THE next day one of those unfortunate incidents happened which may, of course, happen to anybody, but really need not have happened just to me.
We left our camp at twelve, after the usual feverish endeavour to start much earlier, the caravans as usual nearly capsizing getting out to the field, and breaking, also as usual, in their plungings several hitherto unbroken articles, and with the wind and dust in our faces and gray, lowering clouds over our heads we resumed our daily race after pleasure.
The Sunday had been fine throughout, and there had been dew and stars at the end of it which, together with windlessness, made us expect a fine Monday. But it was nothing of the sort. Monday provided the conditions I always now associate with caravaning—a high wind, a threatening sky, clouds of dust, and a hard white road.
The day began badly and continued badly, so that even writing about it at this distance I drop unconsciously into a fretful tone. Perhaps our dinner at the inn on the Sunday had been morethan constitutions used to starvation could suddenly endure, or perhaps some of us may have eaten beyond the limits of discretion, remembering that another week was to pass before the next real meal, and these, becoming cross, had infected the rest; anyhow on Monday troubles seemed to accumulate, beginning with a bill from the farmer for the field and care of the horses of a most exorbitant nature, going on to the losing of various things in the hasty packing up, continuing with the hurting of Menzies-Legh’s foot owing to his folly in placing it where the advancing hoof of my horse was bound to go and with his being in consequence unable to do his proper share of work, and ending with the unfortunate incident I referred to above and shall presently relate.
Menzies-Legh, indeed, was strangely irritable. Perhaps his foot hurt him, but he ought not to have minded that, considering, as I told him, it was nobody’s fault but his own. I was leading the horse at the moment, and saw Menzies-Legh’s foot but never dreamed he would not remove it in time, and you cannot, as I said to him, blame a dumb animal.
“Certainly not,” agreed Menzies-Legh; but with a singular gloom.
And when I saw the exorbitance of the bill I felt bound to point out to him that strict honesty did not seem to be characteristic of his countrymen, and to enlarge on the difference between them and my own, and that seemed to irritate him too, though he said nothing.
Seeing this suppressed irritation I sought to remove it by reminding him of his wealth, and of how the rapacity of the various farmers would at the worst only mean for him one stove the less for one undeserving old woman the fewer; but even that did not cheer him—he was and remained in a bad temper. So that, vexed as I was myself at the expense of the holiday that was to have been so cheap, I could not prevent a temporary good-humour taking possession of me, which is the invariable effect produced on me by other people’s crossness. Even then, with his hurt foot, Menzies-Legh was such a slave to duty that while I was in the very act of talking the recollection of something he ought to do made him struggle up from the low chair and rugs in which his wife had carefully placed him, and limp away; and I saw no more of him for a long while beyond an occasional glimpse of his sallow visage at the window in front of his van, where he sat all day in silence driving his horse.
Behold us, then, crawling along an ugly highroad with our mouths full of dust.
The weather was alternately hot and cold, but uninterruptedly windy, and rain threatened to descend on us and actually did as the afternoonwore on. My hearers must remember that in caravaning afternoons wear on and mornings merge into them with no such thing as a real meal throughout their entire length. Long before this I had realized that plums were to be my portion: plums, or bananas, or very green apples, mitigated by a biscuit unless biscuits chanced to be scarce (in which case the ladies got them), at a time of day when the rest of Europe was sitting down comfortably to its luncheon; and I had learned to acquiesce in this as I acquiesced in all the other privations, for I saw for myself that it was impossible to arrange a cooked meal except before leaving or after arriving in camp. A reasonable man is silent before the impossible; still, plums are poor things to march on. March on them, however, I had to, and Hunger (a most unpleasant and reverberating companion) came too, and marched with me every day.
Well, I was often glad at this time that my poor Marie-Luise was spared her silver wedding journey, and that a more robust and far less deserving wife went through it in her stead. Marie-Luise was a most wifely wife, with no whalebone (if I may so express it) either about her clothes or her character. All was soft, womanly, overflowing. Touch her, and you left a dimple. Bring your pressure, even the slightest, to bear anywhere on her mind, and it immediately gave way.
“But do youlikethat sort of thing?” asked Mrs. Menzies-Legh, to whom, as we plodded along that day, I was talking in this reminiscent strain for want of a better companion.
Ahead walked Edelgard, visibly slimmer, younger, moving quickly and easily in her short skirt and new activity. It was this figure—hardly now at a distance to be distinguished from the figures of the scanty sisters—walking before me that made me think with tenderness of Marie-Luise. Edelgard was behaving badly, and when I told her so at night in our caravan she did not answer. At home she used to express immediate penitence; here she either said nothing, or said short things that reminded me of Mrs. Menzies-Legh, little odd sentences quite unlike her usual style and annoyingly difficult to reply to. And the more she behaved in this manner the more did my thoughts go back regretfully to my gentle and yielding first wife. Sometimes, I recollect, those twenty years with her had seemed long; but that was because, firstly, twenty years are long, and secondly, because we are none of us perfect, and thirdly, because a wife, unless she is careful, is apt to get on to one’s nerves. But how preferable is gentleness to an aggressive activity of mind and body. How annoying to see one’s wife striding on ahead with an ease I could not imitate and therefore in itself a slight on her husband. Aman wants a wife who sits still, and not only still but on the same chair every day so that he knows where to find her should he happen to want anything. Marie-Luise was a very calm sitter; she never moved, except to follow the then Clothilde about. Only her hands moved, in a tireless guiding of the needle through those of my under-garments which had become defective.
“But do youlikethat sort of thing?” asked Mrs. Menzies-Legh, unsympathetic as usual. Her gentle sister would have coo’d an interested Oh? and I would have felt soothed and understood.
“Like what?” I asked rather peevishly, for it occurred to me at that moment as I watched the figures in front—my wife and Jellaby and Frau von Eckthum—that I had not had a word with the latter since the walk back from church more than twenty-four hours previously, and that her sister, on the other hand, seemed never to leave my side.
