Let me earnestly urge any of my hearers who may be fired by my example
to follow it, never to go to Dundale. It is a desolate place, and a
hungry place; and a place, moreover, greatly subject to becoming
enveloped in a sort of universal gray cloud, emitting a steady though
fine drizzle and accounted for--which made it none the less wet--by
persons who knew everything, like Jellaby, as being a sea-mist.
I am no doubt very stupid, and therefore was unable to understand why
there should be a sea-mist when there was no sea.
“Well, we’re in Sussex now you know,” said Jellaby, on my saying
something of the sort to him.
“Indeed,” said I politely, as though that explained it; but of course it
did not.
Up to this point we had at least, since the first night, been dry. Now
the rain began, and caravaning in rain is an experience that must be met
with one’s entire stock of fortitude and philosophy. This stock, however
large originally, has a tendency to give out after drops have trickled
down inside one’s collar for some hours. At the other end, too, the wet
ascends higher and higher, for is not one wading about in long and
soaking grass, trying to perform one’s (so to speak) household duties?
And if, when the ascending wet and the descending wet meet, and the
whole man is a mere and very unhappy sponge, he can still use such words
as healthy and jolly, then I say that that man is either a philosopher
indeed, worthy of and ripe for an immediate tub, or he is a liar and a
hypocrite. I heard both those adjectives often that day, and silently
divided their users into the proper categories. For myself I preferred
to say nothing, thus producing private flowers of stoicism in response
to the action of the rain.
For the first time I was glad to walk, glad to move on, glad of anything
that was not helping dripping ladies to pack up dripping breakfast
things beneath the dripping umbrella that with studious gallantry I
endeavoured to hold the while over my and their dripping heads. However
healthy and jolly the wet might be it undoubtedly made the company more
silent than the dry, and our resumed march was almost entirely without
conversation. We moved on in a southwesterly direction, the diseased
fledgling still in bed and still, I was credibly informed, scratching,
through pine woods full of wet bracken and deep gloom and drizzle, till
at a place called Frant we turned off due south in response to some
unaccountable impulse of Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s, whose unaccountable
impulses were the capricious rudder which swayed us hither and thither
during the entire tour.
She used to study maps, and walk with one under her arm out of which she
read aloud the names of the places we were supposed to be at; and just
as we had settled down to believe it we would come to some flatly
contradictory signpost which talked of quite different places, places we
had been told were remote and in an altogether different direction.
“It doesn’t matter,” she would say, with a smile in which I, at least,
never joined, for I have my own opinions of petticoat government--“the
great thing is to go on.”
So we went on; and it was she who made us suddenly turn off southward
after Frant, leaving a fairly comfortable highroad for the vicissitudes
of narrow and hilly lanes.
“Lanes,” said she, “are infinitely prettier.”
I dare say. They are also generally hillier, and so narrow that once a
caravan is in one on it has to go whatever happens, trusting to luck not
to meet anything else on wheels till it reaches, after many anxieties,
the haven of another highroad. This lane ran deep between towering
hedges and did not leave off again for five miles, and none of you
would believe how long it took us to do those five miles because none of
you know--how should you?--what the getting of caravans up hills by
means of tracing is. We had, thanks to Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s desire for
the pretty (unsatisfied I am glad to say on that occasion, because the
so-called sea-mist clung close round us like a wet gray cloak)--we had
got into an almost mountainous lane. We were tracing the whole time,
dragging each caravan up each hill in turn, leaving it solitary at the
top and returning with all three horses for the next one left meanwhile
at the bottom. I never saw such an endless succession of hills. If
tracing does not teach a man patience what, I would like to know, will?
At first, on finding my horse removed and harnessed on to the Ailsa, I
thought I would get inside the Elsa and stretch myself on the yellow box
and wait there quietly smoking till the horse came back again; but I
found Edelgard inside, blocking it up and preparing to mend her
stockings.
This was unpleasant, for I had hardly spoken to her, and then only with
the chilliest politeness, since her behaviour on the evening by the
Medway; yet, determined to be master in my own (so to speak) house, I
would have carried out my intention if Menzies-Legh’s voice, which I
thought had gone up the hill, had not been heard quite close outside
asking where I was.
I warned my wife by means of a hasty enjoining finger to keep silence.
Will it be believed that she looked at me, said “Why should you not
help?” opened the window, and called out that I was there?
“Come and give us a hand, Baron,” said Menzies-Legh from outside. “It’s
a very stiff pull--we’ll have to push behind as well, and want what help
we’ve got.”
“Certainly,” said I, all apparent ready bustle; but I shot a very
expressive brief glance at Edelgard as I went out.
