She became, however, more normal as the morning wore on, and by about
eleven o’clock was taking an intelligent interest in hop-kilns.
These objects, recurring at frequent intervals as one travels through
the county of Kent, are striking and picturesque additions to the
landscape, and as our guide-book described them very fully I was able to
talk a good deal about them. Kent pleased me very well. It looked as if
there were money in it. Many thriving villages, many comfortable
farmhouses, and many hoary churches peeping slyly at us through
surrounding groups of timber so ancient that its not yet having been cut
down and sold is in itself a testimony to the prevailing prosperity. It
did not need much imagination to picture the comfortable clergyman
lurking in the recesses of his snug parsonage and rubbing his
well-nourished hands at life. Well, let him rub. Some day perhaps--and
who knows how soon?--we shall have a decent Lutheran pastor in his black
gown preaching the amended faith in every one of those churches.
Shortly, then, Kent is obviously flowing with milk and honey and
well-to-do inhabitants; and when on referring to our guide-book I found
it described as the Garden of England I was not in the least surprised,
and neither was Edelgard. In this county, as we knew, part at any rate
of our gipsying was to take place, for the caravans were stationed at a
village about three miles from Wrotham, and we were very well satisfied
that we were going to examine it more closely, because though no one
could call the scenery majestic it yet looked full of promise of a
comfortable nature. I observed for instance that the roads seemed firm
and good, which was clearly important; also that the villages were so
plentiful that there would be no fear of our ever getting beyond the
reach of provisions. Unfortunately, the weather was not true August
weather, which I take it is properly described by the word bland. This
is not bland. The remains of the violent wind that had blown us across
from Flushing still hurried hither and thither, and gleams of sunshine
only too frequently gave place to heavy squalls of rain and hail. It was
more like a blustering October day than one in what is supposed to be
the very height and ripeness of summer, and we could only both hope, as
the carriage windows banged and rattled, that our caravan would be heavy
enough to withstand the temptation to go on by itself during the night,
urged on from behind by the relentless forces of nature. Still, each
time the sun got the better of the inky clouds and the Garden of England
laughed at us from out of its bravery of graceful hop-fields and
ripening corn, we could not resist a feeling of holiday hopefulness.
Edelgard’s spirits rose with every mile, and I, having readily forgiven
her on her asking me to and acknowledging she had been selfish, was
quite like a boy; and when we got out of the train at Wrotham beneath a
blue sky and a hot sun with the hail-clouds retreating over the hills
and found we would have to pack ourselves and our many packages into a
fly so small that, as I jocularly remarked in English, it was not a fly
at all but an insect, Edelgard was so much entertained that for several
minutes she was perfectly convulsed with laughter.
By means of the address neatly written in Latin characters on an
envelope, we had no difficulty in getting the driver to start off as
though he knew where he was going, but after we had been on the way for
about half an hour he grew restless, and began to twist round on his box
and ask me unintelligible questions. I suppose he talked and understood
only _patois_, for I could not in the least make out what he meant, and
when I requested him to be more clear I could see by his foolish face
that he was constitutionally unable to be it. A second exhibition of
the addressed envelope, however, soothed him for a time, and we
continued to advance up and down chalky roads, over the hedges on each
side of which leapt the wind and tried to blow our hats off. The sun was
in our eyes, the dust was in our eyes, and the wind was in our faces.
Wrotham, when we looked behind, had disappeared. In front was a chalky
desolation. We could see nothing approaching a village, yet Panthers,
the village we were bound for, was only three miles from the station,
and not, observe, three full-blooded German miles, but the dwindled and
anæmic English kind that are typical, as so much else is, of the soul
and temper of the nation. Therefore we began to be uneasy, and to wonder
whether the man were trustworthy. It occurred to me that the chalk pits
we constantly met would not be bad places to take us into and rob us,
and I certainly could not speak English quickly enough to meet a
situation demanding rapid dialogue, nor are there any directions in my
German-English Conversational Guide as to what you are to say when you
are being murdered.
Still jocose, but as my hearers will notice, jocose with a tinge of
grimness, I imparted these two linguistic facts to Edelgard, who
shuddered and suggested renewed applications of the addressed envelope
to the driver. “Also it is past dinner time,” she added anxiously. “I
know because _mein Magen knurrt_.”
By means of repeated calls and my umbrella I drew the driver’s attention
to us and informed him that I would stand no further nonsense. I told
him this with great distinctness and the deliberation forced upon me by
want of practice. He pulled up to hear me out, and then, merely
grinning, drove on. “The youngest Storchwerder _droschke_ driver,” I
cried indignantly to Edelgard, “would die of shame on his box if he did
not know every village, nay, every house within three miles of it with
the same exactitude with which he knows the inside of his own pocket.”