“Calm sitters,” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, “and dimples all over one’s mind wherever you touch it. I suppose when you used to remove the pressure they slowly filled out again. It rather makes one think of india-rubber, doesn’t it?”
“A wife’s first duty is to be submissive,” said I, conscious that I had the Prayer-book behind me and waving side issues, such as india-rubber, resolutely aside.
“Yes, yes,” agreed Mrs. Menzies-Legh, “but——”
“And I am thankful to say,” I continued quickly, for she was about to add something that I was sure was going to be aggressive, “I am thankful to say I was very fortunate in my Marie-Luise.”
“And very fortunate in your Edelgard,” said she—they had got to Christian names the second day.
“Of course,” said I.
“She is a person everybody must love,” said she.
“Undoubtedly,” said I.
“So adaptable and quick,” continued the tactless lady.
“You are very good,” said I, raising my Panama in stiff acknowledgment of these compliments.
“And so unselfish,” said she.
I bowed again, more stiffly than before.
“Look how she cuts all the bread and butter.”
I bowed again.
“Look how she makes the coffee.”
I bowed again.
“Look how cheerful she is.”
I bowed again.
“And how clever, dear Baron.”
Clever? That indeed was a new way of looking at poor Edelgard. I could not at this repress a smile of amusement. “I am gratified that youshould have so good an opinion of my wife,” I said; and wished much to add, “But what is my wife to you that you should take it upon yourself to praise her? Is she not solely and exclusively my property?”
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, however, was absolutely rebuke-proof, and had so many answers ready that I thought it better not to bring them upon me in crowds. I did though rather cleverly turn the tables upon her, and at the same time bring the conversation to a point which really interested me, by beginning to praise her sister.
“It is good of you,” I said, “to commend my family. In return permit me to praise yours.”
“What—John?” she asked, with a quick look and something of a smile. (John was her ill-conditioned husband.) “Are you—do you like him so much?”
Now as I thought John a very poor thing indeed this question would have seemed difficult to answer to any one less ready.
“Like,” said I, with conspicuously careful courtesy, “is not at all the word that describes my feelings toward your husband.”
She looked at me sideways, then dropped her eyelashes. “Dear Baron,” she murmured, “how very——”
“I was not, however,” I interrupted hastily, for I felt the ice would not bear much skatingon, “thinking of him. I was referring to your sister.”
“Oh?” said she—almost like the charming relative herself.
“She is of course, and as you know, delightful. But of all her delightfulness do you know what strikes me as most delightful?”
“No,” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, watching me with obvious interest.
“Her conversation.”
“Yes. She is a good talker,” she admitted.
“What I call a perfect talker,” said I enthusiastically.
“I know. Everybody says so.”
“Never too much,” I said meaningly.
“Oh?” said she. “You think so? I rather imagined——” She stopped.
“So extremely sympathetic,” I continued.
“And so amusing,” said she.
“Amusing?” said I, slightly surprised, for I must say I had not till then considered it possible to be amusing on one single note, however flute-like.
“Even more—really witty. Don’t you think so?”
“Witty?” said I, with increased surprise.
She looked at me and smiled. “You evidently have not found her so,” she said.
“No. Nor do I care for wit in ladies. Yoursister has been everything that is perfect—sympathetic, an interested listener, one who shares one’s opinions completely, and who never says a word more than is absolutely necessary; but thank goodness I have not yet observed her descend to the unwomanliness of wit.”
Mrs. Menzies-Legh looked at me as though I were being funny. It was a way she had, and one which I particularly disliked; for surely few things are more offensive than to be treated as amusing when you are not. “Evidently,” said she, “you have a soothing and restraining influence over Betti, dear Baron. Has she, then, never made you laugh?”
“Certainly not,” said I with conviction.
“But look at Mr. Jellaby—do you see how he is laughing?”
“At his own dull jokes, I should say,” I said, bestowing a momentary glance on the slouching figure in front. His face was turned toward Frau von Eckthum, and he was certainly laughing, and to an unbecoming extent.
“Oh, not a bit. He is laughing at Betti.”
“I have heard your sister,” said I emphatically, “talking in general company—such company, that is, as this tour affords—and she has done it invariably seriously, and rather poetically, but never has more than smiled herself, and never raised that doubtful tribute, a laugh.”
“That,” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, “was because you were there, dear Baron. I tell you, you soothe and restrain.”
I bowed. “I am glad,” I said, “that I exert a good influence over the party.”
“Oh, very,” said she, her eyelashes cast down. “But what does Betti talk to you about, then? The scenery?”
“Your tactful sister, my dear lady, does not talk at all. Or rather, what she says consists entirely of one word, spoken indeed with so great a variety of expression that it expands into volumes. It is that that I admire so profoundly in her. If all ladies would take a lesson——”
“But—what word?” interrupted Mrs. Menzies-Legh, who had been listening with a growing astonishment on her face—astonishment, I suppose, that so near a relative should be also a person of tact and delicacy.
“Your sister simply says Oh. It sounds a small thing, and slightly bald stated in this manner, yet all I can say is that if every woman——”
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, however, made a little exclamation and bent down hastily.
“Dear Baron,” she said, “I’ve got a thorn or something in my shoe. I’ll wait for our caravan to come up, and get in and take it out.Auf Wiedersehen.”
And she fell behind.
This was the first really agreeable conversation I had had with Mrs. Menzies-Legh. I walked on alone for some miles, turning it over with pleasure. It was of course pleasant to reflect that I alone of the party had a beneficial influence over her whom her sister was entitled to describe as Betti; and it was also pleasant (though only what was to be expected) that I should exercise a good influence over the entire party. “Soothing” was Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s word. Well, what was happening was that these English people were being leavened hourly and ceaselessly with German yeast; and now that it had been put into so many words I did see that I soothed them, for I had observed that whenever I approached a knot of them, however loudly it had been laughing and talking it sank into a sudden calm—it was soothed, in fact—and presently dispersed about its various duties.
