We supped that night beneath the stars with the field dropping downward
from our feet into the misty purple of the Sussex Weald. What we had for
supper was chicken and rice and onions, and very excellent it was. The
wind had gone, and it was cold. It was like a night in North Germany,
where the wind sighs all day long and at sunset it suddenly grows coldly
and clearly calm.
These are quotations from a conversation I overheard between Frau von
Eckthum (oddly loquacious that night) and Jellaby, who both sat near
where I was eating my supper, supposed to be eating theirs but really
letting it spoil while they looked down at the Sussex Weald (I wish I
knew what a Weald is: Kent had one too) and she described the extremely
flat and notoriously dull country round Storchwerder.
Indeed I would not have recognized it from her description, and yet I
know it every bit as well as she can. Blue air, blue sky, blue water,
and the flash of white wings--that was how she described it, and poor
Jellaby was completely taken in and murmured “Beautiful, beautiful” in
his foolish slow voice, and forgot to eat his chicken and rice while it
was hot, and little guessed that she had laughed at him with me a few
hours before.
I listened, amused but tolerant. We must not keep a pretty lady too
exactly to the truth. The first part of this chapter is a quotation from
what I heard her say (excepting one sentence), but my hearers must take
my word for it that it did not sound anything like as silly as one might
suppose. Everything depends on the utterer. Frau von Eckthum’s
quasi-poetical way of describing the conduct of our climate had an odd
attractiveness about it that I did not find, for instance, in my dear
wife’s utterances when she too, which she at this time began to do with
increasing frequency, indulged in the quasi-poetic. Quasi-poetic I and
other plain men take to be the violent tearing of such a word as rolling
from its natural place and applying it to the plains and fields round
Storchwerder. A ship rolls, but fields, I am glad to say, do not. You
may also with perfect propriety talk about a rolling-pin in connection
with the kitchen, or of a rolling stone in connection with moss. Of
course I know that we all on suitable occasions make use of exclamations
of an appreciative nature, such as _colossal_ and _grossartig_, but that
is brief and business-like, it is what is expected of us, and it is a
duty quickly performed and almost perfunctory, with one eye on the
waiter and the restaurant behind; but slow raptures, prolonged ones,
raptures beaten out thin, are not in my way and had not till then been
in Edelgard’s way either. The English are flimsier than we are, thinner
blooded, more feminine, more finnicking. There are no restaurants or
_Bierhalle_ wherever there is a good view to drown their admiration in
wholesome floods of beer, and not being provided with this natural
stopper it fizzles on to interminableness. Why, Jellaby I could see not
only let his supper get stone cold but forgot to eat it at all in his
endeavour to outdo Frau von Eckthum’s style in his replies, and then
Edelgard must needs join in too, and say (I heard her) that life in
Storchwerder was a dusty, narrow life, where you could not see the
_liebe Gott_ because of other people’s chimney-pots.
Greatly shocked (for I am a religious man) I saved her from further
excesses by a loud call for more supper, and she got up mechanically to
attend to my wants.
Jellaby, however, whose idea seemed to be that a woman is never to do
anything (I wonder who is to do anything, then?) forestalled her with
the sudden nimbleness he displayed on such occasions, so surprising in
combination with his clothes and general slackness, and procured me a
fresh helping.
I thanked him politely, but could not repress some irony in my bow as I
apologized for disturbing him.
“Shall I hold your plate while you eat?” he said.
“Why, Jellaby?” I asked, mildly astonished.
“Wouldn’t it be even more comfortable if I did?” he asked; and then I
perceived that he was irritated, no doubt because I had got most of the
cushions, and he, Quixotic as he is, had given up his to my wife, on
whom it was entirely thrown away for she has always assured me she
actually prefers hard seats.
Well, of course there were few things in the world quite so unimportant
as Jellaby’s irritation, so I just looked pleasant and at the food he
had brought me; but I did not get another evening with Frau von Eckthum.
She sat immovable on the edge of the slope with my wife and Jellaby,
talking in tones that became more and more subdued as dusk deepened into
night and stars grew hard and shiny.
