'No; Charlotte was not with him.'
'Indeed?'
Never was a more expressive Indeed.
'My cousin changed her plans about Berlin,' I said hastily, disturbed by
this expressiveness, 'and came back too. But she didn't care for
Stubbenkammer. She is waiting for me--for us--at Wiek. She is waiting
there till I--till we come.'
'Oh really? And the Professor?'
'The Professor goes to Wiek, too, of course.'
Mrs. Harvey-Browne gazed at me a moment as though endeavouring to
arrange her thoughts. 'Do forgive me,' she said, 'for seeming stupid,
but I don't quite understand where the Professor is. He was at
Stubbenkammer, and he will be at Wiek; but where is he now?'
'In there,' I said, with a nod in the direction of the dining-room; and
I wished with all my heart that he wasn't.
'In there?' cried the bishop's wife. 'Brosy, do you hear? How very
delightful. Let us go to him at once.' And she rustled into the room,
followed by Brosy and myself. 'You go first, dear Frau X.,' she turned
round to say, daunted by the clouds of smoke, and all the chairs and
people who had to be got out of the way; for by this time the tourists
had finished dining, and had pushed their chairs out into the room to
talk together more conveniently, and the room was dim with smoke. 'You
know where he is. I can't tell you how charmed I am; really most
fortunate. He seems to be with an English friend,' she added, for the
revellers, having paused in their din to stare at us, the Professor's
cheery voice was distinctly heard inquiring in English of some person or
persons unseen whether they knew the difference between a canary and a
grand piano.
'Always in such genial spirits,' murmured Mrs. Harvey-Browne
rapturously.
Here there was a great obstruction, a group of people blocking the
passage down the room and having to be got out of the way before we
could pass; and when the scraping of their chairs and their grumbles had
ceased we caught the Professor's conversation a little farther on. He
was saying, 'I cannot in that case, my dear young lady, caution you with
a sufficient earnestness to be of an extreme care when purchasing a
grand piano----'
'I don't ever think of doing such a thing,' interrupted a shrill female
voice, at whose sound Mrs. Harvey-Browne made an exclamation.
'Tut, tut. I am putting a case. Suppose you wished to purchase a grand
piano, and did not know, as you say you do not, the difference between
it----'
'I shan't wish, though. I'd be a nice silly to.'
'Nay, but suppose you did wish----'
'What's the good of supposing silly things like that? You _are_ a funny
old man.'
'Andrews?' said Mrs. Harvey-Browne, at this point emerging on the
absorbed couple, and speaking with a languid gentleness that curled
slightly upwards into an interrogation at the end.
Andrews, whose face had been overspread by the expression that
accompanies titters, started to her feet and froze before our eyes into
the dumb passivity of the decent maid. The Professor hardly gave himself
time to bow and kiss Mrs. Harvey-Browne's hand before he poured forth
his pleasure that this charming young lady should be of her party. 'Your
daughter, madam, I doubt not?'
'My maid,' said Mrs. Harvey-Browne, in a curdled kind of voice.
'Andrews, please see about the luggage. She _is_ rather a nice-looking
girl, I suppose,' she conceded, anxious to approve of all the Professor
said and did.
'Nice-looking? She is so exceedingly pretty, madam, that I could only
conclude she must be your daughter.'
This elementary application of balm at once soothed Mrs. Harvey-Browne
into a radiance of smiles perplexing in conjunction with her age and
supposed superiority to vanities. Forgetful of her objections to German
crowds and smoke she sat down in the chair vacated by Andrews, made the
Professor sit down again in his, and plunged into an exuberant
conversation, which began by an invitation so warm that it almost seemed
on fire to visit herself and the bishop before the summer was over in
the episcopal glories of Babbacombe. This much I heard as I slipped away
into the peace of the front room. Brosy came after me. To him the
picture of the Professor being wrapped about in Mrs. Harvey-Browne's
amenities was manifestly displeasing.