She, however, pretended to be absorbed in her sewing.
“You Socialists,” said I to Jellaby, next to whom I found I was expected
to push, “do not believe in marriage, do you?”
“We--don’t--believe--in--tyrants,” he panted, so short of breath that I
stared at him, I myself having quite a quantity of it; besides, what an
answer!
I shrugged the shoulder nearest him and continued up in silence. At the
top of the hill he was so warm and breathless that he could not speak,
and so were the others, while I was perfectly cool and chatty.
“Why, gentlemen,” I remarked banteringly, as I stood in the midst of
these panters watching them wipe their heated brows, “you are scarcely
what is known as in training.”
“But you, Baron--undoubtedly are----” gasped Menzies-Legh. “You
are--absolutely unruffled.”
“Oh, yes,” I agreed modestly, “I am in good condition. We always are in
our army. Ready at any moment to----”
I stopped, for I had been on the verge of saying “eat the English,” when
I recollected that we may not inform the future mouthfuls of their fate.
“Ready to go in and win,” finished Lord Sigismund.
“To blow up Europe,” said Jellaby.
“To mobilize,” said Menzies-Legh. “And very right and proper.”
“Very wrong and improper,” said Jellaby. “You know,” he said, turning on
his host with all the combativeness of these men of peace (the only
really calm person is your thoroughly trained and equipped
warrior)--“you know very well you agree with me that war is the most
unnecessary----”
“Come, come, my young gentlemen,” I interposed, broadening my
chest, “do not forget that you are in the presence of one of its
representatives----”
“Let us fetch up the next caravan,” interrupted Menzies-Legh, thrusting
my horse’s bridle into my hand; and as I led it down the hill again my
anxiety to prevent its stumbling and costing me heaven knows how much in
the matter of mending its knees rendered me unable for the moment to
continue the crushing of Jellaby.
About four o’clock in the afternoon we found ourselves, drenched and
hungry, on the outskirts of a place called Wadhurst. It seemed wise to
go no nearer unless we were prepared to continue on through it, for
already the laurels of its villa residences dropped their rain on us
over neat railings as we passed. We therefore, too worn out to attempt
to get right through the place to the country beyond, selected the first
possible field on the left of the brown and puddle-strewn road, a field
of yellow stubble which, soaking as it was, was yet a degree less
soaking than long grass, and though it had nothing but a treeless hedge
to divide us from the eyes of wanderers along the road it had an
unusually conveniently placed gate. The importance now of fields and
gates! The importance, indeed, of everything usually unimportant--which
is, in brief, the tragedy of caravaning.
This time the Menzies-Legh couple went to find the owner and crave
permission. So reduced were we--and could reduction go further?--that to
crave, hat in hand, for permission to occupy some wretched field for a
few hours, and to crave it often of illiterate, selfish, and grossly
greedy persons like my friend at Dundale, was not beneath any of our
prides, while to obtain it seemed the one boon worth having.
While they were gone we waited, a melancholy string of vehicles and
people in a world made up of mist and mud. Frau von Eckthum, who might
have cheered me, had been invisible nearly the whole day, ministering
(no doubt angelically) to the afflicted fledgling. Edelgard and the
child Jane got into the Elsa during the pause and began to teach each
other languages. I leaned against the gate, staring before me. Old
James, a figure of dripping patience, remained at his horse’s head. And
Lord Sigismund and Jellaby, as though they had not had enough exercise,
walked up and down the road talking.
Except the sound of their receding and advancing footsteps the stillness
was broken by nothing at all. It was a noiseless rain. It did not
patter. And yet, fine though it was, it streamed down the flanks of the
horses, the sides of the caravans, and actually penetrated, as I later
on discovered, through the green arras lining of the Elsa, making a long
black streak from roof to floor.
