grilling
day. Heat quivered in a blue haze over the hop-poles
of the adjacent field. The sunless farmhouse looked
invitingly cool and shady now that the surrounding
hill-tops were one glare of light. To hold warm
coffee in one's arms on such a morning could not
possibly show anything but a meritorious desire to
make amends ; and as I am not a man to do what
the scriptural call quench the smoking flax, and yet
not a man to forgive too quickly recently audacious
ladies, I dextrously mingled extreme politeness with
an unshakable reserve.
But I did not care to prolong what was practically
a tête-à-tête one moment more than necessary, and
could not but at last perceive in her persistent
replenishings of my cup and plate the exactly contrary
desire in the lady. So I got up with a courteously
declining " No, no-a reasonable man knows when
to leave off," murmured something about seeing to
things, bowed, and withdrew.
Where I withdrew to was the hop-field and a
cigar.
I lay down in the shade of these green promises
of beer in a corner secure from observation, and
reflected that if the others could waste time taking
supererogatory exercise I might surely be allowed an
interval of calm; and as there are no mosquitoes in
England, at least none that I ever saw, it really was
not unpleasant for once to contemplate nature from
the ground. But I must confess I was slightly
nettled by the way the rest of the party had gone off
without waiting to see whether I would not like to
go too. At first, busied by breakfast, I had not
thought of this. Presently, in the hop-field, it entered
my mind, and though I would not have walked far
with them it would have been pleasant to let the rest
go on ahead and remain myself in some cool corner
talking to my gentle but lately so elusive friend.
I must say also that I felt no little surprise that
Edelgard should gad away in such a manner before
our caravan had been tidied up and after what I had
said to her the last thing the night before. Did she
then think, in her exuberant defiance, that I would
turn to and make our beds for her ?
My cigar being finished I lay awhile thinking of
these things, fanned by a gentle breeze. Country
sounds, at a distance to make them agreeable,
gradually soothed ear and brain. A cock crowed just far
enough away. A lark sang muffled by space. The
bells of an invisible church-Raggett's, probably-
began a deadened and melodious ringing. Well, I
was not going ; I smiled as I thought of Raggett and
the eagle, forced to make the best of things by themselves.
All round me was a hum and a warmth
that was irresistible. I did not resist it. My head
dropped; my limbs relaxed; and I fell into a doze.
This doze was, as it turned out, extremely à propos,
for by the time it was over and I had once more
become conscious, the morning was well advanced and
the caravaners had had ample time to get back from
their walk and through their work. Sauntering in
among them I found everything ready for a start
except the Elsa, which, still with its left hind wheel
sunk in the soil, was being doctored by Menzies-Legh,
Jellaby, and old James.
" Hullo," said Jellaby, looking up in the midst of
his heated pushing and pulling as I appeared, " been
enjoying yourself ? "
Menzies-Legh did not even look up, but continued
his efforts with drops of moisture on his saturnine
brow.
Well, here my experience as an artillery officer
accustomed to getting gun-carriages out of
predicaments enabled me at once to assume authority,
and drawing up a camp stool I gave them directions
as they worked. They did not, it is true, listen
much, thinking as English people so invariably do
that they knew better, but by not listening they
merely added another half-hour to their labour, and
as it was fine and warm and sitting superintending
them much less arduous than marching, I had no
real objection.
I told Menzies-Legh this at the time, but he did
not answer, so I told him again when we were on the
road about the half-hour he might have saved if
he had worked on my plan. He seemed to be in a
more than usually bad temper, for he only shrugged
his shoulders and looked glum; and my hearers
will agree that Mrs. Menzies-Legh's John was not a
possession for England to be specially proud of.
We journeyed that day towards Canterbury, a
town you, my friends, may or may not have heard of.
That it is an English town I need not say, for if it
were not would we have been going there ? And it
is chiefly noted, I remembered, for its archbishop.
This gentleman, I was told by Jellaby on my
questioning him, walks directly behind the King's
eldest son and in front of all the nobles in processions.
He is a pastor, but how greatly glorified. He is the
final expansion, the last word, of that which in the
bud was only a curate. Every English curate, like
Buonaparte's soldiers are said to have done, carries
in his handbag the mitre of an archbishop. I can
only regard it as a blessing that our Church has not
got them, for I for one would find it difficult with
this possibility in view ever to be really natural to
a curate. As it is I am perfectly natural. With
absolute simplicity I show ours his place and keep
him to it; and I am equally simple with our
Superintendents and General Superintendents, the nearest
approach our pure and frugal Church goes to bishops
and archbishops. There is nothing glorified about
them. They are just respectable elderly men, with
God-fearing wives who prepare their dinner for them
day by day. " And, Jellaby," said I, " can as much
be said for the wives of your archbishops ? "
" No," said he.
" Another point, then," said I, with the jesting
manner one uses to gild unpalatable truth, " on
which we Germans are ahead."
Jellaby pushed his wisp of hair back and mopped
his forehead. From my position at my horse's head I
had called to him as he was walking quickly past me,
for I perceived he had my poor gentle little friend in
tow and was once again inflicting his society on her.
He could not, however, refuse to linger on my addressing him,
and I took care to ask him so many questions
about Canterbury and its ecclesiastical meaning that
Frau von Eckthum was able to have a little rest.
A faint flush showed she understood and appreciated.