But nothing occurred after this that day that was pleasant. I plodded along alone. Rain came down and mud increased, but still I plodded. It was pretended to me that we were unusually unlucky in the weather and that England does not as a rule have a summer of the sort; I, however, believe that it does, regularly every year, as a special punishment of Providence for its being there at all, or how should the thing be so very green? Mud and greenness,mud and greenness, that is all the place is made of, thought I, trudging between the wet hedges after an hour’s rain had set everything dripping.
Stolidly I followed, at my horse’s side, whither the others led. In the rain we passed through villages which the ladies in every tone of childish enthusiasm cried out were delightful, Edelgard joining in, Edelgard indeed loudest, Edelgard in fact falling in love in the silliest way with every thatched and badly repaired cottage that happened to have a show of flowers in its garden, and saying—I heard her with my own ears—that she would like to live in one. What new affectation was this, I asked myself? Not one of our friends who would not (very properly) leave off visiting us if we looked as poor as thatch. To get and to keep friends the very least that you must have is a handsome sofa-set in a suitably sized drawing-room. Edelgard till then had been justly proud of hers, which cost a sum so round that it seems written in velvet letters all over it. It is made of the best of everything—wood, stuffing, covers, and springs, and has a really beautiful walnut-wood table in the middle, with its carved and shapely legs resting on a square of carpet so good that many a guest has exclaimed in tones of envy as her feet sank into it, “But dearest Baroness, where and how did you secure so truly glorious acarpet? It must have cost——!” And eyes and hands uplifted complete the sentence.
To think of Edelgard with this set and all that it implies in the background of her consciousness affecting a willingness to leave it, tried my patience a good deal; and about three o’clock, having all collected in a baker’s shop in a wet village called Salehurst for the purpose of eating buns (no camp being in immediate prospect), I told her in a low tone how ill enthusiasms about things like thatch sit on a woman who is going to be thirty next birthday.
“Dear wife,” I begged, “do endeavour not to be so calf-like. If you think these pretences pretty let me tell you you are mistaken. The others will not tell you so, because the others are not your husband. Nobody is taken in, nobody believes you. Everybody sees you are old enough to be sensible. But, not being your husband, they are obliged to be polite and feign to agree and sympathize, while they are really secretly lamenting your inability to adjust your conversation to your age.”
This I said between two buns; and would have said more had not the eternal Jellaby thrust himself between us. Jellaby was always coming between man and wife, and this time he did it with a glass of fizzy lemonade. Edelgard refused it, and Jellaby (pert Socialist) thanked herearnestly for doing so, saying he would be wholly unable to respect a woman who drank fizzy lemonade.
Respect a woman? What a tone to adopt to a married lady whose husband is within ear-shot. And what could Edelgard’s tone have been to him before such a one on his side came within the range of the possible?
“And I must warn you,” I continued with a slightly less pronounced patience, “very seriously against the consequences likely to accrue if you allow a person of Jellaby’s sex and standing to treat you with familiarity. Familiarity and disrespect are one and the same thing. They are inseparable. They are, in fact, twins. But not ordinary twins—rather that undividable sort of which there have been luckily only a few examples——”
“Dear Otto, do have another bun,” said she, pointing to these articles in a pile on the counter; and as I paused to choose (by means of squeezing) the freshest, she, although aware I had not finished speaking, slipped away.
I begin to doubt as I proceed with my narrative whether any but relations had better be admitted to the readings aloud after all. Friends have certain Judas-like qualities, and might, perhaps, having listened to these sketches of Edelgard with every appearance of sympathy, go away and misrepresent me. Relations on the other hand are very sincere and never pretend (which is why one prefers friends, I sometimes think) and they have, besides, the family feeling which prevents their discussing each other to the unrelated. It is possible that I may restrict my invitations solely to them; and yet it seems a pity not to let my friends in as well. Have they not often suffered in the same way too? Have they not wives themselves? God help us all.
Continuing our march in the rain we left Salehurst (where I earnestly but vainly suggested we should camp in the back-yard of the inn) and went toward Bodiam—a ruined castle, explained Lord Sigismund coming and walking with me, of great interest and antiquity, rising out of a moat which at that time of the year would be filled with white and yellow water-lilies.
He knew it well and talked a good deal about it, its position, its preservation, and especially its lilies. But I was much too wet to care about lilies. A tight roof and a shut window would have interested me far more. However, it was agreeable to converse with him, and I soon deftly turned the conversation while at the same time linking it, as it were, on to the next subject, by remarking that his serene Aunt in Germany must also be very old. He vaguely said she was, and showed a tendency to get back to the ruins nearer at hand,which I dodged by observing that she must make a perfect picture in her castle in Thuringia, the background being so harmonious, such an appropriate setting for an old lady, for, as is well known, the castle grounds contain the most magnificent ruins in Europe. “And your august Aunt, my dear Lord Sigismund,” I continued, “is, I am certain, not one whit less magnificent than the rest.”
“Well, I don’t think Aunt Lizzie actually crumbles yet, you know, Baron,” said Lord Sigismund smiling. “You should see her going about in gaiters looking after things.”
“There is nothing I would like better than to see her,” I replied with enthusiasm, for this was surely almost an invitation.
He, however, made no direct answer but got back to the Bodiam ruins again, and again I broke the thread of what threatened to become a narrative by inquiring how long it took to go by train from London to his father the Duke’s place in Cornwall.
“Oh, it’s at the end of the world,” said he.
“I know, I know. But my wife and I would not like to leave England without having journeyed thither and looked at a place so famous according to Baedeker both for its size, its splendour, and its associations. Of course, my dear Lord Sigismund,” I added with the utmost courtesy, “we expect nothing. We would be content to go as the merest tourists. In spite of the length of thejourney we should not hesitate to put up at the inn which is no doubt not far from the ducal gates. There should be no trading on what has become, certainly on my side and I hope and believe on yours, a warm friendship.”
“My dear Baron,” said Lord Sigismund heartily, “I agree entirely with you. Friendship should be as warm as one can possibly make it. Which reminds me that I haven’t asked poor Menzies-Legh how his foot is getting on. That wasn’t very warm of me, was it? I must go and see how he is.”
