A man who is writing a book should have a free hand. When I began my
narrative I hardly realized this, but I do now. No longer is Edelgard
allowed to look over my shoulder. No longer are the sheets left lying
open on my desk. I put Edelgard off with the promise that she shall hear
it when it is done. I lock it up when I go out. And I write straight on
without wasting time considering what this or that person may like or
not.
At the end, indeed, there is to be a red pencil,--an active censor
running through the pages making danger signals, and whenever on our
beer evenings I come across its marks I shall pause, and probably cough,
till my eye has found the point at which I may safely resume the
reading. Our guests will tell me that I have a cold, and I shall not
contradict them; for whatever one may say to one friend at a time in
confidence about, for instance, one’s wife, one is bound to protect her
collectively.
I hope I am clear. Sometimes I fear I am not, but language, as I read in
the paper lately, is but a clumsy vehicle for thought, and on this
clumsy vehicle therefore, overloaded already with all I have to say, let
us lay the whole blame, using it (to descend to quaintness) as a kind of
tarpaulin or other waterproof cover, and tucking it in carefully at the
corners. I mean the blame. Also, let it not be forgotten that this is
the maiden flight of my Muse, and that even if it were not, a gentleman
cannot be expected to write with the glibness of your Jew journalist or
other professional quill-driver.
We did not get into camp that first day till nearly six (much too late,
my friends, if you should ever find yourselves under the grievous
necessity of getting into such a thing), and we had great difficulty in
finding one at all. That, indeed, is a very black side of caravaning;
camps are rarely there when they are wanted, and, conversely, frequently
so when they are not. Not once, nor twice, but several times have I,
with the midday sun streaming vertically on my head, been obliged to
labour along past a most desirable field, with just the right aspect,
the sheltering trees to the north, the streamlet for the dish-washing
loitering about waiting, the yard full of chickens, and cream and eggs
ready to be bought, merely because it came, the others said, too early
in the march and we had not yet earned our dinner. Earned our dinner?
Why, long before I left the last night’s camp I had earned mine, if
exhaustion from overwork is what they meant, and earned it well too. I
pity a pedant; I pity a mind that is made up like a bed the first thing
in the morning, and goes on grimly like that all day, refusing to be
unmade till a certain fixed evening hour has been reached; and I assert
that it is a sign of a large way of thinking, of the intellectual
pliability characteristic of the real man of the world, to have no such
hard and fast determinations and to be always ready to camp. Left to
myself, if I were to see the right spot ten minutes, nay, five, after
leaving the last one, I would instantly pounce on it. But no man can
pounce instantly on anything who shall not first have rid himself of his
prejudices.
On that second day of dusty endeavouring to get to Sussex, which was and
remained in the much talked of blue distance, we passed no spot at all
except one that was possible. That one, however, was very possible
indeed in the eyes of persons who had endured sun and starvation since
the morning--a shaded farmhouse, of an appearance that pleased the
ladies owing to the great profusion of flowers clambering up and down
it, an orchard laden with fruit suggestive of dessert, a stream whose
clear waters promised an excellent foot bath, and fat chickens in great
numbers, merely to look on whom caused little rolls of bacon and dabs
of bread sauce and even fragments of salad to dance delightfully before
one’s eyes.
But the woman was cross. Worse, she was inhuman. She was a monster of
indifference to the desires of her fellow-creatures, deaf to their
offers of payment, stony in regard to their pains. Arguing with her, we
gave up one by one our first more succulent visions, and retreating
before the curtness of her refusals let first the camp beneath the plum
trees go, then the dessert, then the chickens with their _etcaeteras_,
then, still further backward, and fighting over each one, egg after egg
of all those many eggs we were so sure she would sell us and we wanted
so badly to buy.
Audaciously she swore she had no eggs, while there beneath our very eyes
walked chickens brimful of the eggs of the morrow. Where were the eggs
of the morning, and where the eggs of yesterday? To this question, put
by me, she replied that it was no business of mine. Accurséd British
female,--certainly not lady, doubtfully even woman, but emphatically
_Weib_--of twisted appearance, and a gnarled and knotty age! May you in
your turn be refused rest and nourishment when hard put to it and
willing to pay, and after you have marched five hours in the sun
controlling, from your feet, the wayward impulses of a big, rebellious
horse.
She shut the door while yet we were protesting. In silence we trooped
back down the brick path between rose bushes that were tended with a
care she denied humans, to where the three caravans waited hopefully in
the road for the call to come in and be at rest.