No longer obliged to exert herself conversationally,
as I had observed she was doing when
they passed, she dropped into her usual calm and
merely listened attentively to all I had to say. But
we had hardly begun before Mrs. Menzies-Legh, who
was in front, happened to look round, and seeing us
immediately added her company to what was already
more than company enough, and put a stop to anything
approaching real conversation by herself holding
forth. No one wanted to hear her ; least of all
myself, to whom she chiefly addressed her remarks.
The others, indeed, were able presently to slip away,
which they did to the rear of our column, I think,
for I did not see them again ; but I, forced to lead
my horse, was helpless.
I leave it to you, my friends, to decide what
strictures should be passed on such persistency. I
cannot help feeling that it was greatly to my credit
that I managed to keep within bounds of politeness
under such circumstances. One thing, however, is
eternally sure: the more a lady pursues, the more a
gentleman withdraws, and accordingly those ladies
who throw feminine decorum to the winds only
defeat their own ends.
I said this-slightly veiled-to Mrs. Menzies-Legh
that morning, taking an opportunity her restless and
leaping conversation offered to administer the little
lesson. No veils however were thin enough for her
to see through, and instead of becoming red and
startled she looked at me through her eyelashes with
an air of pretended innocence and said, " But Baron
dear, what is feminine decorum ? "
As though feminine decorum or modesty or virtue
were things that could be explained in any words
decent enough to fit them for a gentleman to use to
a lady!
That was a tiring day. Canterbury is a tiring
place; at least, it would be if you let it. I did not,
however, let it tire me. And such a hot place. It is
a steaming town with the sun beating down on it,
and full of buildings and antiquities one is told one
must be longing to look at. After a day's march in
the dust it is not antiquities one longs for, and I
watched with some contempt the same hypocritical
attitude take possession of the party that had
distinguished it at Bodiam.
We arrived there about four, and Menzies-Legh
pitched on an exceedingly ugly camping ground on
a slope just outside the city, with villa residences so
near that their inhabitants could observe us, if they
had telescopes, from their windows. It was a field
from which the corn had been cut, and the hard straw
remaining hurt one's weary feet; nor had it any
advantages that I could see, though the others spoke
of the view. This, if you please, consisted of the
roofs of the houses in the town and a cathedral rising
from their midst in a network of scaffolding. I
pointed this out to them as they stood staring, but
Menzies-Legh was quite unshaken in his determination
to stay just on that spot, in spite of there being
a railway line running along the bottom of the field
and a station with all its noises within a stone's throw.
I thought it odd to have come to a town at all, for till
then the party had been unanimous in its desire to
avoid even villages, but on my remarking on this
they murmured something about the cathedral, as
though the building below, or rather the mass of
scaffolding, were enough to excuse the most inconsistent conduct.
The heat of that shadeless stubblefield was
indescribable. It did not possess a tree. At the
bottom was, as I have said, the railway. At the top,
just above where we were, a market garden, a thing
of vegetables, whose aim is to have as few shadows
as possible. Languidly the party made preparations
for settling down. Languidly and after a long delay
Menzies-Legh dragged out the stew-pot. In spite of
the heat I was as hungry as a man ought to be
who, at four o'clock, has not yet dined, and as I
watched the drooping caravaners listlessly preparing
the potatoes and cabbages and boiled bacon that I
now knew so very thoroughly, this having been our
meal (except once or twice when we had chickens, or,
in extremity, underdone sausages) since the beginning
of the tour, a brilliant thought illuminated the gloom
of my brain: Why not slip away unnoticed, and
down in the town cause myself to be served in the
dining-room of an hotel with freshly roasted meat
and generous wine?
Very cautiously I raised myself from the hard hot
stubble.
Casually I glanced at the view.
With an air of preoccupation I went behind the
Elsa, the first move towards freedom, as though to
fetch some accessory of the meal from our larder.
"Do you want anything, Otto ? " asked my
officious and tactless wife trotting after me-a thing
she never does when I do want anything.
Naturally I was a little snappish; but then if she
had left me alone would I have snapped ? Wives
are great forcers of faults upon a man. So I snapped ;
and she departed; chidden.
Looking about me, up at the sky, and round the
horizon, as though intent on thoughts of weather, I
inconspicuously edged towards the market garden
and the gate. With a man in the garden searching
for slugs I spent a moment or two conversing, and
then, a backward glance having assured me the
caravaners were still drooping in listless preparation
round the stew-pot, I sauntered, humming, through
the gate.
Immediately I ran into Jellaby, who, a bucket of
water in each hand, was panting along the road.
" Hullo Baron," he gasped-" enjoying yourself ? "
" I am going," said I with much presence of mind
combined with the seriousness that repudiates any
idea of enjoyment, " to buy some matches. Ours
are running short."
" Oh ? " said he, plumping down his buckets and
fumbling among the folds of his flappy clothes,
" I can lend you some. Here you are."
And he held out a box.
" Jellaby," said I, " what is one box to a whole-
shall we call it household ? My wife requires many
matches. She is constantly striking them. It is
her husband's duty to see that she has enough.
Keep yours. And farewell."
And waking at a pace that prohibited pursuit by
a man with buckets I left him.
I have had so many dinners in dining-rooms since
that one at Canterbury, ordered repasts without
grease and that kept hot, that the wonder of it has
lost in my memory much of its first brightness.
You, my hearers, who dine as I now do regularly
and well, would hardly if I could still describe be
able to enter into my feelings. I found a cool room
in an inn with the pleasantly un-English name
Fleur de Lys, and a sympathetic waiter who fell in
at once with my views about fresh air and shut all
the windows. I had a newspaper, and I sipped a
cognac while the meal was preparing. I ordered
everything on the list except bacon, chickens, and
sausages. I also would not eat potatoes, and declined,
as a vegetable, cabbage. I drank much wine, full-
bodied and generous, but I refused after dinner to
drink coffee.