I wonder what my friends at home would have said could they have seen me
then. No shelter; no refuge; no rest. These three negatives, I take it,
sum up fairly accurately a holiday in a caravan. You cannot get in, for
if you do either you find it full already of your wife, or, if it is
moving, Jellaby immediately springs up from nowhere and inquires at the
window whether you have noticed how your horse is sweating. At every
camp there is nothing but work--and oh, my friends, such work! Work
undreamed of in your ordered lives, and nothing, nothing but it, for
must you not eat? And without it there is no eating. And then when you
have eaten, without the least pause, the least interval for the
meditation so good after meals, there begins that frightful and accursed
form of activity, most frightful and accursed of all known forms, the
washing up. How it came about that it was not from the first left to the
women I cannot understand; they are fitted by nature for such labour,
and do not feel it; but I, being in a minority, was powerless to
interfere. Nor did I always succeed in evading it. If we camped early,
the daylight exposed my movements; and by the time it was done bed
seemed the only place to go to. Now an intelligent man does not desire
to go to bed at eight; yet in that cold weather--we were, they said,
unusually unfortunate in the weather--even if it was dry, what pleasure
was there in sitting out-of-doors? I had had enough during the day of
out-of-doors; by the time evening came, out-of-doors and fresh air were
things abhorrent to me. And there were only three comfortable chairs,
low and easy, in which a man might stretch himself and smoke, and these,
without so much as a preliminary offering of them to anybody else, were
sat in by the ladies. It did seem a turning of good old customs upside
down when I saw Edelgard get into one as a matter of course, so
indifferent to what I might be thinking that she did not even look my
way. How vividly on such occasions did I remember my easy chair at
Storchwerder and how sacred it was, and how she never dared, if I were
in the house, approach it, nor I firmly believe ever dared, so good was
her training and so great her respect, approach it when I was out.
Well, our proverb--descriptive of a German gentleman about to start on
his (no doubt) well-deserved holiday travels--“He who loves his wife
leaves her at home,” is as wise now as the day it was written, and about
this time I began to see that by having made my bed in a manner that
disregarded it I was going to have to lie on it.
The Menzies-Leghs returned wreathed in smiles--I beg you to note the
reason, and all of wretchedness that it implies--because the owner of
the field’s wife had not been rude, and had together with the desired
permission sold them two pounds of sausages, the cold potatoes left from
her dinner, a jug of milk, a piece of butter, and some firewood. Also
they had met a baker’s cart and had bought loaves.
This, of course, as far as it went, was satisfactory, especially the
potatoes that neither wanted peeling nor patience while they grew soft,
but I submit that it was only a further proof of our extreme lowness in
the scale of well-cared-for humanity. Here in my own home, with these
events in what Menzies-Legh and Jellaby would have called the blue
distance, how strange it seems that just sausages and cold potatoes
should ever have been able to move me to exultation.
We at once got into the field, hugging the hedge, and in the shelter of
the Ilsa (which entered last) made our fire. I was deputed (owing to the
unfortunate circumstance of my being the only person who had brought
one) to hold my umbrella over the frying pan while Jellaby fried the
sausages on one of the stoves. It was not what I would have chosen, for
while protecting the sausages I was also, in spite of every effort to
the contrary, protecting Jellaby; and what an anomalous position for a
gentleman of birth and breeding and filled with the aristocratic
opinions, and perhaps (for I am a fair man) prejudices, incident to
being born and bred--well born of course I mean, not recognizing any
other form of birth--what a position, to stand there keeping the back of
a British Socialist dry!
But there is no escaping these anomalies if you caravan; they crop up
continually; and however much you try to dam them out, the waters of
awkwardly familiar situations constantly break through and set all your
finer feelings on edge. Fain would I have let the rain work its will on
Jellaby’s back, but what about the sausages? As they turned and twisted
in the pan, obedient to his guiding fork, I could not find it in me to
let a drop of rain mar that melodious fizzling. So I stood there doing
my best, glad at least I was spared being compromised owing to the
absence of my friends, while the two other gentlemen warmed up the
potatoes over the fire preparatory to converting them into _purée_, and
the ladies in the caravans were employed, judging by the fragrance, in
making coffee.
In spite of the rain a small crowd had collected and was leaning on the
gate. Their faces were divided between wonder and pity; but this was an
expression we had now got used to, for except on fine days every face we
met at once assumed it, unless the face belonged to a little boy, when
it was covered instead with what seemed to be glee and was certainly
animation, the animation being apparently not infrequently inspired by a
train of thought which led up to, after we had passed, a calling out and
a throwing of stones.
“You’ll see these turn brown soon,” said Jellaby, crouching over his
sausages and pursuing them untiringly round and round the pan with a
fork.
“Yes,” said I; “and a pleasant sight too when one is hungry.”
“By Jove, yes,” said he; “caravaning makes one appreciate things,
doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” said I, “whenever there are any.”
In silence he continued to pursue with his fork.
“They are very pink,” said I, after some minutes.
“Yes,” said he.
“Do you think so much--such unceasing--exercise is good for them?”
“Well, but I must get them brown all round.”
“They are, however, still altogether pink.”
“Patience, my dear Baron. You’ll soon see.”
I watched him in a further silence of some minutes.
“Do you, Jellaby,” I then inquired, “really understand how best to treat
a sausage?”
“Oh, yes; they’re bound to turn brown soon.”
“But see how obstinately they continue pink. Would it not be wise,
considering the lateness, to call my wife and desire her to cook them?”
