This was rebellion.
But unconsciousness supervened before I had had time to consider how
best to meet it, the unconsciousness of the profound and prolonged sleep
which is the portion of caravaners. I fell into it almost immediately
after her departure, dropping into my berth, a mere worn-out collection
of aching and presently oblivious bones, and remaining in that condition
till she had left the Elsa next morning.
Therefore I had little time for reflection on the new side of her nature
the English atmosphere was bringing out, nor did I all that day find
either the leisure or the privacy necessary for it. I felt, indeed, as I
walked by my horse along roads broad and roads narrow, roads straight
and roads winding, roads flat and convenient and roads hilly and
tiresome, my eyes fixed principally on the ground, for if I looked up
there were only hedges and in front of me only the broad back of the
Ailsa blocking up any view there might be, I felt a numb sensation
stealing over me, a kind of dull patience, such as I have observed (for
I see most things) to be the leading characteristic of a team of oxen,
a tendency becoming more marked with every mile toward the merely
bovine.
The weather that day was disagreeable. There was a high wind and a
leaden sky and the dust blew hard and gritty. When, on rising, I peeped
out between the window curtains, it all looked very cold and wretched,
the Medway--a most surly river--muddier than ever, the leaves of the
willow trees wildly fluttering and showing their gray undersides. It
seemed difficult to believe that one was really there, really about to
go out into that gloom to breakfast instead of into a normal dining-room
with a stove and a newspaper. But, on emerging, I found that though it
looked so cold it was not intolerably so, and no rain in the night had,
by drenching the long grass, added to our agonies.
They were all at breakfast beneath the willows, holding on their hats
with one hand and endeavouring to eat with the other, and they all
seemed very cheerful. Edelgard, who had taken the coffee under her
management, was going round replenishing the cups, and was actually
laughing when I came out at something some one had just said.
Remembering how we parted this struck me as at least strange.
I made a point of at once asking for porridge, but luckily old James had
not brought the milk in time, so there was none. Spared, I ate corned
beef and jam, but my feet were still sore from the previous day’s march,
and I was unable to enjoy it very much. The tablecloth flapped in my
face, and my mackintosh blew almost into the river when I let it go for
an instant in order to grasp the milk jug, and I must say I could not
quite understand why they should all be so happy. I trust I am as
willing to be amused as any man, but what is there amusing in
breakfasting in a draughty meadow with everything flapping and
fluttering, and the coffee cold before it reaches one’s mouth? Yet they
were happy. Even Menzies-Legh, a gray-haired, badly-preserved man, older
a good deal, I should say, than I am, was joking and then laughing at
his jokes with the fledglings, and Lord Sigismund and Jellaby were
describing almost with exultation how brisk they had felt after a bath
they had taken at five in the morning in the Medway.
What a place to be in at five in the morning. I shivered only to hear of
it. Well, that which makes one man brisk is the undoing of another, and
a bath in that cold, unfriendly stream would undoubtedly have undone me.
I could only conclude that, pasty and loosely put together as they
outwardly were, they must be of a very great secret leatheriness.
This surprised me. Not that Jellaby should be leathery, for if he were
not neither would he be a Socialist; but that the son of so noble a
house as the house of Hereford should have anything but the thinnest,
most sensitive of skins, really was astonishing. No doubt, however, Lord
Sigismund combined, like the racehorse of purest breed, a skin thin as a
woman’s with a mettle and spirit nothing could daunt. Nothing was
daunting him that morning, that was very clear, for he sat at the end of
the table shedding such contented beams through his spectacles on the
company and on the food that it was as if, unconsciously true to his
future calling, he was saying a continual grace.
I think they must all have been up very early, for except the cups and
plates actually in use everything was already stowed away. Even the tent
and its furniture was neatly rolled up preparatory to being distributed
among the three caravans. Such activity, after the previous day, was
surprising; and still more so was the circumstance that I had heard
nothing of the attendant inevitable bustle.
“How do you feel this morning?” I asked solicitously of Frau von Eckthum
on meeting her a moment alone behind her larder; I hoped she, at least,
had not been working too hard.
“Oh, very well,” said she.
“Not too weary?”
“Not weary at all.”
“Ah--youth, youth,” said I, shaking my head playfully, for indeed she
looked singularly attractive that morning.
She smiled, and mounting the steps into her caravan began to do things
with a duster and to sing.
For a moment I wondered whether she too had been made brisk by early
contact with the Medway (of course in some remoter pool or bay), so
unusual in her was this flow of language; but the idea of such delicacy
being enveloped and perhaps buffeted by that rude volume of muddy water
was, I felt, an impossible one. Still, why should she feel brisk? Had
she not walked the day before the entire distance in the dust? Was it
possible that she too, in spite of her poetic exterior, was really
inwardly leathery? I have my ideals about women, and believe there is
much of the poet concealed somewhere about me; and there is a moonlight
intangibleness about this lady, an etherealism amounting at times almost
to indistinctness, that made the application to her of such an adjective
as leathery one from which I shrank. Yet if she were not, how could
she--but I put these thoughts resolutely aside, and began to prepare for
our departure, moving about mechanically as one in a bleak and chilly
dream.