Filled and hallowed, once more in thorough tune
with myself and life and ready to take any further
experiences the day might bring with unruffled
geniality, I left towards dusk the temple that had
thus blest me (after debating within myself whether
it would not be prudent having regard to the future
in further lanes and fields to sup first, and regretfully
realising that I could not), and leisurely made my
way across the street to that other temple, whose
bells announced the inevitable service.
My decision to peep cautiously in and see whether
the parson were alone before definitely committing
myself to a pew was unnecessary, first because there
were no pews but a mighty emptiness, and secondly
because, along the dusk of this emptiness, groups of
persons made their way to a vast flight of steps
dividing the place into two and leading up to a
region, into which they disappeared, of glimmering
lights. Too clever now by far to go where there
were lights and praying might be demanded of me,
I wandered on tiptoe among the gathering shadows
at the other end. It grew quickly darker among
the towering pillars and dim, painted windows. The
bells left off ; the organ began to rumble about ;
and a distant voice, with a family likeness to that
of Raggett, sing-songed something long. It had no
ups and downs, no breaks ; it was a drawn out
thread of sound, thin and sweet like a trickle of
liquid sugar. Then many voices took up the sing-
song, broadening it out from a thread to a band.
Then came the single trickle again ; and so they
went on alternately, while I, hidden among the pillars,
listened very well pleased.
When the organ began, and an endless singing
and repeating of the same tune, I cautiously advanced
nearer in search of something to sit on. To the right
of the steps I found what I wanted, an empty space
in itself as big as our biggest church in Storchwerder
but small in comparison to the rest, with immense
windows full of the painted glass that becomes so
confused and meaningless in the dusk, no lights, and
here and there a chair or two.
I sat down at the foot of a huge pillar in this dark
and unobserved corner, while the organ above me
and the singing voices filled the spaces of the roof
with their slumber-inciting repetitions. Presently, as
a tired and comfortable man would do, I fell asleep,
and was only wakened by the subdued murmur just
round the edge of the pillar of two people talking, and
I instantly, almost before my eyes opened, recognised
that it was Frau von Eckthum and Jellaby.
They were apparently sitting on some chairs I
had noticed as I came round to the greater obscurity
of mine. They were so close that it was practically
into my ear that they spoke. The singing was
finished, and I fancy the congregation had dispersed,
for the organ was playing softly and the glimmer of
lights had gone out.
My ears are as quick as any man's, and I was
greatly amused at the situation. " Now," thought
I, " I shall hear what sort of stuff Jellaby inflicts on
patient and inexperienced ladies."
It also occurred to me that it would be interesting
to hear how she talked to him, and so discover
whether the libel were true that except in my presence
she chatted and was jocular. Jocular ? Can
anything be less what one wishes in the woman one
admires ? Of course she was not, and Mrs. Menzies-
Legh was only (very naturally) jealous. I therefore
sat quite still, and became extremely alert and wide
awake.
They were certainly not laughing. That, however,
may have been the cathedral-not that men of
Jellaby's stamp have even a rudimentary sense of
reverence and decency-but anyhow part of the libel
was disposed of, for the gentle lady was serious.
She was, it is true, a good deal more fluent than I
knew her, but she seemed moved by some strong
emotion which no doubt accounted for that. What
I could not account for was her displaying emotion
to a person like Jellaby. The first thing, for instance,
that I heard her say was, " It is all my fault." And
her voice vibrated with penitence.
" Oh but it wasn't, you know," said Jellaby.
.
"Yes it was. And I feel I ought to take a
double share of the burden, and instead I don't take
any."
Burden ? What burden could the tender lady
possibly have to bear that would not gladly be borne
for her by many a masculine shoulder, including
mine ? I was about to put my head round the
pillar's edge to assure her of this when she began to
speak again.
" I did try-at first," she said. " But I-I simply
can't. So I shift it on to Di."
Di, my friends, is Mrs. Menzies-Legh, christened
with prophetic paganism Diana.
" An extremely sensible thing to do," thought I,
remembering the wiriness of Di.
" She is very wonderful," said Jellaby.
" Yes," I silently agreed, " most."
" She is an angel," said her (I suppose naturally)
partial sister, whose sentiments were besides no doubt
at that moment coloured by the surroundings in which
she found herself. But I could not help being
entertained by this example of lovable blindness.
" It is so sweetly good of her to keep him off
us," continued Frau von Eckthum. " She does it so
kindly. So unselfishly. What can it be like to have
such a husband ? "
" Ah," thought I, a light illuminating my mind,
" they are talking of our friend John. Naturally
his charming sister-in-law cannot bear him. Nor
should she be called upon to do so. To bear her
husband is solely a wife's affair."
"What can it be like?" repeated Frau von
Eckthum, in the voice of one vainly trying to realise
something beyond words bad.
" I can't think," said Jellaby ; basely, I thought,
for he professed much outward friendship for
John.
" Of course she is amused-in a way," continued
Frau von Eckthum, " but that sort of amusement
soon palls, doesn't it ? "
" Extraordinarily soon," said Jellaby.
" Before it has so much as begun," thought I,
recollecting the man's sallow, solemn visage. But
then it is no part of a wife's functions to be
amused.
" And she is really sorry for him," said Frau von
Eckthum.
" Indeed ? " thought I, entertained by the
patronising attitude implied.
" She says," continued her gentle sister, " that his
loneliness, whether he knows it or not, makes her
ache."