They all seemed subdued. They even washed up in whispers. And afterward
the very nondescripts lay stretched out quite quietly by the glowing
embers of Lord Sigismund’s splendid fire listening to Menzies-Legh’s and
Lord Sidge’s talk, in which I did not join for it was on the subject
they were so fond of, the amelioration of the condition of those dull
and undeserving persons, the poor.
I put my plate where somebody would see it and wash it, and retired to
the shelter of a hedge and the comfort of a cigar. The three figures on
the edge of the hill became gradually almost mute. Not a leaf in my
hedge stirred. It was so still that people talking at the distant farm
where we had procured our chickens could almost be understood, and a dog
barking somewhere far away down in the Weald seemed quite threateningly
near. It was really extraordinarily still; and the stillest thing of all
was that strange example of the Englishwoman grafted on what was
originally such excellent German stock, Mrs. Menzies-Legh, sitting a
yard or two away from me, her hands clasped round her knees, her face
turned up as though she were studying astronomy.
I do not suppose she moved for half an hour. Her profile seemed to shine
white in the dusk with lines that reminded me somehow of a cameo there
is in a red velvet case lying on the table in our comfortable
drawing-room at Storchwerder, and the remembrance brought a slight
twinge of home-sickness with it. I shook this off, and fell to watching
her, and for the amusement of an idle hour lazily reconstructed from the
remnants before me what her appearance must have been ten years before
in her prime, when there were at least undulations, at least suggestions
that here was a woman and not a kind of elongated boy.
The line of her face is certainly quite passable; and that night in the
half darkness it was quite as passable as any I have seen on a
statue--objects in which I have never been able to take much interest.
It is probable she used to be beautiful. Used to be beautiful? What is
the value of that? Just a snap of the fingers, and nothing more. If
women would but realize that once past their first youth their only
chance of pleasing is to be gentle and rare of speech, tactful, deft--in
one word, apologetic, they would be more likely to make a good
impression on reasonable men such as myself. I did not wish to quarrel
with Mrs. Menzies-Legh and yet her tongue and the way she used it put my
back up (as the British say) to a height it never attains in the placid
pools of feminine intercourse in Storchwerder.
To see her sit so silent and so motionless was unusual. Was she
regretting, perhaps, her lost youth? Was she feeling bitter at her
inability to attract me, a man within two yards of her, sufficiently for
me to take the trouble to engage her in conversation? No doubt.
Well--poor thing! I am sorry for women, but there is nothing to be done
since Nature has decreed they shall grow old.
I got up and shook out the folds of my mackintosh--a most useful garment
in those damp places--and threw away the end of my cigar. “I am now
going to retire for the night,” I explained, as she turned her head at
my rustling, “and if you take my advice you will not sit here till you
get rheumatism.”
She looked at me as though she did not hear. In that light her
appearance was certainly quite passable: quite as passable as that of
any of the statues they make so much fuss about; and then of course with
proper eyes instead of blank spaces, and eyes garnished with that
speciality of hers, the ridiculously long eyelashes. But I knew what she
was like in broad day, I knew how thin she was, and I was not to be
imposed upon by tricks of light; so I said in a matter of fact manner,
seizing the opportunity for gentle malice in order to avenge myself a
little for her repeated and unjustified attacks on me, “You will not be
wise to sit there longer. It is damp, and you and I are hardly as young
as we were, you know.”
Any normal woman, gentle as this was, would have shrivelled. Instead she
merely agreed in an absent way that it was dewy, and turned up her face
to the stars again.
“Looking for the Great Bear, eh?” I remarked, following her gaze as I
buttoned my wrap.
She continued to gaze, motionless. “No, but--don’t you see? At Christ
Whose glory fills the skies,” she said--both profanely and senselessly,
her face in that light exactly like the sort of thing one sees in the
windows of churches, and her voice as though she were half asleep.
So I hied me (poetry being the fashion) to my bed, and lay awake in it
for some time being sorry for Menzies-Legh, for really no man can
possibly like having a creepy wife.
But (luckily) _autres temps autres mœurs_, as our unbalanced but
sometimes felicitous neighbours across the Vosges say, and next morning
the poetry of the party was, thank heaven, clogged by porridge.
