“’Ere ’e is”
“’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 surpriseI 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 driedup 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 vonEckthum. 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 almostwished 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.
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 andmurmured “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 ascolossalandgrossartig, but that is brief and business-like, it is what is expected of us, and it is a duty quickly performed and almostperfunctory, 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 orBierhallewherever 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 theliebe Gottbecause 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 thingone 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 evenless 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 myselfrapidly, 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 orFamilienbadwhich 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 aFamilienbadwere, 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 partywas 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 hisbatterie 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 uponto 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, includingold 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 underthe 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 herDachshund. 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 atendency 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 sortof 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-readingand 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.
IAM 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 thefeeble-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 Eckthumcoming 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
An imposing lady in the pew in front of us sat sideways in her corner and examined us with calm attention
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; andinquiry 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 almostmore 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 nofatigue 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 understandingexpressed, 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, oncecome, 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 isnot 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 theHerrschaftento 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 withsolemn 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 theHerrschaftento 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 theHerrschaftenare 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 theHerrschaftenof 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 oneand 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 theHerrschaften’sopinion 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 gracefulthan 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 speakingto 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 togetherabout 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.