Then I called up to the man once more, and recollecting that nothing
clears our Hermann’s brain at home quicker than to address him as _Esel_
I said, “Ask, ass.”
He looked down over his shoulder at me with an expression of great
surprise.
“What?” said he.
“What?” said I, confounded by this obtuseness. “What? The way, of
course.”
He pulled up once more and turned right round on his box.
“Look here----” he said, and paused.
“Look where?” said I, very naturally supposing he had something to show
me.
“Who are you talkin’ to?” said he.
The question on the face of it was so foolish that a qualm gripped my
heart lest we had to do with a madman. Edelgard felt the same, for she
drew closer to me.
Luckily at that moment I saw a passer-by some way down the road, and
springing out of the fly hastened to meet him in spite of Edelgard’s
demand that I should not leave her alone. On reaching him I took off my
hat and courteously asked him to direct us to Panthers, at the same time
expressing my belief that the flyman was not normal. He listened with
the earnest and strained attention English people gave to my utterances,
an attention caused, I believe, by the slightly unpractised
pronunciation combined with the number and variety of words at my
command, and then going up (quite fearlessly) to the flyman he pointed
in the direction entirely opposed to the one we were following and bade
him go there.
“I won’t take him nowhere,” said the flyman with strange passion; “he
calls me a ass.”
“It is not your fault,” said I (very handsomely, I thought). “You are
what you were made. You cannot help yourself.”
“I won’t take him nowhere,” repeated the flyman, with, if anything,
increased passion.
The passer-by looked from one to another with a faint smile.
“The expression,” said he to the flyman, “is, you see, merely a term of
recognition in the gentleman’s country. You can’t reasonably object to
that, you know. Drive on like a sensible man, and get your fare.”
And lifting his hat to Edelgard he continued his passing by.
Well, we did finally arrive at the appointed place--indeed, my hearers
next winter will know all the time that we must have, or why should I be
reading this aloud?--after being forced by the flyman to walk the last
twenty minutes up a hill which, he declared, his horse would not
otherwise be able to ascend. The sun shone its hottest while we slowly
surmounted this last obstacle--a hard one to encounter when it is long
past dinner-time. I am aware that by English clocks it was not past it,
but what was that to me? My watch showed that in Storchwerder, the place
our inner natures were used to, it was half-past two, a good hour beyond
the time at which they are accustomed daily to be replenished, and no
arbitrary theory, anyhow no perilously near approach to one, will
convince a man against the evidence of his senses that he is not hungry
because a foreign clock says it is not dinner-time when it is.
Panthers, we found on reaching the top of the hill and pausing to regain
our composure, is but a house here and a house there scattered over a
[Illustration: _The sun shone its hottest while we slowly surmounted
this last obstacle_]
bleak, ungenial landscape. It seemed an odd, high up district to use as
a terminus for caravans, and I looked down the steep, narrow lane we had
just ascended and wondered how a caravan would get up it. Afterward I
found that they never do get up it, but arrive home from the exactly
opposite direction along a fair road which was the one any but an
imbecile driver would have brought us. We reached our destination by, so
to speak, its back door; and we were still standing on the top of the
hill doing what is known as getting one’s wind, for I am not what would
be called an ill-covered man but rather, as I jestingly tell Edelgard, a
walking compliment to her good cooking, and she herself was always of a
substantial build, not exaggeratedly but agreeably so--we were standing,
I say, struggling for breath when some one came out quickly from a
neighbouring gate and stopped with a smile of greeting upon seeing us.
It was the gaunt sister.
We were greatly pleased. Here we were, then, safely arrived, and joined
to at least a portion of our party. Enthusiastically we grasped both her
hands and shook them. She laughed as she returned our greetings, and I
was so much pleased to find some one I knew that though Edelgard
commented afterward somewhat severely on her dress because it was so
short that it nowhere touched the ground, I noticed nothing except that
it seemed to be extremely neat, and as for not touching the ground
Edelgard’s skirt was followed wherever she went by a cloud of chalky
dust which was most unpleasant.