We continued our way subdued. This is a characteristic of those who
caravan, that in the afternoons they are subdued. So many things have
happened to them by then; and, apart from that, they have daily got by
then into that physical condition doctors describe as run down--or, if I
may alter it better to fit this special case, walked down. Subdued,
therefore, we journeyed along flat uncountrified roads, reminding one,
by the frequent recurrence of villas, of the outskirts of some big town
rather than the seclusion it had been and still was our aim to court,
and in this way we came at last to a broad and extremely sophisticated
bridge crossing a river some one murmured was Medway.
Houses and shops lined its approach on the right. On the left was a wide
and barren field with two donkeys finding difficulties in collecting
from the scanty herbage a sufficiency of supper. In the gutter, opposite
a public house, stood a piano-organ, emitting the sounds of shrill yet
unconvincing joyfulness natural to those instruments, and mingled with
these was a burr of machinery at work, and a smell of so searching a
nature that it provoked Frau von Eckthum into a whole sentence--a
plaintive and faintly spoken one, but a long one--describing her
conviction that there must be a tannery somewhere near, and that it was
very disagreeable. Her plaintiveness increased a hundredfold when
Menzies-Legh announced that camp we must at all costs or night would be
upon us.
We drew up in the middle of the road while Lord Sigismund made active
inquiries of the inhabitants as to which of them would be willing to
lend us a field.
“But surely not here?” murmured Frau von Eckthum, holding her little
handkerchief to her nose.
It was here, however, and in the field, said Lord Sigismund returning,
containing the donkeys. For the privilege of sharing with these animals
their bare and shelterless field, exposed as it was to all the social
amenities of the district, including the piano-organ, the shops
opposite, the smell of leather in the making, and the company as long as
the light lasted of innumerable troops of children, the owner would make
us a charge of half a crown per caravan for the night, but this only on
condition that we did not turn out, as he appeared to have had the
greatest suspicions we would turn out, to be a circus.
With a flatness of which I would not have
[Illustration: _“But surely not here,” murmured Frau von Eckthum_]
thought her capable Frau von Eckthum refused to spend a night in the
donkey field; and Mrs. Menzies-Legh, who was absorbed in snap-shotting
the ever-swelling crowd of children and loafers who were surrounding us,
suddenly stamped her foot and said she would not either.
“The horses can’t go another yard,” remonstrated Menzies-Legh.
“I won’t sleep with the donkeys,” said his wife, taking another snap.
Her sister said nothing, but held her handkerchief as before.
Then Jellaby, descrying a hedge with willows beyond it at the far-away
end of the field, and no doubt conscious of a parliamentary practice in
persuasion, said he would get permission to go in there for the night,
and disappeared. Lord Sigismund expressed doubts as to his success, for
the man, he said, was apparently own brother to the female at the farm,
or at any rate of the closest spiritual affinity; but Jellaby did come
back after a while, during which the piano-organ’s waltzes had gone on
accentuating the blank dreariness of the spot, and said it was all
right.
Later on I discovered that what he called all right was paying exactly
twice as much per caravan for the superior exclusiveness of the willow
field as what was demanded for the donkey field. Well, he did not have
to pay, being Menzies-Legh’s guest, so no doubt he did think it all
right; but I call it monstrous that I should be asked to pay that which
would have secured me a perfectly dry bedroom with no grass in it in a
first-rate Berlin hotel for the use for a few hours of a gnat-haunted,
nettle-infested, low-lying, swampy meadow.
The monstrosity struck me more afterward when I looked back. That
evening I was too tired to be struck, and would, I truly believe, have
paid five shillings just for being allowed to sink down into a sitting
position, it mattered not where, and remain in it; but there was still
much, I feared to do and to suffer before I could so sink down--for
instance, there was the gate leading into the donkey field to be got
through, the whole population watching, and the pleasant prospect before
me of having to reimburse any damage done to a caravan that could only,
under the luckiest circumstances, just fit in. Then there was Edelgard
to be brought to reason, and suppose she refused to be brought? That is,
quickly; for I had no fears as to her ultimate bringing.
Well, the gate came first, and as it would require my concentrated
attention I put the other away from me till I should be more at leisure.
Old James, assisted by Menzies-Legh, got the Ailsa safely through, and
away she heaved, while the onlookers cheered, over the mole heaps toward
the willows on the horizon. Then Menzies-Legh, calling Jellaby, came to
help me pull the Elsa through, Lord Sigismund waiting with the third
horse, who had been his special charge throughout the day. It seemed all
very well to help me, but any scratches to the varnish caused by the two
gentlemen in their zeal would be put in my bill, not in theirs, and
under my breath I called down a well-known Pomeranian curse of immense
body and scope on all those fools who had helped in the making of the
narrow British gates.