The front room seemed very calm and spacious after what we had just been
in. A few fishermen were drinking beer at the bar; in a corner sat
Andrews and Gertrud, beginning a necessarily inarticulate acquaintance
over the hold-alls; both window and door were open, and the rain came
down straight and steady, filling the place with a soft murmuring and
dampness. Across the clearness of my first decision that the Professor
must be an absolutely delightful person to be always with, had crept a
slight film of doubt. There were some things about him that might
possibly, I began in a dim way to see, annoy a wife. He seemed to love
Charlotte, and he had seemed to be very fond of me--anyhow, never before
had I been so much patted in so short a space of time. Yet the moment he
caught sight of the Alsatian bow he forgot my presence and existence,
forgot the fluster he had been in to get on after his wife, and attached
himself to it with a vehemence that no one could be expected to like. A
shadowy conviction began to pervade my mind that the sooner I handed him
over to Charlotte and drove on again alone the better. Surely Charlotte
_ought_ to go back to him and look after him; why should I be obliged to
drive round Rügen first with one Nieberlein and then with the other?
'The ways of Fate are truly eccentric,' I remarked, half to myself,
going to the door and gazing out into the wet.
'Because they have led you to Arkona on a rainy day?' asked Brosy.
'Because of that and because of heaps of other things,' I said; and
sitting down at a table on which lay a bulky tome with much-thumbed
covers, I began rather impatiently to turn over its pages.
But I had not yet reached the limits of what Fate can and will do to a
harmless woman who only asks to be left unnoticed; for while Brosy and I
were studying this book, which is an ancient visitor's book of 1843 kept
by the landlord's father or grandfather, I forget which, and quite the
best thing Arkona possesses, so that I advise the traveller, whose
welfare I do my best at intervals to promote, not to leave Arkona
without having seen it,--while, I say, we were studying this book,
admiring many of its sketches, laughing over the inevitable ineptitudes
that seem to drop with so surprising a facility from the pens of persons
who inscribe their names, examining with awe the signatures of
celebrated men who came here before they were celebrated,--Bismarck's as
assessor in 1843, Caprivi's as lieutenant, Waldersee's also as
lieutenant, and others of the kind,--while, I repeat, we were
innocently studying this book, Fate was busy tucking up her sleeves
preparing to hit me harder than ever.
'It was not Fate,' interrupted the wise relative before alluded to, as I
sat after my return recounting my adventures and trying to extract
sympathy, 'it was the first consequence of your having meddled. If you
had not----'
Well, well. The great comfort about relatives is that though they may
make what assertions they like you need not and do not believe them; and
it was Fate and nothing but Fate that had dogged me malevolently all
round Rügen and joined me here at Arkona once more to Mrs.
Harvey-Browne. In she came while we were bending over the book, followed
by the Professor, who walked as a man may walk in a dream, his eyes
fixed on nothing, and asked me without more ado whether I would let her
share my carriage as far as Wiek.
'Then, you see, dear Frau X., I shall get there,' she observed.
'But why do you want to get there?' I asked, absolutely knocked over
this time by the fists of Fate.
'Oh why not? We must go somewhere, and quite the most natural thing to
do is to join forces. You agree, don't you, Brosy dear? The Professor
thinks it an excellent plan, and is charming enough to want to
relinquish his seat to me if you will have me, are you not, Professor?
However I only ask to be allowed to sit on the small seat, for the last
thing I wish to do is to disturb anybody. But I fear the Professor will
not allow----' and she stopped and looked with arch pleasantness at the
Professor who murmured abstractedly 'Certainly, certainly '--which, of
course, might mean anything.
'My dear mother----' began Brosy in a tone of strong remonstrance.
'Oh I'm sure it is the best thing we can do, Brosy. I did ask the
landlord about hiring a fly, and there is no such thing. It will only be
as far as Wiek, and I hear that is not so very far. You don't mind do
you, dear Frau X.?'
'Mind?' I cried, wriggling out a smile, 'mind? But how will your son I
don't quite see--and your maid?'
'Oh Brosy has his bicycle, and if you'll let the luggage be put in your
luggage cart Andrews can quite well sit beside your maid. Of course we
will share expenses, so that it will really be mutually advantageous.'
Mrs. Harvey-Browne being one of those few persons who know exactly what
they want, did as she chose with wavering creatures like myself. She
also did as she chose with Brosy, because the impossibility of publicly
rebuking one's mother shut his mouth. She even did as she chose with the
Professor, who, declaring that sooner than incommode the ladies he would
go in the luggage cart, was in the very act as we were preparing to
start off of nimbly climbing on to the trunk next to the one on which
Andrews sat, when he found himself hesitating, coming down again,
getting into the victoria, subsiding on to the little seat, and all in
obedience to a clear something in the voice of Mrs. Harvey-Browne.