And he dropped behind.
At this time I was leading the procession (by some accident of the start from the bun shop) and had general orders to go straight ahead unless signalled to from the rear. I went, accordingly, straight ahead down a road running along a high ridge, the blank space of rain and mist on either side filled in no doubt on more propitious days by a good view. Bodiam lay below somewhere in the flat, and we were going there; for Mrs. Menzies-Legh, and indeed all the others including Edelgard, wished (or pretended to wish) to see the ruins. I must decline to believe in the genuineness of such a wish when expressed, as in this case, by the hungry and the wet. Ruins are very well, no doubt, but they do come last. A man will not look at a ruin if he is honest untilevery other instinct, even the smallest, has been satisfied. If, not having had his dinner, he yet expresses eagerness to visit such things, then I say that that man is a hypocrite. To enjoy looking at the roofless must you not first have a roof yourself? To enjoy looking at the empty must you not first be filled? For the roofless and the empty to visit and admire other roofless and other empties seems to me as barren as for ghosts to go to tea with ghosts.
Alone I trudged through a dripping world. My thoughts from ruins and ghosts strayed naturally—for when you are seventy there must be a good deal of the ghost about you—once more to Lord Sigismund’s august and aged Aunt in Thuringia, to the almost invitation (certainly encouragement) he had given me to go and behold her in princely gaiters, to the many distinct advantages of having such a lady on our visiting list, to conjecture as to the extent of the Duke her brother’s hospitality should we go down and take up our abode very openly at the inn at his gates, to the pleasantness (apart from every other consideration) of staying in his castle after staying in a caravan, and to the interest of Storchwerder when it heard of it.
The hooting of a yet invisible motor interrupted these musings. It was hidden in the mist at first, but immediately loomed into view, comingdown the straight road toward me at a terrific pace, coming along with a rush and a roar, the biggest, swiftest, and most obviously expensive example I had yet seen.
The road was wide, but sloped away considerably on either side from the crown of it, and on the crown of it I walked with my caravan. It was a clay road, made slippery by the rain; did these insolent vulgarians, I asked myself, suppose I was going to slide down one side in order to make room for them? Room there was plenty between me in the middle and the gutter and hedge at the sides. If there was to be sliding, why should it not be they who slid?
The motor, with the effrontery usual to its class, was right on the top of the road, in the very pick and middle of it. I perceived that here was my chance. No motor would dare dash straight on in the face of so slow and bulky an obstacle as a caravan, and I was sick of them—sick of their dust, their smell, and their vulgar ostentation. Also I felt that all the other members of our party would be on my side, for I have related their indignant comments on the slaying of a pretty young woman by one of these goggled demons. Therefore I kept on immovably, swerving not an inch from the top of the road.
The motor, seeing this and now very near, shrieked with childish rage (it had a voice likean angry woman) at my daring to thwart it. I remained firmly on my course, though I was obliged to push up the horse which actually tried of itself to make way. The motor, still shrieking, saw nothing for it but to abandon the heights to me, and endeavoured to pass on the slope. As it did it skidded violently, and after a short interval of upheaval and activity among its occupants subsided into calm and the gutter.
An old gentleman with a very red face struggled into view from among many wrappers.
I waited till he had finally emerged, and then addressed him impressively and distinctly from the top of the road. “Road hog,” I said, “let this be a lesson to you.”
I would have said more, he being unable to get away and I holding, so to speak, the key to the situation, if the officious Jellaby and the too kind Lord Sigismund had not come running up from behind breathlessly eager to render an assistance that was obviously not required.
The old gentleman, shaking himself free from his cloak and rising in the car, was in the act of addressing me in his turn, for his eyes were fixed on me and his mouth was opening and shutting in the spasms preliminary to heated conversation (all of which I observed calmly, leaning against my horse’s shaft and feeling myself to be in the right) when Lord Sigismund and Jellaby arrived.
The old gentleman was in the act of addressing me in his turn
The old gentleman was in the act of addressing me in his turn
“I do hope you’ve not been hurt——” began Lord Sigismund with his usual concern for those to whom anything had happened.
The old gentleman gasped. “What? Sidge? It’s your lot?” he exclaimed.
“Hullo, Dad!” was Lord Sigismund’s immediate and astonished response.
It was the Duke.
Now was not that very unfortunate?
IHAVE observed on frequent occasions in a life now long enough to have afforded many, a tendency on the part of Providence to punish the just man because he has been just. Not one to criticize Providence if I can avoid it, I do feel that this is to be deplored. It is also inexplicable. Marie-Luise died, I recollect, the very day I had had occasion to speak sharply to her, which almost looked, I remember thinking at the time, like malice. I was aware, however, that it was only Providence. My poor wife was being wielded as the instrument which was to put me in the wrong, and I need not say to you, my friends, who knew her and know me and were witness of the harmony of our married life, that her death had nothing to do with my rebukes. You all remember she was in perfect health that day, and was snatched from my side late in the afternoon by means of a passingdroschke. Thedroschkepassed over her, and left me, with incredible suddenness, a widower on the pavement. This might have happened to anybody, but what was so peculiarly unfortunate was that I had beenforced, if I would do my duty, to rebuke her during the hours immediately preceding the occurrence. Of course, I could not know about thedroschke. I could not know about it; I did my duty; and by the evening I was the most crushed of men, a prey to the crudest regrets and self-reproaches. Yet had I not acted aright? Conscience told me Yes. Alas, how little could Conscience do for my comfort then! In time I got over it, and regained the calm balance of mind that saw life would stand still if we feared to speak out because people might die. Indeed, I saw this so clearly that I not only married again within the year, but made up my mind that no past experience should intimidate me into not doing my duty by my second wife; I assumed, that is, from the first my proper position in the household as its guide and censor, and up to now I am glad to say Providence has left Edelgard alone, and has not used her (except in minor matters) as a weapon for making me regret I have done right.