As I feared, there was too much of that zèle that somebody (I think he
was French) advised somebody else (I expect he must have been English)
not to have, and amid a hubbub of whoas--which is the island equivalent
for our so much more lucid _brrr_--shouts from the onlookers, and a
scream or two from Edelgard who could not listen unmoved to the
crashings of our crockery, Menzies-Legh and Jellaby between them drew
the brute so much to one side that it was only owing to my violent
efforts that a terrible accident was averted. If they had had their way
the whole thing would have charged into the right-hand gate post--with
what a crashing and a parting from its wheels may be imagined--but
thanks to me it was saved, although the left-hand gate post did scrape a
considerable portion of varnish off the Elsa’s left (so to speak) flank.
“I say,” said the Socialist when it was all over, brushing his bit of
hair aside, “you shouldn’t have pulled that rein like that.”
The barefaced audacity of putting the blame on to me left me speechless.
“No,” said Menzies-Legh, “you shouldn’t have pulled anything.”
He too! Again I was left speechless--left, indeed, altogether, for they
immediately dropped behind to help (save the mark) Lord Sigismund bring
the Ilsa through.
So the Elsa in her turn heaved away, guided anxiously by me over the
mole heaps, every mole heap being greeted by our pantry as we passed
over it with a thunderous clapping together of its contents, as though
the very cups, being English, were clapping their hands, or rather
handles, in an ecstasy of spiteful pleasure at getting broken and on to
my bill.
Little do you who only know cups in their public capacity, filled with
liquids and standing quietly in rows, realize what they can do once they
are let loose in a caravan. Sometimes I have thought--but no doubt
fancifully--that so-called inanimate objects are not as inanimate as one
might think, but are possessed of a character like other people, only
one of an unadulterated pettiness and perversity rarely found in the
human. I believe most people who had been in my place that evening last
August guiding the Elsa across all the irregularities that lay between
us and the willow-field in the distance, and had listened to what the
cups were doing, would have been sure of it. As for me, I can only say
that every time I touch a cup or other piece of crockery it seems to
upset it, and frequently has such an effect on it that it breaks; and it
is useless for Edelgard to tell me to be careful, and to hint (as she
does when she is out of spirits) that I am clumsy, because I am careful;
and as for being clumsy, everybody knows that I have the straightest eye
and am the best shot in our regiment. But it is not only cups. If, while
I am dressing (or undressing) I throw any portion of my clothes or other
article I may be using on to a table or a chair, however carefully I aim
it invariably either falls at once, or after a brief hesitation slips
off on to the floor from which place, in its very helplessness, it seems
to jeer at me. And the more important it is I should not be delayed the
more certainly is this conduct indulged in. Fanciful? Perhaps. But let
me remind you of what the English poet Shakespeare says through the
mouth of Hamlet into the ears of Horatio, and express the wish that you
too could have listened to the really exultant clapping of the cups in
our pantry as I crossed the mole heaps.
Edelgard, feeling guilty, remained behind, so was not there as she
otherwise certainly would have been making anxious sums, according to
her custom, in what these noises were going to cost us. A man who has
been persuaded to take a holiday because it is cheap may be pardoned for
being preoccupied when he finds it is likely to be dear. Among other
things I thought some very sharp ones about the owner of the field, who
permitted his ground, in defiance I am sure (though not being an
agriculturist I cannot give chapter and verse for my belief) of all laws
of health and wholesomeness, to be so much ravaged by moles. If he had
done his duty my cups would not have been smashed. The heaps of soil
thrown up by these animals were so frequent that during the entire
crossing at least one of the Elsa’s wheels was constantly on the top of
a heap, and sometimes two of her wheels simultaneously on the top of
two.
It is a pity people do not know what other people think of them.
Unfortunately it is rude to tell them, but if only means could be
devised--perhaps by some Marconi of the mind--for letting them know
without telling them, how nice and modest they would all become. That
farmer was probably eating his supper in his snug parlour in bestial
complacency and ignorance at the very moment that I was labouring across
his field pouring on him, if he had only known it, a series of as
scalding criticisms as ever made a man, if he were aware of them,
shrivel and turn over a new leaf.