Now why were we so glad to see this lady again? Why, indeed, are people
ever glad to see each other again? I mean people who when they last saw
each other did not like each other. Given a sufficient lapse of time,
and I have observed that even those who parted in an atmosphere thick
with sulphur of implied cursings will smile and genially inquire how the
other does. I have observed this, I say, but I cannot explain it. There
had, it is true, never been any sulphur about our limited intercourse
with the lady on the few occasions on which proper feeling prevailed
enough to induce her to visit her flesh and blood in Prussia--our
attitude toward her had simply been one of well-bred chill, of chill
because no thinking German can, to start with, be anything but
prejudiced against a person who commits the unpatriotism--not to call it
by a harsher name--of selling her inestimable German birthright for the
mess of an English marriage. Also she was personally not what
Storchwerder could like, for she was entirely wanting in the graces and
undulations of form which are the least one has a right to expect of a
being professing to be a woman. Also she had a way of talking which
disconcerted Storchwerder, and nobody likes being disconcerted. Our
reasons for joining issue with her in the matter of caravans were first,
that we could not help it, only having discovered she was coming when it
was too late; and secondly, that it was a cheap and convenient way of
seeing a new country. She with her intimate knowledge of English was to
be, we privately told each other, our unpaid courier--I remember
Edelgard’s amusement when the consolatory cleverness of this way of
looking at it first struck her.
But I am still at a loss to explain how it was that when she
unexpectedly appeared at the top of the hill at Panthers we both rushed
at her with an effusiveness that could hardly have been exceeded if it
had been Edelgard’s grandmother Podhaben who had suddenly stood before
us, an old lady of ninety-two of whom we are both extremely fond, and
who, as is well known, is going to leave my wife her money when she
(which I trust sincerely she will not do for a long time yet) dies. I
cannot explain it, I say, but there it is. Rush we did, and effusive we
were, and it was reserved for a quieter moment to remember with some
natural discomposure that we had showed far more enthusiasm than she
had. Not that she was not pleasant, but there is a gap between
pleasantness and enthusiasm, and to be the one of two persons who is
most pleased is to put yourself in the position of the inferior, of the
suppliant, of him who hopes, or is eager to ingratiate himself. Will it
be believed that when later on I said something to this effect about
some other matter in general conversation, the gaunt sister immediately
cried, “Oh, but that’s not generous.”
“What is not generous?” I asked surprised, for it was the first day of
the tour and I was not then as much used as I subsequently became to her
instant criticism of all I said.
“That way of thinking,” said she.
Edelgard immediately bristled--(alas, what would make her bristle now?)
“Otto is the most generous of men,” she said. “Every year on Sylvester
evening he allows me to invite six orphans to look at the remains of our
Christmas tree and be given, before they go away, doughnuts and grog.”
“What! Grog for orphans?” cried the gaunt sister, neither silenced nor
impressed; and there ensued a warm discussion on, as she put it, (_a_)
the effect of grog on orphans, (_b_) the effect of grog on doughnuts,
(_c_) the effect of grog on combined orphans and doughnuts.
But I not only anticipate, I digress.
Inside the gate through which this lady had emerged stood the caravans
and her gentle sister. I was so much pleased at seeing Frau von Eckthum
again that at first I did not notice our future homes. She was looking
remarkably well and was in good spirits, and, though dressed in the same
way as her sister, by adding to the attire all those graces so
peculiarly her own the effect she produced was totally different. At
least, I thought so. Edelgard said she saw nothing to choose between
them.
After the first greetings she half turned to the row of caravans, and
with a little motion of the hand and a pretty smile of proprietary pride
said, “There they are.”
There, indeed, they were.
There were three; all alike, sober brown vehicles, easily
distinguishable, as I was pleased to notice, from common gipsy carts.
Clean curtains fluttered at the windows, the metal portions were bright,
and the names painted prettily on them were the Elsa, the Ilsa, and the
Ailsa. It was an impressive moment, the moment of our first setting eyes
upon them. Under those frail roofs were we for the next four weeks to be
happy, as Edelgard said, and healthy and wise--“Or,” I amended shrewdly
on hearing her say this, “_vice versa_.”
Frau von Eckthum, however, preferred Edelgard’s prophecy, and gave her
an appreciative look--my hearers will remember, I am sure, how
agreeably her dark eyelashes contrast with the fairness of her hair. The
gaunt sister laughed, and suggested that we should paint out the names
already on the caravans and substitute in large letters Happy, Healthy,
and Wise, but not considering this particularly amusing I did not take
any trouble to smile.
Three large horses that were to draw them and us stood peacefully side
by side in a shed being fed with oats by a weather-beaten person the
gaunt sister introduced as old James. This old person, a most untidy,
dusty-looking creature, touched his cap, which is the inadequate English
way of showing respect to superiors--as inadequate at its end of the
scale as the British army is at the other--and shuffled off to fetch in
our luggage, and the gaunt sister suggesting that we should climb up and
see the interior of our new home with some difficulty we did so, there
being a small ladder to help us which, as a fact, did not help us either
then or later, no means being discovered from beginning to end of the
tour by which it could be fixed firmly at a convenient angle.