It always was at breakfast. They were strangely hilarious then, but
never poetic. Poetry developed later in the day as the sun and their
spirits sank together, and flourished at its full growth when there were
stars or a moon. That morning, our first Sunday, a fresh breeze blew up
from the Weald below and a cloudless sun dazzled us as it fell on the
white cloth of the table set out in the middle of the field by
somebody--I expect it was Mrs. Menzies-Legh--who wanted to make the most
of the sun, and we had to hold on our hats with one hand and shade our
eyes with the other while we ate.
Uncomfortable? Of course it was uncomfortable. Let no one who loves to
be comfortable ever caravan. Neither let any one who loves order and
decency do so. They may take it from me that there is never any order,
and even less frequently is there any decency. I can give you an
example from that Sunday morning. I was sitting at the table with the
ladies, on a seat (as usual) too low for me, and that (also as usual)
slanted on the uneven ground, with my feet slightly too cold in the damp
grass and my head slightly too hot in the bright sun, and the general
feeling of subtle discomfort and ruffledness that is one of the
principal characteristics of this form of pleasure-taking, when I saw
(and so did the ladies) Jellaby emerge from his tent--in his shirt
sleeves if you please--and fastening up a mirror on the roof of his
canvas lair proceed then and there in the middle of the field to lather
his face and then to shave it.
Edelgard, of course, true to her early training, at once cast down her
eyes and was careful to keep them averted during the remainder of the
meal, but nobody else seemed to mind; indeed, Mrs. Menzies-Legh got out
her camera and focussing him with deliberate care snap-shotted him.
Were these people getting blunted as the days passed to the refinements
and necessary precautions of social intercourse? I had been stirred to
much silent indignation by the habit of the gentlemen of walking in
their shirt sleeves, and had not yet got used to that, but to see
Jellaby dressing in an open field was a little more than I could endure
in silence. For if, I asked myself rapidly, Jellaby dresses (shaving
being a part of dressing) out-of-doors in the morning, what is to
prevent his doing the opposite in the evening? Where is the line? Where
is the logical limit? We had now been three days out, and we had already
got to this. Where, I thought, should we have got to in another six?
Where should we be by, say, the following Sunday?
I cannot think a promiscuous domesticity desirable, and am one of those
who strongly disapprove of that worst example of it, the mixed bathing
or _Familienbad_ which blots with practically unclothed Jews of either
sex our otherwise decent coasts. Never have I allowed Edelgard to
indulge in it, nor have I done so myself. It is a deplorable spectacle.
We used to sit and watch it for hours, in a condition of ever-increasing
horror and disgust--it was quite difficult to find seats sometimes, so
many of our friends were there being disgusted too.
But these denizens of the deep at the points where the deep was a
_Familienbad_ were, as I have said, chiefly Jews and their Jewesses, and
what can you expect? Jellaby, however, in spite of his other
infirmities, was not yet a Jew; he was everything else I think, but that
crowning infamy had up to then been denied him.
But not to be one and yet to behave with the laxness of one within view
of the rest of the party was very inexcusable. “Are there no hedges to
this field?” I cried in indignant sarcasm, looking pointedly at each of
its four hedges in turn and raising my voice so that he could hear.
“Oh, Baron dear, it’s Sunday,” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, no longer a
rather nice-looking if irreverent cameo in a velvet case, but full of
morning militancy. “Don’t be cross till to-morrow. Save it up, or what
will you do on Monday?”
“Be, I trust, just as capable of distinguishing between the permitted
and the non-permitted as I am to-day,” was my ready retort.
“Oh, oh,” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, shaking her head and smiling as though
she were talking to a child or a feeble-minded; and turning her camera
on to me she took my photograph.
“Pray why,” I inquired with justifiable heat, “should I be photographed
without my consent?”
“Because,” she said, “you look so deliciously cross. I want to have you
in my scrap-book like that. You looked then exactly like a baby I know.”
“Which baby?” I asked, frowning and at a loss how to meet this kind of
thing conversationally. And there was Edelgard, all ears; and if a wife
sees her husband being treated disrespectfully by other women is it not
very likely that she soon will begin to treat him so herself? “Which
baby?” I asked; but knew myself inadequate.