That is a hideous bridge, that one the English have built themselves
across the Medway. A great gray-painted iron structure, with the dusty
highroad running over it and the dirty river running under it. I hope
never to see it again, unless officially at the head of my battalion. On
the other side was a place called Paddock Wood, also, it seemed to me, a
dreary thing as I walked through it that morning at my horse’s side. The
sun came out just there, and the wind with its consequent dust
increased. What an August, thought I; what a climate; what a place. An
August and a climate and a place only to be found in the British Isles.
In Storchwerder at that moment a proper harvest mellowness prevailed. No
doubt also in Switzerland, whither we so nearly went, and certainly in
Italy. Was this a reasonable way of celebrating one’s silver wedding,
plodding through Paddock Wood with no one taking any notice of me, not
even she who was the lawful partner of the celebration? The only answer
I got as I put the question to myself was a mouthful of dust.
Nobody came to walk with me, and unless some one did my position was a
very isolated one, wedged in between the Ailsa and the Ilsa, unable to
leave the Elsa, who, like a wife, immediately strayed from the proper
road if I did. The back of the Ailsa prevented my seeing who was with
whom in front, but once at a sharp turning I did see, and what I saw
was Frau von Eckthum walking with Jellaby, and Edelgard--if you
please--on his other side. The young Socialist was slouching along with
his hands in his pockets and his bony shoulders up to his ears
listening, apparently, to Frau von Eckthum who actually seemed to be
talking, for he kept on looking at her, and laughing as though at the
things she said. Edelgard, I noticed, joined in the laughter as
unconcernedly as if she had nothing in the world to reproach herself
with. Then the Elsa followed round the corner and the scene in front was
blotted out; but glancing back over my shoulder I saw how respectably
Lord Sigismund, true to his lineage, remained by the Ilsa’s horse’s
head, reflectively smoking his pipe and accompanied only by his dog.
Beyond Paddock Wood and its flat and dreary purlieus the road began to
ascend and to wind, growing narrower and less draughty, with glimpses of
a greener country and a hillier distance, in fact improving visibly as
we neared Sussex. All this time I had walked by myself, and I was still
too tired after the long march the day before to have any but dull
objections. It would have been natural to be acutely indignant at
Edelgard’s persistent defiance, natural to be infuriated at the
cleverness with which she shifted the entire charge of our caravan on to
me while she, on the horizon, gesticulated with Jellaby. I realized, it
is true, that the others would not have let her lead the horse even had
she offered to, but she ought at least to have walked beside me and hear
me, if that were my mood, grumble. However, a reasonable man knows how
to wait. He does not, not being a woman, hasten and perhaps spoil a
crisis by rushing at it. And if no opportunity should present itself for
weeks, would there not be years in our flat in Storchwerder consisting
solely of opportunities?
Besides, my feet ached. I think there must have been some clumsy darning
of Edelgard’s in my socks that pressed on my toes and made them feel as
if the shoes were too short for them. And small stones kept on getting
inside them, finding out the one place they could get in at and leaping
through it with the greatest dexterity, dropping gradually by unpleasant
stages down to underneath my socks, where they remained causing me
discomfort till the next camp. These physical conditions, to which the
endless mechanical trudging behind the Ailsa’s varnished back must be
added, reduced me as I said before to a condition of dull and bovine
acquiescence. I ceased to make objections. I hardly thought. I just
trudged.
At the top of the ascent, at a junction of four roads called Four Winds
(why, when they were four roads, the English themselves I suppose best
know), we met a motor.
It came scorching round a corner with an insolent shriek of its tooting
apparatus, but the shriek died away as it were on its lips when it saw
what was filling up the way. It hesitated, stopped, and then began
respectfully to back. Pass us it could not at that point, and charge
into such vast objects as the caravans was a task before which even
bloodthirstiness quailed. I record this as the one pleasing incident
that morning, and when it was my turn to walk by the thing I did so with
squared shoulders and held-up head and a muttered (yet perfectly
distinct) “Road hogs”--which is the term Menzies-Legh had applied to
them the day before when relating how one had run over a woman near
where he lives, and had continued its career, leaving her to suffer in
the road, which she did for the space of two hours before the next
passer-by passed in time to see her die. And she was a quite young
woman, and a pretty one into the bargain.
(“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” said the foolish Jellaby
when, in answer to my questions, I extracted this information from
Menzies-Legh.)