But here, now, was this business with the Duke. Nothing could have been warmer and more cordial than my feelings toward him and his family. I admired and liked his son; I infinitely respected his sister; and I only asked to be allowed to admire, like, and respect himself. Such was my attitude toward him. Toward motors it was equally irreproachable. I detestedtheir barbarous methods, and was as anxious as any other decent man to give them a lesson and help avenge their many unhappy victims. Now came Providence, stepping in between these two meritorious intentions, and frustrating both at one blow by the simple expedient of combining the Duke with the motor. It confounded me; it punished me; it put me in the wrong; and for what? For doing what I knew was right.
“No one, not even a pastor, can expect me to like that sort of thing,” I complained to Mrs. Menzies-Legh, to whom I had been talking, owing to her sister’s being somewhere else.
“No,” said she; and looked at me reflectively as though tempted to say more. But (no doubt remembering my dislike of talkative women) she refrained.
I was sitting under one of the ruined arches of Bodiam Castle (never, my friends, go there; it is a terribly damp place), with the lean lady, while the others peered about as well as they could, being too tired to do anything but sit, and weary, too, of spirit, for I am a sensitive man, and had had a troubled day. The evening had done that which English people call drawing in. Lord Sigismund was gone—gone with his unreasonably incensed father in the motor to some place whose name I did not catch, and was not to be back till the next day. The others,including myself, had, after a prolonged search, found a very miserable camp with cows in it. It was too late to object to anything, so there we huddled round our stew-pot in an exposed field, while the wind howled and a fine rain fell. Our party was oddly silent and cheerless considering its ordinary spirits. No one said it was healthy and jolly; even the children did not speak, and sat buttoned up in mackintoshes, their hands clasped round their knees, their faces, shining with rain, set and serious. I think the way the Duke had behaved after getting out of the gutter had depressed them. It had been a disagreeable scene—I should say he was a man of a hot and uncontrolled temper—and my apologies had been useless. Then the supper took an unconscionable time preparing. For some reason the chickens would not boil (they missed Lord Sigismund’s persuasive talent) and the potatoes could not because the stove on which they stood went out and nobody noticed it. How bleak and autumnal that field, bare of trees, with the rain driving over it, looked after the unsatisfactory day I cannot describe to you. Its dreariness, combined with what had gone before, and with the bad supper, made me dislike it more than any camp we had had. The thought that up there on those dank cow-ridden heights we were to spend the night, while down in Bodiam lights twinkled and happycottagers undressed in rooms and went into normal beds instead of inserting themselves sideways into what was in reality a shelf, was curiously depressing. And when, after supper, our party was washing up by the flickering lantern-light, with the rain wetting the plates as quickly as they were dried, I could not refrain from saying as I stood looking down at them, “So this is what is called pleasure.”
Nobody had anything to say to that.
In self-defense we went down later on, dark and wild though it was, to the ruins. Sit up there in the wet we could not, and it was too early to go to bed. Nor could we play at cards in each other’s caravans, because of questions of decorum. Mrs. Menzies-Legh did, indeed, suggest it, but on my pointing this out to her with a severity I was prepared to increase if she had made the least opposition, the suggestion was dropped. Forced to stay out-of-doors we were forced to move, or rheumatism would certainly have claimed us for its own, so we set out once again along the muddy lanes, leaving Menzies-Legh (who was sulking terribly) to mind the camp, and trudged the two miles down to the castle.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh walked with me. Directly she saw I was alone, the others hurrying on ahead at a pace I did not care to keep up with, she loitered behind till I overtook her and walked with me.
I have made no secret of the fact that this lady seemed to mark me during the tour for her special prey. You, my hearers, must have noticed it by now, for I conceal nothing. I can safely say I was not to blame, for in no way did I encourage her. Not only must she have been over thirty, but more than once she had allowed herself to do that which can only be described as poking fun at me. Besides, I do not care for the type. I dislike the least suggestion of wiriness in woman; and there was nothing of her bodily (except wire) and far too much intellectually—I mean so far as a woman can be intellectual, which, of course, is not far at all. I therefore feel entirely conscience-clear, and carefully avoiding any comments which might give the impression of vanity on my part, merely state the bare facts that the lady was constantly at my elbow, that my elbow was reluctant, and that no other member of the party clung to it like that.
There she sat with me, for instance, in the ruins, pretending she was tired too, though of course she was not, for never was any one more active, and for want of a better listener—Frau von Eckthum had from the first melted away among the shadows—I was obliged to talk to her in the above strain. However, one cannot reallytalkto such a woman, not really converse with her. She soon reminded me of this fact (which I wellknew) by inquiring whether I did not think people were very apt to call that Providence which was in reality nothing more nor less than their own selves—“Or,” she added (profanely) “if they’re in another mood they call it the Devil, but it is always just themselves.”
Well, I had not come through the mud to Bodiam to be profane, so I gathered my wraps about me and prepared to go.
“But I do see your point,” she said, noticing these preparations, and realizing, perhaps, that she had gone too far. “Things do sometimes happen very unluckily, and punishments are out of all proportion to the offence. I think, for instance, it was perfectly terrible for you that you should have been scolding your wife——”
“Not scolding. Rebuking.”
“It’s the same thing——”
“Certainly not.”
“Rebuking her, then, up to the very moment—oh, it would have killed me!”
And she shivered.
“My dear lady,” said I, slightly amused, “a man has certain duties, and he performs them. Sometimes they are unpleasant, and he still performs them. If he allowed himself to be killed each time there would be a mighty dearth of husbands in the world, and what would you all do then?”
Women however have no sense of humour,and she was unable to catch at this straw of it offered her for the purpose of lightening the conversation. On the contrary, she turned her head and looking at me gravely (pretty eyes, wasted) she said, “But how much better never, never to do your duty.”
“Really——” I protested.
“Yes. If it means being unkind.”
“Unkind? Is a mother unkind who rebukes her child?”
“Oh, call it by its proper name—scolding, preaching, advising, abusing—it’s all unkind, wickedly unkind.”