Well, I did not mind Mrs. Menzies-Legh aching,
so thought nothing definite there.
" She doesn't want him to notice we get out of
his way-she is afraid he might be hurt. Do you
think he would be ? "
" No," said Jellaby. " Pure leather."
I agreed, though once again surprised at Jellaby's
baseness.
" I can't think," continued Frau von Eckthum,-
" I suppose it's because I am so bad-but I really
cannot think how she can endure him, and in such
doses."
"He is undoubtedly," said Jellaby, " a very
grievous bounder."
" What," I wondered, " is a bounder ? " But I
applauded Jellaby's sentiment nevertheless, for there
was no mistaking its nature, though his baseness was
really amazing.
" It must be because Di has such a vivid imagination,"
continued her sister musingly. " She sees
what he might have been, what he probably was
meant to be-"
" And what he would still be," put in Jellaby,
" if only he would allow his nice wife to influence
him a little."
" But John," thought I, " in that is right. Let
us be fair and admit his good sides. A wife should
never, under any circumstances, be allowed-"
Then, suddenly struck by the point of view, by
the feminine idea (Socialists have the minds of women)
of a man's being restored to what he was primarily
intended to be when he issued newly-made (as poets
and parsons would say) from the hands of his Maker
through the manipulations of Mrs. Menzies-Legh,
my sense of humour played me a nasty trick (for I
would have liked to have heard more) and I found
myself bursting into a loud chuckle.
" What's that ? " exclaimed Jellaby, jumping up.
He soon saw what it was, for I immediately put
my head round the edge of the pillar.
They both stared at me in a strange alarm.
" Pray do not suppose," I said, smiling reassuringly, " that I am a ghost."
They stared without a word.
" You look as though I might be."
They went on staring.
" I could not help, as I sat here, hearing what
you were saying."
They stared as speechless as though they had been
caught killing somebody.
" I really am not a spirit," said I, getting up.
" Look-do I look like one ? "
And striking a match I playfully passed
it backwards and forwards across my features.
But its light at the same time showed me a flush
of the most attractive and vivid crimson on Frau von
Eckthum's face, colouring it from her hair to her
throat. She looked so beautiful like that, she who
was ordinarily white, that immediately lighting
another I gazed at her in undisguised admiration.
" Pardon me," I said, holding it very near her
while her eyes, fixed on mine, still seemed full of
superstitious terror, " pardon me, but I must as a
man and a judge look at you."
Jellaby however, unforgivably ill-bred as ever,
knocked the match out of my hand and stamped on
it. " Look here Baron," he said with unusual heat,
" I am very sorry-as sorry as you like, but you really
mustn't hold matches in front of somebody's face."
" Why sorry, Jellaby ? " I inquired mildly, for
I was not going to have a scene. " I do not mind
about the match. I have more."
" Sorry, of course, that you should have heard-"
" Every word, Jellaby," said I.
" I tell you I'm frightfully sorry-I can't tell you
how sorry-"
" You may be assured," said I, " that I will be
discreet."
With her eyes fixed on mine, and that strange
look of perfect fright in them, she got up slowly and
put her hand on my proffered arm.
I led her away with careful tenderness.
Jellaby, I believe, followed in the distance.
He stared, with a face of stupid surprise.
" Discreet ? " said he.
" Discreet, Jellaby. And it may be a relief to
you to know," I continued, " that I heartily endorse
your opinion."
Jellaby's mouth dropped open.
" Every word of it."
Jellaby's mouth remained open.
" Even the word bounder, which I did not
understand but which, I gathered from your previous
remarks, is a very suitable expression."
Jellaby's mouth remained open.
I waited a moment, then seeing that it would not
shut and that I had really apparently shattered their
nerves beyond readjustment by so suddenly popping
round on them in that ghostly place, I thought it
best to change the subject, promising myself to
return to it another time.
So I picked up my hat and stick from the chair
I had vacated-Jellaby peered round the pillar at
this piece of furniture with his unshut mouth still
denoting unaccountable shock-bowed, and offered
my arm to Frau von Eckthum.
" It is late," said I with tender courtliness, " and
I observe an official approaching us with keys. If
we do not return to the camp we shall have your
sister setting out, probably on angelic wings "-she
started-" in search of you. Let me, dear lady,
conduct you back to her. Nay, nay, you need have
no fears-I really can keep a secret."
XX
LIFE is a strange thing, and full of surprises. The
day before, you think you know what will happen
on the morrow, and on the morrow you find you did
not. Light as you may the candle of your commonsense,
and peer as you may by its shining into the
future, if you see anything at all it turns out to have
been, after all, something else. We are surrounded
by tricks, by illusions, by fluidities. Even when the
natural world behaves pretty much as experience
has led us to expect, the unnatural world, by which
I mean (and I say it is a fair description) human
beings, does nothing of the sort. My ripe conclusion,
carefully weighed and unattackably mellow, is that all
one's study, all one's thought, all one's experience,
all one's philosophy, lead to this: that you cannot
account for anything. Do you, my friends, interrupt
me here with a query ? My answer to it is-Wait.
The morning after the occurrences just described
I overslept myself, and on emerging about ten o'clock
in search of what I hoped would still be breakfast I
found the table tidily set out, the stove alight and
keeping coffee warm, ham in slices on a dish, three
eggs waiting to be transferred to an expectant
saucepan, and not a single caravaner in sight except
Menzies-Legh.