I think I could have climbed up better if Frau von Eckthum had not been
looking on; besides, at that moment I was less desirous of inspecting
the caravans than I was of learning when, where, and how we were going
to have our delayed dinner. Edelgard, however, behaved like a girl of
sixteen once she had succeeded in reaching the inside of the Elsa, and
most inconsiderately kept me lingering there too while she examined
every corner and cried with tiresome iteration that it was _wundervoll_,
_herrlich_, and _putzig_.
“I knew you’d like it,” said Frau von Eckthum from below, amused
apparently by this kittenish conduct.
“Like it?” called back Edelgard. “But it is delicious--so clean, so
neat, so miniature.”
“May I ask where we dine?” I inquired, endeavouring to free the skirts
of my new mackintosh from the door, which had swung to (the caravan not
standing perfectly level) and jammed them tightly. I did not need to
raise my voice, for in a caravan even with its door and windows shut
people outside can hear what you say just as distinctly as people
inside, unless you take the extreme measure of putting something thick
over your head and whispering. (Be it understood I am alluding to a
caravan at rest: when in motion you may shout your secrets, for the
noise of crockery leaping and breaking in what we learned--with
difficulty--to allude to as the pantry will effectually drown them.)
The two ladies took no heed of my question, but coming up after us--they
never could have got in had they been less spare--filled the van to
overflowing while they explained the various arrangements by which our
miseries on the road were to be mitigated. It was chiefly the gaunt
sister who talked, she being very nimble of tongue, but I must say that
on this occasion Frau von Eckthum did not confine herself to the
attitude I so much admired in her, the ideal feminine one of smiling and
keeping quiet. I, meanwhile, tried to make myself as small as possible,
which is what persons in caravans try to do all the time. I sat on a
shiny yellow wooden box that ran down one side of our “room” with holes
in its lid and a flap at the end by means of which it could, if needed,
be lengthened and turned into a bed for a third sufferer. (On reading
this aloud I shall probably substitute traveller for sufferer, and some
milder word such as discomfort for the word miseries in the first
sentence of the paragraph.) Inside the box was a mattress, also extra
sheets, towels, etc., so that, the gaunt sister said there was nothing
to prevent our having house-parties for week-ends. As I do not like such
remarks even in jest I took care to show by my expression that I did
not, but Edelgard, to my surprise, who used always to be the first to
scent the vicinity of thin ice, laughed heartily as she continued her
frantically pleased examination of the van’s contents.
It is not to be expected of any man that he shall sit in a cramped
position on a yellow box at an hour long past his dinner time and take
an interest in puerilities. To Edelgard it seemed to be a kind of a
doll’s house, and she, entirely forgetting the fact of which I so often
reminded her that she will be thirty next birthday, behaved in much the
same way as a child who has just been presented with this expensive form
of toy by some foolish and spendthrift relation. Frau von Eckthum, too,
appeared to me to be less intelligent than I was accustomed to suppose
her. She smiled at Edelgard’s delight as though it pleased her, chatting
in a way I hardly recognized as she drew my wife’s attention to the
objects she had not had time to notice. Edelgard’s animation amazed me.
She questioned and investigated and admired without once noticing that
as I sat on the lid of the wooden box I was obviously filled with sober
thoughts. Why, she was so much infatuated that she actually demanded at
intervals that I too should join in this exhibition of childishness; and
it was not until I said very pointedly that I, at least, was not a
little girl, that she was recalled to a proper sense of her behaviour.
“Poor Otto is hungry,” she said, pausing suddenly in her wild career
round the caravan and glancing at my face.
“Is he? Then he must be fed,” said the gaunt sister, as carelessly and
with as little real interest as if there were no particular hurry.
“Look--aren’t these too sweet?--each on its own little hook--six of
them, and their saucers in a row underneath.”
And so it would have gone on indefinitely if an extremely pretty, nice,
kind little lady had not put her head in at the door and asked with a
smile that fell like oil on the troubled water of my brain whether we
were not dying for something to eat.