I found Mrs. Menzies-Legh at the farther gate, holding it open. Old
James had already got his horse out, and when he saw me approaching came
and laid hold of the bridle of mine and led him through. He then drew
him up parallel with the Ailsa, the doors of both caravans being toward
the river, and proceeded with the skill and expedition natural in an old
person who had done nothing else all his life to unharness my horse and
turn him loose.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh lit a cigarette and handed me her case. She then
dropped down on to the long and very damp-looking grass and motioned to
me to sit beside her; so we sat together, I much too weary either to
refuse or to converse, while the muddy river slid sullenly along within
a yard of us between fringes of willows, and myriads of gnats gyrated in
the slanting sunbeams.
“Tired?” said she, after a silence that no doubt surprised her by its
length.
“Too tired,” said I, very shortly.
“Not really?” said she, turning her head to look at me, and affecting
much surprise about the eyebrows.
This goaded me. The woman was inhuman. For beneath the affected surprise
of the eyebrows I saw well enough the laughter in the eyes, and it has
always been held since the introduction of Christianity that to laugh at
physical incapacitation is a thing beyond all others barbarous.
I told her so. I tossed away the barely begun cigarette she had given
me, not choosing to go on smoking a cigarette of hers, and told her so
with as much Prussian thoroughness as is consistent with being at the
same time a perfect gentleman. No woman (except of course my wife) shall
ever be able to say I have not behaved to her as a gentleman should; and
my hearers will be more than ever convinced of the inexplicable
toughness of Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s nature, of the surprising impossibility
of producing the least effect upon her, when I tell them that at the end
of quite a long speech on my part, not, I believe ineloquent, and yet as
plainspoken as the speech of a man can be within the framework which
should always surround him, the carved and gilt and--it must be
added--expensive framework of gentlemanliness, she merely looked at me
again and said:
“Dear Baron, why is it that men, when they have walked a little farther
than they want to, or have gone hungry a little longer than they like
to, are always so dreadfully cross?”
The lumbering into the field of the Ilsa with the rest of the party made
an immediate reply impossible.
“Hullo,” said Jellaby, on seeing us apparently at rest in the grass.
“Enjoying yourselves?”
I fancy this must be a socialistic formula, for short as the period of
my acquaintance with him had been he had already used it to me three
times. Perhaps it is the way in which his sect reminds those outside it
of the existence of its barren and joyless notions of other people’s
obligations. A Socialist, as far as I can make out, is a person who may
never sit down. If he does, the bleak object he calls the Community
immediately becomes vocal, because it considers that by sitting down he
is cheating it of what he would be producing by his labour if he did
not. Once I (quite good naturedly) observed to Jellaby that in a
socialistic world the chair-making industry would be the first to go to
the wall (or the dogs--I cannot quite recollect which I said it would go
to) for want of suitable sitters, and he angrily retorted--but this
occurred later in the tour, and no doubt I shall refer to it in its
proper place.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh got up at once on his asking if we were enjoying
ourselves, as though her conscience reproached her, and went over to the
larder of her caravan and busily began pulling out pots; and I too
seeing that it was expected of me prepared to rise (for English society
is conducted on such artificial lines that immediately a woman begins to
do anything a man must at least pretend to do something too) but found
that my short stay on the grass had stiffened my over-tired limbs to
such an extent that I could not.
The two nondescripts, who were passing, lingered to look.
“Can I help you?” said the one they called Jumps, as I made a second
ineffectual effort, advancing and holding out a knuckly hand. “Will you
take my arm?” said the other one, Jane, crooking a bony elbow.
“Thank you, thank you, dear children,” I said, with bland heartiness one
assumes--for no known reason--toward the offspring of strangers; and
obliged to avail myself of their assistance (for want of practice makes
it at all times difficult for me to get up from a flat surface, and my
stiffness on this occasion turned the difficult into the impossible), I
somehow was pulled on to my feet.
“Thank you, thank you,” I said again, adding jestingly, “I expect I am
too old to sit on the ground.” ^
“Yes,” said Jane.
This was so unexpected that I could not repress a slight sensation of
annoyance, which found its expression in sarcasm.
“I am extremely obliged to you young ladies,” I said, sweeping off my
Panama, “for extending your charitable support and assistance to such a
poor old gentleman.”
[Illustration: _The two nondescripts, who were passing, lingered to
look_]
“Oh,” said Jumps earnestly, too thick-skinned to feel sarcasm, “I’m used
to it. I have to help Papa about. He’s very old too.”
“Yet surely,” said I, tingeing my sarcasm with playfulness (but they
were too thick-skinned even for playfulness), “surely not so old as I?”
“About the same,” said Jumps, considering me gravely.
“And how old,” said I, inquiring of Jane, for Jumps annoyed me too much,
“may your friend’s excellent parent be?”
“Oh, about sixty, or seventy, or eighty,” said she, indifferently.