Him, of course, I now pitied. For to have a
treacherous friend, and a sister-in-law of whom you
are fond but who in her heart cannot endure you, to
be under the delusion that the one is sincere and
the other loving, is to become a fit object for pity ;
and since no one can at the same time both pity
and hate I was not nearly so much annoyed as I
otherwise would have been at finding my glum-faced
friend was to keep me company. Annoyed, did I
say ? Why, I was not annoyed at all. For though
I might pity I was also secretly amused, and further,
the feeling that I now had a little private
understanding with Frau von Eckthum exhilarated me into
more than my usual share of good humour.
He was sitting smoking; and when I appeared,
fresh, and rested, and cheery, round the corner of the
Elsa, he not only immediately said Good morning
but added an inquiry as to whether I did not think
it a beautiful day ; then he got up, went across to
the stove, put the eggs in the saucepan, and fetched
the coffee-pot.
This was very surprising. I tell you, my friends,
the moods of persons who caravan are as many and
as incalculable as the grains of sand on the sea shore.
If you doubt it, go and do it. But you cannot
reasonably doubt it after listening to the narrative.
Have I not told you in the course of it how the
party's spirits were up in the skies one hour, and down
on the ground the next, how their gaiety some days
at breakfast was childish in its folly, and their silence
on others depressing, how they quoted poetry and
played at Blind Man's Buff in the morning, and in
the afternoon dragged their feet without speaking
through the mud, how they talked far too much
sometimes, and then, when I wished to, would not
talk at all, how they were suddenly polite and
attentive, and then as suddenly forgot I could possibly
want anything, how the wet did not damp their
hilarity one day, and no amount of sunshine coax
it forth the next ? But of all their moods this of
Menzies-Legh's in the field above Canterbury was the
one that surprised me most.
You see, he was naturally so very glum. True
at the beginning there had been gleams of light, but
they soon became extinguished. True also at Frogs'
Hole Farm, when demonstrating truths by means of
tea in glasses, he had been for a short while pleasant,
-only however to plunge immediately and alll the
deeper into gloom and ill-temper. Gloom and ill-
temper was his normal state ; and to see him attending
to my wants, doing it with unmistakable assiduity,
actively courteous, was astonishing. I was astonished.
But my breeding enabled me to behave as though
it were the most ordinary thing in the world, and I
accepted sugar from him and allowed him to cut my
bread with the blank expression on my face of him
who sees nothing unusual or interesting anywhere,
which is, I take it, the expression of the perfect
gentleman. When at length my plate was surrounded
by specimens of all the comforts available
and I had begun to eat he sat down again, and leaning
his elbow on the table and fixing his eyes on the city
already sweltering in heat and vapour below resumed
his pipe.
A train puffed out of the station along the line at
the bottom of our field, jerking up slow masses of
white steam into the hot, motionless air.
" There goes Jellaby's train," said Menzies-Legh.
" Jellaby's what ? " said I, cracking an egg.
" Train," said he.
" Why, what has he got to do with trains ? " I
asked, supposing with the vagueness of want of
interest that Jellaby, as well as being a Socialist,
was a railway director and kept a particular train as
another person would keep a pet.
" He's in it," said Menzies-Legh.
I looked up from my egg at Menzies - Legh's
profile.
" What ? " said I.
" In it," said he. " Obliged to go."
" What--Jellaby gone ? First Lord Sidge, and
now Jellaby ? "
Naturally I was surprised, for I had heard and
noticed nothing of this. Also the way one after
the other left without saying good-bye seemed to me
inconsiderate-at least that: probably more.
" Yes," said Menzies-Legh. " We are-we are
very sorry."
I could not, however, honestly join in any sorrow
over Jellaby, so merely remarked that the party was
shrinking.
" Yes," said Menzies-Legh, " that's rather our
feeling too."
" But why has Jellaby ? "
" Oh well, you know, public man. Parliament.
And all that."
" Does your Parliament reassemble so shortly ? "
" Oh well, soon enough. You have to prepare, you
know. Collect your wits, and that sort of thing."
" Ah yes. Jellaby should not leave that to the
last minute. But he might," I added with a slight
frown, " have taken leave of me according to the
customs of good society. Manners are manners, after
all is said and done."
" He was in a great hurry," said Menzies-Legh.
There was a silence, during which Menzies-Legh
smoked and I breakfasted. Once or twice he cleared
his throat as though about to say something, but
when I looked up prepared to listen he continued his
pipe and his staring at the city in the sun below.
" Where are the ladies ? " I inquired, when the
first edge of my appetite had been blunted and I
had leisure to look about me.
Menzies-Legh shifted his legs, which had been
crossed.
" They went to the station with Jellaby to see the
last of him," said he.
" Indeed. All of them ? "
" I believe so."
Jellaby then, though he could not have the
courtesy to say good-bye to me, could take a prolonged
farewell of my wife and of the other members
of our party.
" He is not what we in our country would call a
gentleman," I said, after a silence during which I
finished the third egg and regretted there were no more.
" Who is not ? " asked Menzies-Legh.
" Jellaby. No doubt the term bounder would
apply to him quite as well as to other people."
Menzies-Legh turned his sallow visage to me.
" He's a great friend of mine," he said, the familiar
scowl weighing down his eyebrows.
I could not help smiling and shaking my head at
that, all I had heard the night before so very fresh
in my memory.
" Ah my dear sir," I said, " be careful how you
trust your great friends. Do not give way too
lavishly to confidence. Belief in them is all very well,
but it should not go beyond the limits of reason."
" He's a great friend of mine," repeated Menzies-
Legh, raising his voice.