Therefore, remembering this shocking affair, and being as well a great
personal detester of these conveyances, the property invariably of the
insolent rich, who with us are chiefly Jews, I took care to be distinct
as I muttered “Road hogs.” The two occupants in goggles undoubtedly
heard me, for they started and even their goggles seemed to shrink back
and be ashamed of themselves, and I continued my way with a slight
reviving of my spirits, the slight reviving of which he is generally
conscious who has had the courage to say what he thinks of a bad thing.
The post whose finger we were following had Dundale inscribed on it, and
as we wound downward the scenery considerably improved. Woods on our
left sheltered us from the wind, and on our right were a number of
pretty hills. At the bottom--a bottom only reached after care and
exertion, for loose stones imperilled the safety of my horse’s knees,
and I had besides to spring about applying and regulating the brake--we
found a farm with a hop-kiln in the hollow on the left, and opposite it
a convenient, indeed attractive, field.
No other house was near. No populace. No iron bridge. No donkeys. No
barrel-organ. Stretches of corn, so ripe that though the sky had clouded
over they looked as if the sun were shining on them, alternated very
pleasantly with the green of the hop-fields, and portions of woods
climbed up between the folds of the hills. It was a sheltered spot, with
a farm capable no doubt of supplying food, but I feared that because it
was only one o’clock my pedantic companions, in defiance of the
previous day’s experience, would decline to camp. Taking therefore the
law into my own hands I pulled up my caravan in front of the farm gate.
The Ilsa behind me was forced to pull up too; and the Ailsa, in the very
act of lumbering round the next corner, was arrested by my loud and
masterful _Brrr_.
“Anything wrong?” asked Lord Sigismund, running up from the back.
“What is it?” asked Menzies-Legh, coming toward me from the front.
Strange to say they listened to reason; and yet not strange, for I have
observed that whenever one makes up one’s mind beforehand and unshakably
other people give in. One must know what one wants--that is the whole
secret; and in a world of flux and shilly-shally the infrequent rock is
the only person who really gets it.
Jellaby (who seemed to think he was irresistible) volunteered to go to
the farmer and get permission to camp in the field, and I was pleased to
see that he made so doubtful an impression that the man came back with
him before granting anything, to find out whether the party belonging to
this odd emissary were respectable. I dare say he would have decided
that we were not had he only seen the others, for the gentlemen were in
their shirt sleeves again; but when he saw me, well and completely
dressed, he had no further hesitations. Readily he let us use the
field, recommending a certain lower portion of it on account of the
nearness of the water, and then he prepared to go back and, as he said,
finish his dinner.
But we, who wanted dinner too, could not be content with nothing more
filling than a field, and began almost with one voice to talk to him of
poultry.
He said he had none.
Of eggs.
He said he had none.
Of (anxiously) butter.
He said he had none. And he scratched his head and looked unintelligent
for a space, and then repeating that about finishing his dinner turned
away.
I went with him.
“Take the caravans into the field and I will forage,” I called back,
waving my hand; for the idea of accompanying a man who was going to
finish his dinner exhilarated me into further masterfulness.
My rapid calculation was, as I kept step with him, he looking at me
sideways, that though it was very likely true he had not enough for ten
it was equally probable that he had plenty for one. Besides, he might be
glad to let an interesting stranger share the finishing of his no doubt
lonely meal.
In the short transit from the lane to his back door (the front door was
choked with grass and weeds) I chatted agreeably and fluently about the
butter and eggs we desired to buy, adopting the “Come, come, my dear
fellow” tone, perhaps better described as the man to man form of appeal.
“Foreign?” said he, after I had thus flowed on, pausing on his doorstep
as though intending to part from me at that point.
“Yes, and proud of it,” said I, lifting my hat to my distant Fatherland.
“Ah,” said he. “No accountin’ for tastes.”
This was disappointing after I had thought we were getting on. Also it
was characteristically British. I would at once have resented it if with
the opening of the door the unfinished dinner had not, in the form of a
most appetizing odour, issued forth to within reach of my nostrils. To
sit in a room with shut windows at a table and dine, without preliminary
labours, on food that did not get cold between the plate and one’s
mouth, seemed to me at that moment a lot so blessed that tears almost
came into my eyes.
“Do you never have--guests?” I asked, faltering but hurried, for he was
about to shut the door with me still on the wrong side of it.
He stared. Red-faced and over stout his very personal safety demanded
that he should not by himself finish that dinner.
“Guests?” he repeated stupidly. “No, I don’t have no guests.”
“Poor fellow,” said I.
“I don’t know about poor fellow,” said he, getting redder.
“Yes. Poor fellow. And poor fellow inasmuch as I suppose in this
secluded spot there are none to be had, and so you are prevented from
exercising the most privileged and noble of rites.”
“Oh, you’re one of them Social Democrats?”