Never did unhappy celebrity sit more wretchedly than the poor Professor.
It was raining so hard that we were obliged to have the hood up, and its
edge came to within an inch of his nose--would have touched it quite if
he had not sat as straight and as far back as possible. He could not,
therefore, put up his umbrella, and was reduced, while water trickled
ceaselessly off the hood down his neck, to pretending with great heroism
that he was perfectly comfortable. It was impossible to sit under the
snug hood and contemplate the drenched Professor outside it. It was
impossible to let an old man of seventy, and an old man, besides, of
such immense European value, catch his death before my very eyes. Either
he must come between us and be what is known as bodkin, or some one must
get out and walk; and the bodkin solution not commending itself to me it
was plain that if some one walked it must be myself.
In an instant the carriage was stopped, protestations filled the air, I
got out, the Professor was transferred to my place, the bishop's wife
turned deaf ears to his entreaties that he might go in the luggage cart
and hold his big umbrella over the two poor drowning maids, the hood
became vocal with arguments, suggestions, expostulations, apologies--and
'Go on, August,' I interrupted; and dropped behind into sand and
silence.
We were already beyond Putgarten, in a flat, uninteresting country of
deep sand and treeless, hedgeless cornfields. I had no umbrella, but a
cloak with a hood to it which I drew over my head, throwing Gertrud my
hat when she too presently heaved past in a cloud of expostulations. 'Go
on, go on,' I called to the driver with a wave of my hand seeing him
hesitate; and then stood waiting for Brosy who was some little way
behind pushing his bicycle dismally through the sand, meditating no
doubt on the immense difficulties of dealing with mothers who do things
one does not like. When he realised that the solitary figure with the
peaked hood outlined against the sullen grey background was mine he
pushed along at a trot, with a face of great distress. But I had no
difficulty in looking happy and assuring him that I liked walking,
because I really was thankful to get away from the bishop's wife, and I
rather liked, besides, to be able to stretch myself thoroughly; while as
for getting wet, to let oneself slowly be soaked to the skin while
walking in a warm rain has a charm all its own.
Accordingly, after the preliminary explanations, we plodded along
comfortably enough towards Wiek, keeping the carriage in sight as much
as possible, and talking about all the things that interested Brosy,
which were mostly things of great obscurity to myself. I suppose he
thought it safest to keep to high truths and generalities, fearing lest
the conversation in dropping to an everyday level should also drop on to
the Nieberleins, and he seemed quite anxious not to know why Charlotte
was at Wiek by herself while her husband and I were driving together
without her. Therefore he soared carefully in realms of pure reason, and
I, silent and respectful, watched him from below; only I could not help
comparing the exalted vagueness of his talk with the sharp clearness of
all that the old and wise Professor said.
Wiek after all turned out to be hardly more than five miles from Arkona,
but it was heavy going. What with the bicycle and my wet skirts and the
high talk we got along slowly, and my soul grew more chilled with every
step by the thought of the complications the presence of the
Harvey-Brownes was going to make in the delicate task of persuading
Charlotte to return to her husband.
Brosy knew very well that there was something unusual in the Nieberlein
relations, and was plainly uneasy at being thrust into a family meeting.
When the red roofs and poplars of Wiek came in sight he sank into
thoughtfulness, and we walked the last mile in our heavy, sand-caked
shoes in almost total silence. The carriage and cart had disappeared
long ago, urged on, no doubt, by the Professor's eagerness to get to
Charlotte and away from Mrs. Harvey-Browne, and we were quite near the
first cottages when August appeared coming back to fetch us, driving
very fast, with Gertrud's face peering anxiously round the hood. It was
only a few yards from there to the open space in the middle of the
village in which the two inns are, and Brosy got on his bicycle while I
drove with Gertrud, wrapped in all the rugs she could muster.
There are two inns at Wiek, and one is the best. The Professor had gone
to each to inquire for his wife, and I found him striding about in front
of the one that is the best, and I saw at once by the very hang of his
cloak and position of his hat that Charlotte was not there.
