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 thethreatening 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.
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 Ithought 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 bridleinto 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 craveit 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 wereonly 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, andsome 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 intopurée, 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,” saidJellaby, 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.
“Do you, Jellaby,” I then inquired, “really understand how best to treat a sausage?”
“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 amsurprised 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 theGotha Almanachbeing 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 anote 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 potatopuree, 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 desertionI 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.
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 amas 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 noway 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 wasPanthers 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, perfectliberty, 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 theanodynes 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 theelements; 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 onthat 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, hadshenot 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 disturbedwhen 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 stuffaway. 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.