" I wish then," said I, " you would tell me what
a bounder is."
He glowered at me a moment from beneath black
brows. Then he said more quietly-
" I'm not a slang dictionary. Suppose we talk
seriously."
" Certainly," said I, reaching out for the jam.
He cleared his throat. " I got a lot of letters and
telegrams last night," he said.
" How did you manage that ? " I asked.
" They were waiting for me at the post-office here.
I had telegraphed for them to be forwarded. And
I'm afraid-I'm sorry, but it's inevitable-we shall
have to be off."
" Off what ? " said I, for a few of the more intimate
English idioms still remained for me to master.
" Off," said he. " Go. Leave this."
" Oh ? " said I. "Well, we are used to that.
This tour, my dear sir, is surely the very essence of
what you call being off. Where do we go next ? I
trust to a place with trees in it."
" You don't understand, Baron. We don't go
anywhere next as far as the caravans are concerned.
My wife and I are obliged to go home."
I was, of course, surprised. " We are indeed," said
I after a moment, " shrinking rapidly."
Then the thought of being rid of Mrs. Menzies-
Legh and her John and Jellaby at, so to speak, one
swoop, and continuing the tour purged of these baser
elements with the tender lady entirely in our charge
made me unable to repress a smile of satisfaction.
Menzies-Legh looked in his turn surprised. " I am
glad," he said, " that you don't mind."
" My dear sir," I said courteously, " of course I
mind, and we shall miss you and your-er-er-"
it was difficult on the spur of the moment to find an
adjective, but Frau von Eckthum's praises of her sister
the night before coming into my mind I popped in
the word suggested-" angelic wife "
He stared, ungratefully I thought, considering
the effort it had been.
" But," I continued, " you may be very sure we
shall take every care of your sister-in-law, and return
her safe and well into your hands on September the
first, which is the date my contract with the owner
of the Elsa expires."
" I'm afraid," said he, " I wasn't clear. We all
go. Betti included, and Jumps and Jane too. I'm
very sorry," he interrupted, as I opened my mouth,
" very sorry indeed that things should have turned
out so unexpectedly, but it is absolutely impossible
for us to go on. Out of the question."
And he set his jaws, and shut his mouth into a
mere line of opposition and finality.
Well, my friends, what do you say to that ? What
do you think of this example of the surprises life has
in store for one ? And, incidentally, what do you
think of human nature ? Especially of human nature
when it caravans ? And still more especially of human
nature that is also English ? Not without reason
do our neighbours label the accursed island perfide
Albion. It is true I am not clear about the Albion,
but I am very clear about the perfide.
" Do you mean to tell me," I said, leaning towards
him across the table and forcing him to meet my gaze,
" that your sister-in-law wishes to go with you ? "
" She does," said he.
" Then, sir-" I began, amazement and indignation struggling together within me.
" I tell you, Baron," he interrupted, " we are very
sorry things have turned out like this. My wife is
most genuinely distressed. But she too sees the
impossibility-unforeseen complications demand we
should go home."
" Sir-" I again began.
" My dear Baron," he again interrupted, " it
needn't in the least interfere with you. Old James
will stay with you if you and the Baroness would like
to go on."
" Sir, I have paid for a month, and have only had
a week."
" Well, go on and finish your month. Nobody is
preventing you."
" But I was persuaded to join the tour on the
understanding that it was a party-that we were all
to be together-four weeks together-"
"My dear fellow," said he (never had I been
addressed as that before), " you talk as if it were a
business arrangement, a buying and selling, as if we
were bound by a contract, under an agreement-"
" Your sister-in-law inveigled me into it,"
I exclaimed, emphasising what I said by regular beats on
the table with my forefinger, " on the definite
understanding that it was to be a party and she-was-to be
-a-member of it."
" Pooh, my dear Baron-Betti's definite understandings.
She's in love, and when a woman's that
it's no earthly use-"
" What ? " said I, startled for a moment out of all
self-possession.
" Well ? " he said, looking at me in surprise.
" Why not ? She's young. Or do you consider it
improper for widows-- "
" Improper ? Natural, sir-natural. How long--?"
" Oh, before the tour even started. And propinquity,
seeing each other every day-well," he
finished suddenly, " one mustn't talk about it, you
know."
But you, my friends, what do you say to that ?
What do you think of this second example of the
surprises life has in store for us ? I have been in two
minds as to whether I would tell you this one at all,
but to a law-abiding man, calm and objective as I
know myself to be and as you by now must know me
too, such an incident though pleasurable could not
in any way affect or alter my conduct. Strictly
Menzies-Legh was to be censured for mentioning it;
however that, I suppose, was what Jellaby called the
bounder coming out in him, and I perceived that
whatever they exactly may be bounders have their
uses. I repeat, I make no attempt to deny that it
was a pleasurable incident, and although I am aware
Storchwerder never liked her (chiefly, I firmly believe,
because she would not ask it to her dinners) I am
convinced that not one of you, my friends, and I say
it straight in your faces, but would have been glad
to stand at that moment in my shoes. I did not
forget I was a husband, but you can be a husband and
yet remain a man. I think I behaved very creditably.
Only for an instant was there the least little lapse
from complete self-possession. Immediately I became
and remained perfectly calm. Edelgard ; duty; my
position in life; my beliefs; I remembered them all.
It also occurred to me (but I could not well tell
Menzies-Legh) that having regard to the behaviour
throughout the tour of his wife it was evident these
things ran in families. I could not tell him, but I felt
myself inwardly in every way tickled. All I could do,
indeed all I did do, was to say " Strange, strange
world," and get up from my chair because I found
myself unable to continue sitting in it.