“Abusing, my dear lady?”
“Come, now, Baron, what you said to the Duke——”
“Ah. That was an unfortunate accident. I did what under any other circumstances would have been my duty, and Providence——”
“Oh, Baron dear, leave Providence alone. And leave your duty alone. A tongue doing its duty is such a terrible instrument of destruction. Why, you can almost see all the little Loves and Charities turning paler and paler and weaker and weaker the longer it wags, and shrivelling up quite at last and being snuffed out. Really I have been thankful on my knees every time I have not said what I was going to say when I’ve been annoyed.”
“Indeed?” said I, ironically.
I might have added that no great strain could have been put upon her knees, for I could conceive no woman less likely to be silent if she wanted to speak. But, candidly, what did it matter? I have always found it quite impossible to take a woman seriously, even when I am attracted; and heaven knows I had no desire to sit on stones in that wet place while this one spread out her little stock of ill-assimilated wisdom for my (presumable) improvement.
I therefore began to button up my cloak with an unmistakable finality, determined to seek the others and suggest a return to the camp.
“You forget,” I said, while I buttoned, “that an outburst of annoyance has nothing whatever to do with the calm discharge of a reasonable man’s obligations.”
“What, you’ve been quite calm and happy when you’ve been doing what you call rebuke?” said she, looking up at me. “Oh, Baron.” And she shook her head and smiled.
“Calm, I hope and believe, but not happy. Nor did I expect to be. Duty has nothing to do with one’s happiness.”
“No, nor with the other one’s,” said she quickly.
Of course I could have scattered her reasoning to the winds if I had chosen to bring real logic to bear on it, but it would have taken time, shebeing very unconvinceable, and I really could not be bothered.
“Let Menzies-Legh convince her,” thought I, making myself ready for the walk back in the rain, aware that I had quite enough to do convincing my own wife.
“Try praising,” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh.
Not seeing the point, I buttoned in silence.
“Praising and encouraging. You’d be astonished at the results.”
In silence, for I would not be at the trouble of asking what it was I was to praise and encourage, I turned up my collar and fastened the little strap across the front. She, seeing I had no further intention of talking, began to get ready too for the plunge out into the rain.
“You’re not angry, Baron dear?” she asked, leaning across and looking into as much of my face as appeared above the collar.
This mode of addressing me was one that I had never in any way encouraged, but no amount of stiffening at its use discouraged it. In justice, I must remind you who have met her that her voice is not disagreeable. You will remember it is low, and so far removed from shrillness that it lends a spurious air to everything she says of being more worth listening to than it is. Edelgard described it fancifully, but not altogether badly, as being full of shadows. It vibrated, notunmusically, up and down among these shadows, and when she asked me if I were angry it took on a very fair semblance of sympathetic concern.
I, however, knew very well that the last thing she really was was sympathetic—all the aptitude for sympathy the Flitz family had produced was concentrated in her gentle sister—so I was in no way hoodwinked.
“My dear lady,” I said, shaking out the folds of my cloak, “I am not a child.”
“Sometimes I think,” said she, getting up too, “that you are not enjoying your holiday. That it’s not what you thought it would be. That perhaps we are not a very—not a very congenial party.”
“You are very good,” said I, with a stiffness that relegated her at once to an immense and proper distance away, for was not this a tending toward the confidential? And a man has to be careful.
She looked at me a moment at this, her head a little on one side, considering me. Her want of feminine reserve—conceive Edelgard staring at a living gentleman with the frank attention one brings to bear on an inanimate object—struck me afresh. She seemed absolutely without a vestige of that consciousness of sex, of thosearrière-pensées(as our conquered but still intelligent neighbours say) very properly called female modesty. A wellbrought up German lady soon casts down her eyes when facing a gentleman. She at once recollects that she is a woman and he is a man, and continues to recollect it during the whole time they are together. I am sure in the days when Mrs. Menzies-Legh was yet a Flitz she did so, but England had blunted if not completely destroyed those finer Prussian feelings, and there she stood considering me with what I can only call a perfectly sexless detachment. What, I wondered, was she going to say that would annoy me at the end of it? But she said nothing; she just gave her head a little shake, turned suddenly, and walked away.
Well, I was not going to walk too—at least, not with her. The ruins were not my property, and she was not my guest, so I felt quite justified in letting her go alone. Chivalry, too, has its limits, and one does not care to waste any of one’s stock of it. No man can be more chivalrous than I if provided with a proper object, but I do not consider that objects are proper once they have reached an age to be able to take care of themselves, neither are they so if Nature has encrusted them in an armour of unattractiveness; in this latter case Nature herself may be said to be chivalrous to them, and they can safely be left to her protection.
I therefore followed at my leisure in Mrs.Menzies-Legh’s wake, desiring to return to the camp, but not desiring to do it with her. I thought I would search for Frau von Eckthum and she and I would walk back happily together; and, passing under the arch leading into what had been the banqueting hall, I immediately found the object of my search beneath an umbrella which was being held over her head by Jellaby.
When I was a child, and still in charge of my mother, she, doing her best by me, used to say, “Otto, put yourself in his place,” if my judgments chanced to be ill-considered or headlong.
I did so; it became a habit; and in consequence I arrived at conclusions I would probably not otherwise have arrived at. So now, coming across my gentle friend beneath Jellaby’s umbrella, I mechanically carried out my mother’s injunction. At once I began to imagine what my feelings would be in her place. How, I rapidly asked myself, would I enjoy such close proximity to the boring Socialist, to the common man of the people if I were a lady of exceptionally refined moral and physical texture, the fine flower and latest blossom of an ancient, aristocratic, Conservative, and right-thinking family? Why, it would be torture; and so was this that I had providentially chanced upon torture.
“My dear friend,” I cried, darting forward, “what are you doing here in the wet and darkness unprotected? Permit me to offer you my arm and conduct you to your sister, who is, I believe, preparing to return to camp. Allow me——”
And before Jellaby could frame a sentence I had drawn her hand through my arm and was leading her carefully away.