“What! The Baroness in this wet stubble?” said he, with such energy that
I deemed the moment come for the striking of the blow that had been so
long impending.
[Illustration: _“Do you, Jellaby,” I then inquired, “really understand
how best to treat a sausage?”_]
“When a lady,” I said with great distinctness, “has cooked for fourteen
years without interruption--ever since, that is, she was sixteen--one
may safely at thirty leave it always in her hands.”
“Monstrous,” said he.
At first I thought he was in some way alluding to her age, and to the
fact that he had been deceived into supposing her young.
“What is monstrous?” I inquired, as he did not add anything.
“Why should she cook for us? Why should she come out in the wet to cook
for us? Why should any woman cook for fourteen years without
interruption?”
“She did it joyfully, Jellaby, for the comfort and sustenance of her
husband, as every virtuous woman ought.”
“I think,” said he, “it would choke me.”
“What would choke you?”
“Food produced by the unceasing labour of my wife. Why should she be
treated as a servant when she gets neither wages nor the privilege of
giving notice and going away?”
“No wages? Her wages, young gentleman, are the knowledge that she has
done her duty to her husband.”
“Thin, thin,” he murmured, digging his fork into the nearest sausage.
“And as for going away, I must say I am surprised you should connect
such a thought with any respectable lady.”
Indeed, what he said was so ridiculous, and so young, and so on the face
of it unmarried that in my displeasure I moved the umbrella for a moment
far enough to one side to allow the larger drops collected on its metal
tips to fall on to his bent and practically collarless (he wore a
flannel shirt with some loose apology for a collar of the same material)
neck.
“Hullo,” he said, “you’re letting the sausages get wet.”
“You talk, Jellaby,” I resumed, obliged to hold the umbrella on its
original position again and forcing myself to speak calmly, “in great
ignorance. What can you know of marriage? Whereas I am very fully
qualified to speak, for I have had, as you may not perhaps know, the
families scheduled in the _Gotha Almanach_ being unlikely to come within
the range of your acquaintance, two wives.”
I must of course have been mistaken, but I did fancy I heard him say,
partly concealing it under his breath, “God help them,” and naturally
greatly startled I said very stiffly, “I beg your pardon?”
But he only mumbled unintelligibly over his pan, so that no doubt I had
done him an injustice; and the sausages being, as he said (not without
a note of defiance in his voice), ready, which meant that for some
reason or other they had one and all come out of their skins (which lay
still pink in limp and lifeless groups about the pan), and were now mere
masses of minced meat, he rose up from his crouching attitude, ladled
them by means of a spoon into a dish, requested my umbrella’s continued
company, and proceeded to make the round of caravans, holding them up at
each window in turn while the ladies helped themselves from within.
“And us?” I said at last, for when he had been to the third he began to
return once more to the first--“and us?”
“Us will get some presently,” he replied--I cannot think
grammatically--holding up the already sadly reduced dish at the Ilsa’s
window.
Frau von Eckthum, however, smiled and shook her head, and very luckily
the sick fledgling, so it appeared, still turned with loathing from all
nourishment. Lord Sigismund was following us round with the potato
_puree_, and in return for being waited on in this manner, a manner that
can only be described as hand and foot, Edelgard deigned to give us cups
of coffee through her window and Mrs. Menzies-Legh slices of buttered
bread through hers.
Perhaps my friends will have noted the curious insistence and patience
with which we drank coffee. I can hear them say, “Why this continuous
coffee?” I can hear them also inquire, “Where was the wine, then, that
beverage for gentlemen, or the beer, that beverage for the man of muscle
and marrow?”
The answer to that is, Nowhere. None of them drank anything more
convivial than water or that strange liquid, seemingly so alert and full
of promise, ginger-beer, and to drink alone was not quite what I cared
for. There was Frau von Eckthum, for instance, looking on, and she had
very early in the tour expressed surprise that anybody should ever want
to drink what she called intoxicants.
“My dear lady,” I had protested--tenderly, though--“you would not have a
man drink milk?”
“Why not?” said she; but even when she is stupid she does not for an
instant cease to be attractive.
On the march I often could make up for abstinences in between by going
inside the inns outside which the gritless others lunched on bananas and
milk, and privately drinking an honest mug of beer.
You, my friends, will naturally inquire, “Why privately?”
Well, I was in the minority, a position that tends to take the kick, at
least the open kick, out of a man--in fact, since my wife’s desertion I
occupied the entire minority all by myself; then I am a considerate man,
and do not like to go against the grain (other people’s grain),
remembering how much I feel it when other people go against mine; and
finally (and this you will not understand, for I know you do not like
her), there was always Frau von Eckthum looking on.