'Gone! gone!' he cried, before the carriage stopped even. 'Gone this
very day--this very morning, gone at eight, at the self-same hour we
wasted over those accursed flounders. Is it not sufficient to make a
poor husband become mad? After months of patience? To miss her
everywhere by a few miserable hours? I told thee, I begged thee, to
bring me on last night----'
Brosy, now of a quite deadly anxiety to keep out of Nieberlein
complications, removed himself and his bicycle with all possible speed.
Mrs. Harvey-Browne, watching my arrival from an upper window, waved a
genial hand with ill-timed cordiality whenever I looked her way. The
landlord and his wife carried in all the rugs that dropped off me
unheeded into the mud when I got out, and did not visibly turn a hair at
my peaked hood and draggled garments.
'Where has she gone?' I asked, as soon as I could get the Professor to
keep still and listen. 'We'll drive after her the first thing to-morrow
morning--to-night if you like----'
'Drive after her? Last night, when it would have availed, thou wouldest
not drive after her. Now, if we follow her, we must swim. She has gone
to an island--an island, I tell thee, of which I never till this day
heard--an island to reach which requires much wind from a favourable
quarter--which without wind is not to be reached at all--and in me thou
now beholdest a broken-hearted man.'
THE TENTH DAY
FROM WIEK TO HIDDENSEE
The island to which Charlotte had retired was the island of Hiddensee, a
narrow strip of sand to the west of Rügen. Generally so wordy, the
guide-book merely mentions it as a place to which it is possible for
Rügen tourists to make excursions, and proffers with a certain timidity
the information that pleasure may be had there in observing the life and
habits of sea-birds.
To this place of sea-birds Charlotte had gone, as she wrote in a letter
left with the landlady for me, because during the night she spent at
Wiek a panic had seized her lest the Harvey-Brownes should by some
chance appear there in their wanderings before I did. 'I daresay they
will not dream of coming round this way at all,' she continued, 'but you
never know.'
You certainly never know, I agreed, Mrs. Harvey-Browne being at that
very moment in the room Charlotte had had the panic in; and I lay awake
elaborating a most beautiful plan by which I intended at one stroke to
reunite Charlotte and her husband and free myself of both of them.
This plan came into my head during the evening while sitting sadly
listening to something extremely like a scolding from the Professor. It
seemed to me that I had done all in my power short of inhumanity to the
horses to help him, and it was surely not my fault that Charlotte had
not happened to stay anywhere long enough for us to catch her up. My
intentions were so good. Far preferring to drive alone and stop where
and when I pleased--at Vitt for instance, among the walnut trees--I had
yet given up all my preferences so that I might help bring man and wife
together. If anything, did not this conduct incline towards the noble?
'Your extreme simplicity amazes me,' remarked the wise relative when,
arrived at this part of my story on my return home, I plaintively asked
the above question. 'Under no circumstances is the meddler ever
thanked.'
'Meddler? Helper, you mean. Apparently you would call every person who
helps a meddler.'
'_Armes Kind_, proceed with the story.'
Well, the Professor, who had suffered much in the hood between Arkona
and Wiek, and was more irritated by his disappointment on getting to
Wiek than seemed consistent with the supposed serenity of the truly
wise, was telling me for the tenth time that if I had brought him on at
once from Glowe as he begged me to do we would not only have escaped the
Harvey-Brownes but would have caught his Charlotte by now, seeing that
she had not left Wiek for Hiddensee till eight o'clock of this Saturday
we had now got to, and I was drooping more and more under these
reproaches when, with the suddenness of inspiration, the beautiful plan
flooded my dejected brain with such a cheerful light that I lifted my
head and laughed in the Professor's face.
'Now pray tell me,' he exclaimed, stopping short in his strides about
the room, 'what thou seest to laugh at in my present condition?'
'Nothing in your present condition. It's the glories of your future one
that made me laugh.'
'Surely that is not a subject on which one laughs. Nor will I discuss it
with a woman. Nor is this the place or the moment. I refer thee'--and he
swept round his arm as though to sweep me altogether out of sight,--'I
refer thee to thy pastor.'
'Dearest Professor, don't be so dreadfully cross. The future state I was
thinking of isn't further off than to-morrow. Sometimes there's a
cunning about a woman's wit that you great artists in profundity don't
possess. You can't, of course, because you are so busy being wise on a
large scale. But it's quite useful to have some cunning when you have to
work out petty schemes. And I tell you solemnly that at this moment I am
full of it.'
