THE CARAVANERS

                          BY THE SAME AUTHOR

                   _Elizabeth and Her German Garden_
                  _Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen_
                 _Fräulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther_
                   _Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight_
                         _The Solitary Summer_

[Illustration: _The fitful flicker of the lanterns played over rapidly
cooling eggs and grave faces_]




                            THE CARAVANERS

                           BY THE AUTHOR OF
                   “ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN”

                       [Illustration: colophon]

                     ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR LITLE


                               NEW YORK
                       DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
                                 1910

          ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
          INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

             COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY




                             ILLUSTRATIONS


The fitful flicker of the lanterns played over rapidly
cooling eggs and grave faces                               _Frontispiece_

                                                             FACING PAGE

I never saw such little shoes                                         14

Edelgard most inconsiderately leaving me to bear
the entire burden of opening and shutting our
things                                                                38

The sun shone its hottest while we slowly surmounted
this last obstacle                                                    50

It was an unnerving spectacle                                         80

“Dear Baron,” said she, “do you think it is wrong
to carry stew-pots?”                                                 100

Thus, as it were, with blacking, did I cement my
friendship with Lord Sigismund                                       102

Edelgard posing--and what a pose; good heavens,
what a pose!                                                         114

“But surely not here,” murmured Frau von Eckthum                     124

The two nondescripts, who were passing, lingered
to look                                                              134

“But, lieber Otto, is it then my fault that you
have forgotten the paper?”                                           142

“Do you, Jellaby,” I then inquired, “really understand
how best to treat a sausage?”                                        182

“’Ere ’e is”                                                         200

An imposing lady in the pew in front of us sat sideways
in her corner and examined us with calm
attention                                                            230

The old gentleman was in the act of addressing
me in his turn                                                       268

Gentle as my voice was, it yet made her start                        294




                            THE CARAVANERS




CHAPTER 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 wagonette 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 toward 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 Bockhügel, 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 recognize 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 recognizing 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 wagonette; 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-honeymooners; 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 otherwise 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

[Illustration: _I never saw such little shoes_]

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 gentleman
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 glorious cement of
blood and iron by means of which we intend to stick there.

“But I was chiefly thinking,” said Frau von Eckthum, 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 _soirées_ 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 Encyclopædia 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 cloak
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 afterward, 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.




CHAPTER 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 cozy
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 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 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 Encyclopædia, 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 napthalin (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
disheveled 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 recognized 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 a gulp of the man of the world, I was able
to chat courteously and amiably with 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 a 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 things 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 realized 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 8 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

[Illustration: _Edelgard most inconsiderately leaving me to bear the
entire burden of opening and shutting our things_]

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 Brödchen_. 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, endeavoring 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 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?”




CHAPTER 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 the 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
is 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 hop-fields 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
anæmic 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

[Illustration: _The sun shone its hottest while we slowly surmounted
this last obstacle_]

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. Afterward 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 afterward 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 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 toward 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 birthright 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 at 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, doughnuts 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 doughnuts,
(_c_) the effect of grog on combined orphans and doughnuts.

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 understood 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 pantry 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 a
doll’s house, and she, entirely forgetting the fact of which I so often
reminded 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 recognized 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
agonized 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 _al fresco_ 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 accommodations 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 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 Frau 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.




CHAPTER 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
toward 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-Legh’s 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 afterward 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 afterward 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 outward and downward 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 forever; 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 farther, 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 backward on top of the
Elsa, which in its turn began to move backward on top of the Ailsa,
which in its turn began to move backward 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 backward 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
homeward, 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
upward 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

[Illustration: _It was an unnerving spectacle_]

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! Gray 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 farther 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 eider-down quilts on the
beds, the green portière 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 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 concealed 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 civilized 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 have
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.




CHAPTER 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 appetizing 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 fashion 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 toward 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 into?

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 hobnob with a
future pastor I should object. I did object strongly. And decided, while
I dressed, that my attitude toward 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 realize 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 toward 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, sympathize 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 realize 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 eyeglasses 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

[Illustration: _“Dear Baron,” said she, “do you think it is wrong to
carry stew-pots?”_]

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 to 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,

[Illustration: _Thus, as it were, with blacking, did I cement my
friendship with Lord Sigismund_]

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.




CHAPTER 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 afterward 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.

“_Schwärmerisch_,” 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 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 under-worked,
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 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 gray, 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 criticized 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 recognized 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 emphasized.

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 toward 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

[Illustration: _Edelgard posing--and what a pose; good heavens, what a
pose!_]

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
forever)--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 realized 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 it (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 onward 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,
forever.




CHAPTER VII


A man who is writing a book should have a free hand. When I began my
narrative I hardly realized 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 waterproof 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 backward, 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. Accurséd 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 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 some one murmured was 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

[Illustration: _“But surely not here,” murmured Frau von Eckthum_]

thought her capable Frau von Eckthum refused to spend a night in the
donkey field; and Mrs. Menzies-Legh, who was absorbed in snap-shotting
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 afterward 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 toward
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 zèle 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, realize 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 farther 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 toward
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
plainspoken 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 farther
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 bland heartiness one
assumes--for no known reason--toward 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.”

[Illustration: _The two nondescripts, who were passing, lingered to
look_]

“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.




CHAPTER 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
handkerchiefful 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 toward 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 gray 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 countrywomen--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 feverishly
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 these several ways (all of them, I must concede,
unknown to me) I ought to choose.

The ditch had a hedge on its farther 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
Réaumur, 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 criticize.
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 criticize.”