He, I regret to say, quite unable (owing to his thick skin) to see when his presence was not desired, came too, making clumsy attempts to hold his umbrella over her and chiefly succeeding, awkward as he is, in jerking the rain off its tips down my neck.
Well, I could not be rude to him before a lady and roundly tell him to take himself off, but I do not think he enjoyed his walk. To begin with I suddenly remembered that no members of our party, except Edelgard and myself, possessed umbrellas, so that I was able to say with the mildness that is sometimes so telling: “Jellaby, what umbrella is this?”
“The Baroness kindly lent it to me,” he replied.
“Oh, indeed. Community of goods, eh? And what is she doing herself without one, may I inquire?”
“I took her home. She said she had some sewing to do. I think it was to mend a garment of yours.”
“Very likely. Then, since it is my wife’s umbrella, and therefore mine, as you will hardlydeny, for if two persons become by the marriage law one flesh they must equally become one everything else, and therefore also one umbrella, may I request you instead of inserting it so persistently between my collar and my neck to hand it over to me, and allow its lawful owner to hold it for this lady?”
And I took it from him, and looked down at Frau von Eckthum and laughed, for I knew she would be amused at Jellaby’s being treated as he ought to be.
She, of my own nation and class, must often have been, I think, scandalized at the way the English members of the party behaved to him, absolutely as though he were one of themselves. Her fastidiousness must often and often have been wounded by Jellaby’s appearance and manner of speech, by his flannel collar, his untidy clothes, the wisp of hair forever being brushed aside from his forehead only forever to fall across it again, his slender, almost feminine frame, his round face, and the ridiculous whiteness of his skin. Really, the only way to treat this person was as a kind of joke; not to take him seriously, not to allow oneself to be, as one so often was on the verge of being, angry with him. So I gave the hand resting on my arm a slight pressure expressive of mutual understanding, and looked down at her and laughed.
The dear lady was not, however, invariably quick of comprehension. As a rule, yes; but once or twice she gave the last touch to her femininity by being divinely stupid, and on this occasion, whether it was because her little feet were wet and therefore cold, or she was not attending to the conversation, or she had had such a dose of Jellaby that her brain refused any new impression, she responded neither to my look nor to my laugh. Her eyes were fixed on the ground, and the delicate and serious outline of her nose was all that I was permitted to see.
Respecting her mood, as a tactful man naturally would, I did not again directly appeal to her, but laid myself out to amuse her on the way up the hill by talking to Jellaby in a strain of mock solemnity and endeavouring to draw him out for her entertainment. Unfortunately he resisted my well-meant efforts, and was more taciturn than I had yet seen him. He hardly spoke, and she, I fear, was very tired, for only once did she say Oh. So that the conversation ended by being a disquisition on Socialism held solely by myself, listened to by Frau von Eckthum with absorbed and silent interest, and by Jellaby with, I am sure, the greatest rage. Anyhow, I made some very good points, and he did not venture a single protest. Probably his fallacious theories had never had such a thorough pulling to pieces before, forthere were two miles to go up hill and I made the pace as slow as possible. My hearers must also bear in mind that I exclusively employed that most deadly weapon for withering purposes, the double-barrelled syringe of irony and wit. Nothing can stand against the poison pumped out of these two, and I could afford to bid Jellaby the cheeriest good night as I helped the tender lady up the steps of her caravan.
He, it is amusing to relate, barely answered. But the moment he had gone Frau von Eckthum found her tongue again, for on my telling her as she was about to disappear through her doorway how greatly I had enjoyed being able to be of some slight service to her, she paused with her hand on the curtain and looking down at me, said: “What service?”
“Rescuing you from Jellaby,” said I.
“Oh,” said she; and drew back the curtain and went in.
THERE is a place about six hours’ march from Bodiam called Frogs’ Hole Farm, a deserted house lying low among hop-fields, a dank spot in a hollow with the ground rising abruptly round it on every side, a place of perpetual shade and astonishing solitude.
To this, led by the wayward Fate that had guided our vague movements from the beginning, we steadily journeyed during the whole of the next day. We were not, of course, aware of it—one never is, as no doubt my hearers have noticed too—but that that was the ultimate object of every one of our painful steps during an exceptionally long march, and that our little arguments at crossroads and hesitations as to which we would take were only the triflings of Fate, contemptuously willing to let us think we were choosing, dawned upon us at four o’clock exactly, when we lumbered in single file along a cart track at the edge of a hop-field and emerged one by one into the back yard of Frogs’ Hole Farm.
The house stood (and very likely still does) on the other side of a dilapidated fence, in asquare of rank garden. A line of shabby firs with many branches missing ran along the north side of it; a pond, green with slime, occupied the middle of what was once its lawn; and the last tenant had left in such an apparent hurry that he had not cleared up his packing materials, and the path to the front door was still littered with the straw and newspapers of his departure.
The house was square with many windows, so that in whatever corner we camped we were subject to the glassy and empty stare of two rows of them. Though it was only four o’clock when we arrived the sun was already hidden behind the big trees that crowned the hill to the west, and the place seemed to have settled down for the night. Ghostly? Very ghostly, my friends; but then even a villa of the reddest and newest type if it is not lived in is ghostly in the shiver of twilight; at least, that is what I heard Mrs. Menzies-Legh say to Edelgard, who was standing near the broken fence surveying the forlorn residence with obvious misgiving.
We had asked no one’s permission to camp there, not deeming it necessary when we heard from a labourer on the turnpike road that down an obscure lane and through a hop-field we would find all we required. Space there was certainly of every kind: empty sheds, empty barns, empty oast-houses, and, if we had chosen to open one ofthe rickety windows, an empty house. Space there was in plenty; but an inhabited farm with milk and butter in it would have been more convenient. Besides, there did undoubtedly lie—as Mrs. Menzies-Legh said—a sort of shiver over the place, an ominously complete silence and motionlessness of leaf and bough, and nowhere round could I see either a roof or a chimney, no, not so much as a thread of smoke issuing upward from between the hills to show me that we were not alone.