“Social Democrats?” I echoed.
“Them chaps that go about talkin’ to us of rights, and wrongs too, till
we all get mad and discontented--which is pretty well all we ever do
get,” he added with a chuckle that was at the same time scornful. And he
shut the door.
Filled with the certitude that I had been misunderstood, and that if
only he could be made aware that he had one of the aristocracy of the
first nation in the world on his step willing to be his guest and that
such a chance would never in all human probability occur again he would
be too delighted to welcome me, I knocked vigorously.
“Let me in. I am hungry. You do not know who I am,” I called out.
“Well,” said he, opening the door a few inches after a period during
which I had continued knocking and he, as I could hear, had moved about
the room inside, “here’s a quarter of a pound of butter for you. I
ain’t got no more. It’s salt. I ain’t got no fresh. I send it away to
the market as soon as it’s made. It’ll be fourpence. Tell your party
they can pay when they settle for the field.”
And he thrust a bit of soft and oily butter lying on a piece of paper
into my hand and shut the door.
“Man,” I cried in desperation, rattling the handle, “you do not know who
I am. I am a gentleman--an officer--a nobleman----”
He bolted the door.
When I got back I found them encamped in a corner at the far end of the
field, as close into the shelter of a hedge as they could get, and my
butter was greeted with a shout (led by Jellaby) of laughter. He and the
fledglings at once started off on a fresh foraging expedition, on my
advice in another direction, but all they bore back with them was the
promise, from another farmer, of chickens next morning at six, and what
is the good of chickens next morning at six? It was my turn to shout,
and so I did, but I seemed to have little luck with my merriment, for
the others were never merry at the moment that I was, and I shouted
alone.
Jellaby, pretending he did not know why I should, looked surprised and
said as usual, “Hullo, Baron, enjoying yourself?”
“Of course,” said I, smartly--“is not that what I have come to England
for?”
We dined that day on what was left of our bacon and some potatoes we had
over. An attempt which failed was made to fry the potatoes--“as a
pleasant change,” said Lord Sigismund good humouredly--but the wind was
so high that the fire could not be brought to frying pitch, so about
three o’clock we gave it up, and boiled them and ate them with butter
and the bacon, which was for some reason nobody understood half raw.
That was a bad day. I hope never to revisit Dundale. The field, which
began dry and short-grassed at the top of the slope, was every bit as
deep and damp by the time it got down to the corner we were obliged to
camp in because of the wind as the meadow by the Medway had been. We had
the hedge between us (theoretically) and the wind, but the wind took no
notice of the hedge. Also we had a black-looking brook of sluggish
movement sunk deep below some alders and brambles at our side, and
infested, it appeared, with a virulent species of fly or other animal,
for while we were wondering (at least I was) what we were going to do to
pass the hours before bed time, and what (if any) supper there would be,
and reflecting (at least I was) on the depressing size and greenness of
the field and on the way the threatening clouds hung lower and lower
over our heads, the fledgling Jumps appeared, struggling up from the
brook through the blackberry bushes, and crying that she had been stung
by some beast or beasts unknown, flung herself down on the grass and
immediately began to swell.
Everybody was in consternation, and I must say so was I, for I have
never seen anything to equal the rapidity of her swelling. Her face and
hands even as she lay there became covered with large red, raised
blotches, and judging from her incoherent remarks the same thing was
happening over the rest of her. It occurred to me that if she could not
soon be stopped from further swelling the very worst thing might be
anticipated, and I expressed my fears to Menzies-Legh.
“Nonsense,” said he, quite sharply; but I overlooked it because he was
obviously in his heart thinking the same thing.
They got her into the Ilsa and put her, I was informed, to bed; and
presently, just as I was expecting to be scattered with the other
gentlemen in all directions in search of a doctor, Mrs. Menzies-Legh
appeared in the doorway and said that Jumps had been able to gasp out,
between her wild scratchings, that when anything stung her she always
swelled, and the only thing to do was to let her scratch undisturbed
until such time as she should contract to her ordinary size again.
Immensely relieved, for a search for a doctor in hedges and ditches
would surely have been a thing of little profit and much fatigue, I sat
down in one of the only three chairs that were at all comfortable and
spent the rest of the afternoon in fitful argument with Jellaby as he
came and went, and in sustained, and not, I trust, unsuccessful efforts
to establish my friendship with Lord Sigismund on such a footing
that an invitation to meet his Serene Aunt, the Princess of
Grossburg-Niederhausen, would be the harmonious result.
The ladies were busied devising methods for the more rapid relief of the
unhappy and still obstinately swollen fledgling.
There was no supper except ginger-biscuits.
“You can’t expect it,” said Edelgard, when I asked her (very distantly)
about it, “with sickness in the house.”
“What house?” I retorted, pardonably snappy.
I hope never to revisit Dundale.