" But what do you propose to do ? " Menzies-Legh
asked, after he had watched me taking a hasty turn
or two up and down in the sun.
" Behave," said I, stopping in front of him, " as an
officer and a gentleman."
He stared. Then he got up and said with a touch
of impatience-a most unreliable person as regards
temper-" Yes, yes-no doubt. But what shall I tell
old James about your caravan ? Are you going on
or not ? If not, he'll pilot it home for you. I'm afraid
I must know soon. I haven't much time. I must get
away to-day."
" What ? To-day ? "
" I must. I'm very sorry. Obliged to, you
know-"
" And the Ailsa ? "
" Oh that's all arranged. I telegraphed last night
for one of the grooms. He'll be down in an hour or
two and take charge of it back to Panthers."
" And the Ilsa ? "
" He'll take that too."
" No my dear sir," said I firmly. " You leave the
Ilsa in our charge-it and its contents."
" Eh ? " said he.
" It and its contents-human and otherwise."
" Nonsense, Baron. What on earth would you
do with Jane and Jumps ? They're going up to town
with me by train. And my wife and Betti-oh yes
by the way, my wife gave me instructions to tell you
how very sorry she was not to be able to say good
bye to you. I assure you she was really greatly
distressed, but she and Betti are motoring up to London
and felt they ought to start as early as possible-"
" But-motoring ? You said they had gone to the
sta--"
" So they did. They saw Jellaby off, and then
were picked up by a motor I ordered for them last night
in the town, and went straight from there "
I heard no more. He went on speaking, but I
heard no more. The series of surprises had done
their work, and I could attend to nothing further.
I believe he continued to express regret and offer
advice, but what he said fell on my ear with the
indifferent trickling of water when one is not thirsty.
At first anger, keen resentment, and disappointment
surged within me, for why, I asked myself, did she
not say good-bye? I walked up and down on the
hot stubble, my hands deep in my pockets and myself
deep in conflicting emotions, while Menzies-Legh
supposing I was listening regretted and advised,
asking myself why she did not say good-bye ? Then,
gradually, I could not but see that here was tact,
here was delicacy, the right feeling of the truly
feminine woman, and began to admire her all the more
because she had not said it. By degrees composure
stole upon me. Reason returned to my assistance.
I could think, arrange, decide. And before Edelgard
came back with the two children, mere heated debris
of that which had lately been so complete, what I had
decided with the clear-headed rapidity of the practical
and sensible man was to give up the Elsa, lose my
money, and go home. Home after all is the best
place when life begins to wobble; and home in this
case was very near the Eckthum property-I only
had to borrow a vehicle, or even in extremity take a
Droschke, and there I was. There too the delightful
lady must sooner or later be, and I would at least see
her from time to time, whereas in England among her
English relations she was entirely and hopelessly
cut off.
Thus it was, my friends, that I did not see Frau
von Eckthum again. Thus it was our caravaning
came to an untimely end.
You can figure to yourselves what kind of reflections
a man inclined to philosophise would reflect as the
reduced party hastily packed, in the heat and glare
of the summer morning, that which they had unpacked
a week previously amid howling winds and hail
showers in the yard at Panthers. Nature then had
frowned, but vainly, on our merriment. Nature now
was smiling, equally vainly on our fragments. One
brief week; and what had happened? Rather, I
should say, what had not happened ?
On the stubble I walked up and down lost in reflection,
while Edelgard, helped (officiously I thought,
but I did not care enough to mind) by Menzies-Legh,
stuffed our belongings into bags. She had asked no
questions. If she had I would not have answered
them, being little in the mood as you can imagine
to put up with wives. I just told her, on her return
from seeing Jellaby off, of my decision to cross by
that night's boat, and bade her get our things together.
She said nothing, but at once began to pack. She
did not even inquire why we were not going to look at
London first, as we had originally planned. London?
Who cared for London? My mood was not one in
which a man bothers about London. With reference
to that city it can best be described by the single
monosyllable Tcha.
I will not linger over the packing, or relate how
when it was finished Edelgard indulged in a prolonged
farewell (with embraces, if you please) of the two
uninteresting fledglings, in a fervent shaking of both
Menzies-Legh's hands combined with an invitation-
I heard it-to stay with us in Storchwerder, and the
pressing upon old James in a remote corner of
something that looked suspiciously like a portion of her
dress-allowance; or how she then set out by my
side for the station steeped in that which we call
Abschiedsstimmung, old James preceding us with our
luggage while the others took care for the last time
of the camp; or with what abandonment of apparent
affectionate regret she hung herself out of the train
window as we presently passed along the bottom of the
field and waved her handkerchief. Such rankness
of sentiment could only make me shrug my shoulders,
filled as I was by my own absorbing thoughts.
I did glance up, though, and there on the stubble,
surrounded by every sort of litter, stood the three
familiar brown vehicles blistering in the sun, with
Menzies-Legh and the fledglings knee-deep in straw
and saucepans and bags and other forlorn discomforts,
watching us depart.
Strange how alien the whole thing seemed, how
little connection it seemed to have with me now that
the sparkling bubbles (if I may refer to Frau von
Eckthum as bubbles) had disappeared and only the
dregs were left. I could not help feeling glad, as I
raised my hat in courteous acknowledgment of the
frantic wavings of the fledglings, that I was finally out
of all the mess.
Menzies-Legh gravely returned my salute ; our
train rounded a curve ; and camp and caravaners
disappeared at once and for ever into the unrecallable
past.