Well, I am not one to mind much if leaves do not move and a place is silent. A man does not regard these matters in the way ladies do, but I must say even I—and my friends will be able to measure from that the uncanniness of our surroundings—even I remembered with a certain regret that Lord Sigismund’s very savage and very watchful dog had gone with his master and was therefore no longer with us. Nor had we even Jellaby’s, which, inferior as it was, was yet a dog, no doubt with some amount of practice in barking, for it was still at the veterinary surgeon’s, a gentleman by now left far behind folded among the embosoming hills.
My hearers must be indulgent if my style from time to time is tinged with poetic expressions such as this about the veterinary surgeon and the hills, for they must not forget that the party I waswith could hardly open any of its mouths without using words plain men like myself do not as a rule even recollect. It exuded poetry. Poetry rolled off it as naturally and as continuously as water off a duck’s back. Mrs. Menzies-Legh was an especial offender in this respect, but I have heard her gloomy husband, and Jellaby too, run her very close. After a week of it I found myself rather inclined also to talk of things like embosoming hills, and writing now about the caravan tour I cannot always avoid falling into a strain so intimately, in my memory, associated with it. They were a strange set of human beings gathered together beneath those temporary and inadequate roofs. I hope my hearersseethem.
Our march that day had been more silent than usual, for the party was greatly subject, as I was gradually discovering, to ups and downs in its spirits, and I suppose the dreary influence of Bodiam together with the defection of Lord Sigismund lay heavily upon them, for that day was undoubtedly a day of downs. The weather was autumnal. It did not rain, but sky and earth were equally leaden, and I only saw very occasional gleams of sunshine reflected in the puddles on which my eyes were necessarily fixed if I would successfully avoid them. At a place called Brede, a bleak hamlet exposed on the top of a hill, we were to have met Lord Sigismundbut instead there was only an emissary from him with a letter for Mrs. Menzies-Legh, which she read in silence, handed to her husband in silence, waited while he read it in silence, and then without any comment gave the signal to resume the march. How differently Germans would have behaved I need not tell you, for news is a thing no German will omit to share with his neighbours, discussing it thoroughly,lang und breit, from every possible and impossible point of view, which is, I maintain, the human way, and the other way is inhuman.
“Is not Lord Sigismund coming to-day?” I asked Mrs. Menzies-Legh the first moment she came within earshot.
“I’m afraid not,” said she.
“To-morrow?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“What, not again at all?” I exclaimed, for this was indeed bad news.
“I’m afraid not.”
And, contrary to her practice she dropped behind.
“Why is not Lord Sigismund coming back?” I shouted to Menzies-Legh, whose caravan was following mine, mine as usual being in the middle; and I walked on backward through all the puddles so as to face him, being unable to leave my horse.
“Eh?” said he.
How like an ill-conditioned carter he looked, trudging gloomily along, his coat off, his battered hat pushed back from his sullen forehead! Another week, I thought, and he would be perfectly indistinguishable from the worst example of a real one.
“Why is not Lord Sigismund coming back?” I repeated, my hands up to my mouth in order to carry my question right up to his heavy ears.
“He’s prevented.”
“Prevented?”
“Eh?”
“Prevented by what?”
“Eh?”
This was wilfulness: it must have been.
“What—has—prevented—him?” I roared.
“Look out—your van will be in the ditch.”
And turning quickly I was just in time to pull the tiresome brute of a horse, who never could be left to himself an instant, straight again.
I walked on shrugging my shoulders. Menzies-Legh was without any doubt as ill-conditioned a specimen of manhood as I have ever come across.
At the four crossroads beyond Brede, on the party’s pausing as usual to argue over the signpost while Fate, with Frogs’ Hole Farm up her sleeve, laughed in the background, I laid my hand on Jellaby’s arm—its thinness quite made me jump—and said, “Where is Lord Sigismund?”
“Gone home, I believe, with his father.”
“Why is he not coming back?”
“He’s prevented.”
“But by what? Is he ill?”
“Oh, no. He’s just—just prevented, you know.”
And Jellaby slipped his arm out of my grasp and went to stare with the others up at the signpost.
On the road we finally decided to take, while they were all clustering round the labourer I have mentioned who directed us to the deserted farm, I approached Frau von Eckthum who stood on the outer fringe of the cluster, and said in the gentler voice I instinctively used when speaking to her, “I hear Lord Sigismund is not coming back.”
Gently as my voice was, it yet made her start; she generally did start when spoken to, being unusually (it adds to her attractiveness) highly strung.
(“She doesn’t when I speak to her,” said Edelgard, on my commenting to her on this characteristic.
“My dear, you are merely another woman,” I replied—somewhat sharply, for Edelgard is really often unendurably obtuse.)
“I hear Lord Sigismund is not coming back,” I said, then, very gently, to the tender lady.
“Oh?” said she.
For the first time I could have wished a wider range of speech.
“He has been prevented, I hear.”
“Oh?”
“Do you know what has prevented him?”
She looked at me and then at the others absorbed by the labourer with a funny little look (altogether feminine) of helplessness, though it could not of course have been that; then, adding another letter but not unfortunately another word to her vocabulary, she said “No”—or rather “N-n-n-o,” for she hesitated.
And up bustled Jellaby as I was about to press my inquiries, and taking me by the elbow (the familiarity of this sort of person!) led me aside to overwhelm me with voluble directions as to the turnings to Frogs’ Hole Farm.
Well, it was undoubtedly a blow to find by far the most interesting and amiable member of the party (with the exception of Frau von Eckthum) gone, and gone without a word, without an explanation, a farewell, or a regret. It was Lord Sigismund’s presence, the presence of one so unquestionably of my own social standing, of one whose relations could all bear any amount of scrutiny and were not like Edelgard’s Aunt Bockhügel (of whom perhaps more presently) a dark and doubtful spot round which conversation had to make carefuldétours—it was undoubtedly,