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

[Illustration: _“But, lieber Otto, is it then my fault that you have
forgotten the paper?”_]

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 toward 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 upward or outward 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
crystallization 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 toward 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 have 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 kitchen 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 the 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 stew-pot, 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.

Toward 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, 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 dishcloths.

I stood in the narrow gangway lighting a cigar, and when I had done
lighting it I realized 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 toward 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
dishcloths in the darkness.




CHAPTER 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 toward 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 gray 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 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 gray-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 Frau 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 gray-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 realized, 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
bloodthirstiness 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 downward 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 toward 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 dare say 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 the 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 him, 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 appetizing 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. Red-faced 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 all get 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 thing 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.




CHAPTER 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 gray 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 can still 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 southwesterly 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 southward
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 round us like a wet gray 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 mobilize,” 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 gentlemen,” 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 residences 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 recognizing 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 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 _purée_, 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.

[Illustration: _“Do you, Jellaby,” I then inquired, “really understand
how best to treat a sausage?”_]

“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 on 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 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
occupied 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 Frau von Eckthum looking on.




CHAPTER 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 be so 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 curtain 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 not 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 afterward. 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 as I considered, for naturally it depends on 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.

[Illustration: _“’Ere ’e is”_]

“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 pretendin’
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 toward 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, down-right
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 oh’s 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.




CHAPTER XII


We supped that night beneath the stars with the field dropping downward
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 recognized 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 finnicking. 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
apologized 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 at the food he
had brought me; but I did not get another 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 afterward
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 realize 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 places--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 mœurs_, 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 toward 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 characterizes 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 my 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.




CHAPTER 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 recognizing
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

[Illustration: _An imposing lady in the pew in front of us sat sideways
in her corner and examined us with calm attention_]

began and during it whenever the sitting portions of the ritual were
reached. She was, we afterward 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 extemporizations 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--called 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 defense. 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, Fürst 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 Gräfin 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 dare 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 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 keep
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 any one 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 inkpot.”

“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 byways 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--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.




CHAPTER 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 to the
field, and breaking, also as usual, in their plungings several hitherto
unbroken articles, and with the wind and dust in our faces and gray,
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 highroad 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 realized 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 your 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 under-garments
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 second 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 toward 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 toward 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
Wiedersehen._”

And she fell behind.

This was the first really agreeable conversation I had 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 carved 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 sympathize, 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 toward 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 toward 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 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 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 very 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.

[Illustration: _The old gentleman was in the act of addressing me in his
turn_]

“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?




CHAPTER 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 criticize 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 crudest 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 feelings toward 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 toward him. Toward 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-defense 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
realizing, 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
toward 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 _arrière-pensées_ (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,
scandalized 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
forever being brushed aside from his forehead only forever 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.




CHAPTER 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 crossroads 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 upward 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 backward 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 crossroads beyond Brede, on the party’s pausing as usual to
argue over the signpost 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 signpost.

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.”

Gently 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
Bockhügel (of whom perhaps more presently) a dark and doubtful spot
round which conversation had to make careful _détours_--it was
undoubtedly,

[Illustration: _Gentle as my voice was, it yet made her start_]

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
the 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 toward 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, perhaps, 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 can 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 myself, and Jellaby, and 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 recognizes it, to
bow in silence. Yet I felt very well. I said I did, after a pause during
which I was realizing how unassailable Menzies-Legh’s position was, 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.




CHAPTER 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 afterward 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 tombstones 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 eyed 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 toward 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 sympathizing 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 on to the yellow box and said with
forced calm as I scrutinized her face:

“Dear wife, you have no idea how exactly you resemble your Aunt
Bockhügel 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 Bockhügel 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 Bockhügel 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
paralyzing 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 Bockhügel! Aunt Bockhügel!” 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 realize 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 emphasize 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 forever 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.




CHAPTER 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 woman.
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 the 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 that
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 utilizing 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 characterized
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 Frog’s 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 is 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 crystallized 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 toward 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
emphasizing 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 cost 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 backward 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, fidgetting 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 realizing 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 were 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 fidgetting 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 gray 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 realized 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 devastating 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_ forever--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 you--” (again she had the grace to 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.




CHAPTER 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 realized 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 dexterously 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 toward 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
to presently 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
toward 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 toward 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 walking 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 toward 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
realizing 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,
recognized 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 realize 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 patronizing 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
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 backward and forward 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.”

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.”

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.




CHAPTER 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 common sense, 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 seashore. 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 all 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
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 accursèd 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 toward 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 agreement----”

“Your sister-in-law inveigled me into it,” I exclaimed, emphasizing 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 _débris_ 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
philosophize 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 forever into the
unrecallable past.




CHAPTER XXI


Thus our caravaning came to an end.

I could hardly believe it when I thought how at that hour of 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-à-tête_ in a
railway carriage and with a future of, if I may coin a word,
_tête-à-têteness_ stretching uninterruptedly ahead as far as imagination
could be induced to look. And not only just ordinary _tête-à-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 Bockhügel 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 Bockhügel
face she said, “My dear Otto--poor Aunt Bockhügel. 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 criticize 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 _à la_ Mrs.
Menzies-Legh, but I frown her down or apply the Aunt Bockhügel, 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 Frau 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 forever,
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


Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

It it had not been=> If it had not been {pg 7}

though her concience=> though her conscience {pg 133}

the Menzies-Leigh couple=> the Menzies-Legh couple {pg 176}

all enioying themselves=> all enjoying themselves {pg 198}

Mrs. Menzies-Leigh=> Mrs. Menzies-Legh {pg 213}

devasting microbe=> devastating microbe {pg 340}