Never did the British absence of ceremony and introductions and
preliminary phrases seem to me excellent before. I sprang up, and
immediately knocked my elbow so hard against a brass bracket holding a
candle and hanging on a hook in the wall that I was unable altogether to
suppress an exclamation of pain. Remembering, however, what is due to
society I very skilfully converted it into a rather precipitate and
agonized answer to the little lady’s question, and she, with a charming
hospitality, pressing me to come into her adjoining garden and have some
food, I accepted with alacrity, only regretting that I was unable, from
the circumstance of her going first, to help her down the ladder. (As a
matter of fact she had in the end to help me, because the door slammed
behind me and again imprisoned the skirts of my mackintosh.)
Edelgard, absorbed in delighted contemplation of a corner beneath the
so-called pantry full of brooms and dusters also hanging in rows on
hooks, only shook her head when I inquired if she would not come too; so
leaving her to her ecstasies I went off with my new protector, who asked
me why I wore a mackintosh when there was not a cloud in the sky. I
avoided giving a direct answer by retorting playfully (though wholly
politely), “Why not?”--and indeed my reasons, connected with creases and
other ruin attendant on confinement in a hold-all, were of too domestic
and private a nature to be explained to a stranger so charming. But my
counter-question luckily amused her, and she laughed as she opened a
small gate in the wall and led me into her garden.
Here I was entertained with the greatest hospitality by herself and her
husband. The fleet of caravans which yearly pervades that part of
England is stationed when not in action on their premises. Hence departs
the joyful caravaner, accompanied by kind wishes; hither he returns
sobered, and is received with balm and bandages--at least, I am sure he
would find them and every other kind form of solace in the little garden
on the hill. I spent a very pleasant and reviving half-hour in a
sheltered corner of it, enjoying my _al fresco_ meal and acquiring much
information. To my question as to whether my entertainers were to be of
our party they replied, to my disappointment, that they were not. Their
functions were restricted to this seeing that we started happy, and
being prompt and helpful when we came back. From them I learned that our
party was to consist, besides ourselves and Frau von Eckthum and that
sister whom I have hitherto distinguished by the adjective gaunt,
putting off the necessity as long as possible of alluding to her by
name, she having, as my hearers perhaps remember, married a person with
the unpronounceable one if you see it written and the unspellable one if
you hear it said of Menzies-Legh--the party was to consist, I say,
besides these four, of Menzies-Legh’s niece and one of her friends; of
Menzies-Legh himself; and of two young men about whom no precise
information was obtainable.
“But how? But where?” said I, remembering the limited accommodations of
the three caravans.
My host reassured me by explaining that the two young men would inhabit
a tent by night which, by day, would be carried in one of the caravans.
“In which one?” I asked anxiously.
“You must settle that among yourselves,” said he smiling.
“That’s what one does all day long caravaning,” said my hostess, handing
me a cup of coffee.
“What does one do?” I asked, eager for information.
“Settle things among oneselves,” said she. “Only generally one doesn’t.”
I put it down to my want of practice in the more idiomatic involutions
of the language that I did not quite follow her meaning; but as one of
my principles is never to let people know that I have not understood
them I merely bowed slightly and, taking out my note-book, remarked that
if that were so I would permit myself to make a list of our party in
order to keep its various members more distinct in my mind.
The following is the way in which we were to be divided:
1. A caravan (the Elsa), containing the Baron and Baroness von
Ottringel, of Storchwerder in Prussia.
2. Another caravan (the Ailsa), containing Mr. and Mrs. Menzies-Legh, of
various addresses, they being ridiculously and superfluously rich.
3. Another caravan (the Ilsa), containing Frau von Eckthum, the
Menzies-Legh niece, and her (as I gathered, school) friend. In this
caravan the yellow box was to be used.
4. One tent, containing two young men, name and status unknown.
The ill-dressed person, old James, was coming too, but would sleep each
night with the horses, they being under his special care; and all of
the party (except ourselves and Frau von Eckthum and her sister who had
already, as I need not say, done so) were yet to assemble. They were
expected every moment, and had been expected all day. If they did not
come soon our first day’s march, opined my host, would not see us
camping further away than the end of the road, for it was already past
four o’clock. This reminded me that my luggage ought to be unpacked and
stowed away, and I accordingly begged to be excused that I might go and
superintend the operation, for I have long ago observed that when the
controlling eye of the chief is somewhere else things are very apt to go
irremediably wrong.
“Against stupidity,” says some great German--it must have been Goethe,
and if it was not, then no doubt it was Schiller, they having, I
imagine, between them said everything there is to be said--“against
stupidity the very gods struggle in vain.” And I beg that this may not
be taken as a reflection on my dear wife, but rather as an inference of
general applicability. In any case the recollection of it sent me off
with a swinging stride to the caravans.