XXI
THUS our caravaning came to an end.
I could hardly believe it when I thought how at
that hour the day before I was lying beneath the hop-
poles of Frogs' Hole Farm with the greater part, as
I supposed, of the tour before me ; I could hardly
believe that here we were again, Edelgard and I,
tête-a-tête in a railway carriage and with a future of,
if I may coin a word, tête-a-têteness stretching
uninterruptedly ahead as far as imagination could be
induced to look. And not only just ordinary tête-a-têteness,
but with the complication of one of the
têtes, so to speak, being rankly rebellious and unwifely.
How long would it take, I wondered glancing at her
as she sat in the corner opposite me, to bring her back
to the reason in which she used before we came to
England to take delight ?
I glanced at her, and I found she was looking at
me; and immediately on catching my eye she leaned
forward and said-
" Otto, what was it you did ? "
They were the first words she had spoken to me
that day, and very naturally failing to see any point
in them I requested her not to be subtle, which is
courteous for senseless.
" Why," said she, not heeding this warning, " did
the party break up ? What was it you did ? "
Were there ever such questions ? But I recollected
she could not dream how things really were, and
therefore was not as much put out as I would
otherwise have been at the characteristically wifely fashion
of at once when anything seemed to be going wrong
attributing it to her husband.
I therefore good-humouredly applied the Aunt
Bockhugel remedy to her, and was willing to leave it
at that if she had let me. She, however, preferred to
quarrel. Without the least attempt to change the
Bockhugel face she said, " My dear Otto-poor Aunt
Bockhugel. Won't we leave her in peace ? But tell
me what it was you did."
Then I became vexed, for really the assumption of
superiority, of the right to criticise and blame, went
further than a reasonable man can permit. What I
said as we journeyed up to London I will not here
repeat; it has been said before and will be said often
enough again so long as husbands have to have wives:
but how about the responsibility resting on the wives ?
I remembered the cheerful mood I had been in on
getting up, and felt no small degree of resentment at
the manner in which my wife was trying to wipe it
out. Give me a chance, and I am the kindest of men;
take away my chance, and what can I do ?
And so, my friends, as it were with a wrangle ended
our sojourn on British soil. I lay down my pen, and
become lost in many reflections as I think of all these
things. Long ago have we settled down again to our
ordinary Storchwerder life, with an Emilie instead of
a Clothilde in the kitchen. Long ago we paid our
calls announcing to our large circle that we were back.
We have taken up the threads of duty, we have
resumed regulated existence; and gradually as the
weeks melt into months and the influence of Storchwerder
presses more heavily upon her, I have observed
that my wife shows an increasing tendency once more
to find her level. I need not have worried; I need
not have wondered how I could bring her to reason.
Storchwerder is doing it. Its atmosphere and associations
are very potent. They are being, I am thankful
to say, too strong for Edelgard. After a few preliminary
convulsions she began to cook my meals and
look after my welfare as dutifully as before, and other
effects no doubt will follow. At present she is more
silent than before the tour, and does not laugh as
readily as she used when I chance to be in a jesting mood;
also at times a British microbe that
has escaped the vigilance of those beneficent little
creatures Science tells us are in our blood on the alert
to devour intrusive foreigners crops up and causes
her to comment on my sayings and doings rather
a la Mrs. Menzies-Legh, but I frown her down or
apply the Aunt Bockhugel, and in another few months
I trust all will be exactly as it used to be.
I myself am exactly as I used to be-a plain, outspoken,
patriotic, Christian gentleman, going steadily along
the path of duty, neither looking to the right nor to
the left (if I did I should not see Fran von Eckthum
for she is still in England), and using my humble
abilities to do what I can for the glory of my country
and my Emperor.
And now having finished the narrative there is
nothing more to do but to buy a red pencil and put
marks on it. Many, I fear, will be those marks.
Unfortunate is the fact that you cannot be sincere
without at the same time being indiscreet. But I
trust that what remains will be treated by my hearers
with the indulgence due to a man who has only been
desirous of telling the whole truth, or in other words
(and which amount I take it to precisely the same
thing) of concealing nothing.
POST SCRIPTUM
A TERRIBLE thing has happened.
Finished a week ago and the invitations to come and
listen already in the post, with the flat being cleaned
in preparation and beer and sandwiches almost, as it
were, on the threshold, I have been obliged to take
my manuscript once more out of the locked drawer
which conceals it from Edelgard's eyes in order to
record a most lamentable occurrence.
My wife received a letter this morning from Mrs.
Menzies-Legh informing her that Frau von Eckthum
is about to be married to Jellaby.
No words can express the shock this has given me.
No words can express my horror at such a union.
Left to herself, helpless in the clutches of her English
relatives, the gentle creature's very virtues-her
pliability, her tender womanliness-have become the
means of bringing about the catastrophe. She was
influenced, persuaded, a prey. It is six months since
she was handed over entirely to the Menzies-Leghs,
six months of no doubt steady resistance, ending
probably in her health breaking down and in her
giving in. It hardly bears thinking of. A Briton.
A Socialist. A man in flannel. No family. No money.
And the most terrible opinions. My shock and horror
are so great, so profound, that I have cancelled the
invitations and will lock this up perhaps for ever,
certainly for some weeks; for how could I possibly
read aloud the story of our harmonious and delightful
intercourse with the tragic sequel public knowledge ?
And my wife, when she read the letter at breakfast,
clapped her hands and cried, " Isn't it splendid-oh
Otto, aren't you glad ? "
~THE END~