He stopped again in his striding. The good landlady and her one
handmaiden were laying the table for supper. Mrs. Harvey-Browne had gone
upstairs to put on those evening robes in which, it appeared, she had
nightly astonished the ignorant tourists of Rügen. Brosy had not been
seen at all since our arrival.
'What thou art full of is nothing but poking of fun at me, I fear,' said
the Professor; but his kind old face began to smooth out a little.
'I'm not. I'm only full of artfulness, and anxious to put it all at your
disposal. But you mustn't be quite so cross. Pray, am I no longer then
your little and dear cousin?'
'When thou art good, yes.'
'Whom to pat is pleasant?'
'Yes, yes, it is pleasant, but if unreasonableness develops----'
'And with whom to sit under one umbrella is a joy?'
'Surely, surely--but thou hast been of a great obstinacy----'
'Well, come and sit here and let us be happy. We're very comfortable
here, aren't we? Don't let us think any more about the wet, horrid,
obstinate, disappointing day we've had. And as for to-morrow, I've got a
plan.'
The Professor, who had begun to calm, sat down beside me on the sofa.
The landlord, deft and noiseless, was giving a finishing touch of roses
and fruit and candles to the supper table. He had been a butler in a
good family, and was of the most beautiful dignity and solemnity. We
were sitting in a very queer old room, used in past years for balls to
which the quality drove in from their distant estates and danced through
winter nights. There was a gallery for the fiddlers, and the chairs and
benches ranged round the walls were still covered with a festive-looking
faded red stuff. In the middle of this room the landlord had put a table
for us to sup at, and had arranged it in a way I had not seen since
leaving home. No one else was in the house but ourselves. No one,
hardly, of the tourist class comes to Wiek; and yet, or because of it,
this inn of all the inns I had stayed at was in every way quite
excellent.
'Tell me then thy plan, little one,' said the Professor, settling
himself comfortably into the sofa corner.
'Oh, it's quite simple. You and I to-morrow morning will go to
Hiddensee.'
'Go! Yes, but how? It is Sunday, and even if it were not, no steamers
seem to go to what appears to be a spot of great desolation.'
'We'll hire a fishing-smack.'
'And if there is no wind?'
'We'll pray for wind.'
'And I shall spend an entire day within the cramped limits of a vessel
in the company of the English female bishop? I tell thee it is not to be
accomplished.'
'No, no--of course they mustn't come too.'
'Come? She will come if she wishes to. Never did I meet a more
commanding woman.'
'No, no, we must circumvent the Harvey-Brownes.'
'Do thou stay here then, and circumvent. Then shall I proceed in safety
on my way.'
'Oh no,' I exclaimed in some consternation; the success of my plan,
which was by no means to be explained in its entirety to the Professor,
wholly depended on my going too. 'I--I want to see Charlotte again. You
know I'm--fond of Charlotte. And besides, long before you got to
Hiddensee you would have sunk into another abstraction and begun to fish
or something, and you'd come back here in the evening with no Charlotte
and only fishes.'
'Tut, tut--well do I now know what is the object I have in view.'
'Don't be so proud. Remember Pilatus.'
'Tut, tut. Thou art beginning to be like a conscience to me, rebuking
and urging onwards the poor old man in bewildering alternations. But I
tell thee there is no hope of setting sail without the English madam
unless thou remainest here while I secretly slip away.'
'I won't remain here. I'm coming too. Leave the arrangements to me,
dearest Professor, and you'll see we'll secretly slip away together.'
Mrs. Harvey-Browne sweeping in at that moment in impressive garments
that trailed, our conversation had to end abruptly. The landlord lit the
candles; the landlady brought in the soup; Brosy appeared dressed as one
dresses in civilised regions. 'Cheer up,' I whispered to the Professor
as I got up from the sofa; and he cheered up so immediately and so
excessively that before I could stop him, before I could realise what he
was going to do, he had actually chucked me under the chin.
We spent a constrained evening. The one remark Mrs. Harvey-Browne
addressed to me during the hours that followed this chin-chucking was:
'I am altogether at a loss to understand Frau Nieberlein's having
retired, without her husband, to yet another island. Why this
regrettable multiplicity of islands?'
To which I could only answer that I did not know.