“Oh, a perfectly respectable baby,” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh carelessly,
putting her camera down and going on with her breakfast, “but irritable
and exacting about things like bottles.”
“But I do not see what I have to do with bottles,” I said nettled.
“Oh, no--you haven’t. Only it looks at its nurse just like you did then
if they’re late, or not full enough.”
“But I did not look at its nurse,” I said angrily, becoming still more
so as they all (including my wife) laughed.
I rose abruptly. “I will go and smoke,” I said.
Of course I saw what she meant about the nurse the moment I had spoken,
but it is inexcusable to laugh at a man because he does not immediately
follow the sense (or rather the senselessness) of a childishly skipping
conversation. I am as ready as any one to laugh at really amusing
phrases or incidents, but being neither a phrase nor an incident myself
I do not see why I should be laughed at. Surely it is unworthy of grown
men and women to laugh at each other in the way silly children do? It is
ruin to the graces of social intercourse, to the courtliness that should
uninterruptedly distinguish the well-born. But there was a childish
spirit pervading the whole party (with the exception of myself) that
seemed to increase as the days went by, a spirit of unreasoning glee
and mischievousness which I believe is characteristic of very young and
very healthy children. Even Edelgard was daily becoming more calf-like,
as we say, daily descending nearer to the level occupied at first only
by the two nondescripts, that level at which you begin to play idiotic
and heating games like the one the English call Blind Man’s Buff (an
obviously foolish name, for what is buff?) and which we so much more
sensibly call Blind Cow. Therefore I, having no intention at my age and
in my position of joining in puerilities or even of seeming to
countenance them by my presence, said abruptly, “I will smoke”--and
strode away to do it.
One of the ladies called after me to inquire if I were not going to
church with them, but I pretended not to hear and strode on toward the
shelter of the hedge, giving Jellaby as I passed him such a look as
would have caused any one not overgrown with the leather substitute for
skin peculiar to persons who set order, morals, and religion at
defiance, to creep confounded into his tent and stay there till his face
was ready and his collar on. He, however, called out with the geniality
born of brazenness, that it was a jolly morning; of which, of course, I
took no notice.
In the dry ditch beneath the hedge on the east side of the field sat
Lord Sigismund beside his _batterie de cuisine_, watching over, with
unaccountable and certainly misplaced kindness, the porridge and the
coffee that were presently to be Jellaby’s. While he watched he smoked
his pipe, stroked his dog, and hummed snatches of what I supposed were
psalms with the pleasant humming of the good, the happy, and the
well-born.
Near him lay Menzies-Legh, his dark and sinister face bent over a book.
He nodded briefly in response to my lifted hat and morning salutation,
while Lord Sigismund, full as ever of the graciousness of noble birth,
asked me if I had had a good night.
“A good night, and an excellent breakfast, thanks to you, Lord Sidge,” I
replied; the touch of playfulness contained in the shortened name
lightening the courteous correctness of my bow as I arranged myself next
to him in the ditch.
Menzies-Legh got up and went away. It was characteristic of him that he
seemed always to be doing that. I hardly ever joined him but he was
reminded by my approach of something he ought to be doing and went away
to do it. I mentioned this to Edelgard during the calm that divided one
difference of opinion from another, and she said he never did that when
she joined him.
“Dear wife,” I explained, “you have less power to remind him of
unperformed duties than I possess.”
“I suppose I have,” said Edelgard.
“And it is very natural that it should be so. Power, of whatever sort it
may be, is a masculine attribute. I do not wish to see my little wife
with any.”
“Neither do I,” said she.
“Ah--there speaks my own good little wife.”
“I mean, not if it is that sort.”
“What sort, dear wife?”
“The sort that reminds people whenever I come that it is time they
went.”
She looked at me with the odd look that I observed for the first time
during our English holiday. Often have I seen it since, but I cannot
recollect having seen it before. I, noticing that somehow we did not
understand each other, patted her kindly on the shoulder, for, of
course, she cannot always quite follow me, though I must say she manages
very creditably as a rule.
“Well, well,” I said, patting her, “we will not quibble. It is a good
little wife, is it not?” And I raised her chin by means of my
forefinger, and kissed her.
This, however, is a digression. I suppose it is because I am unfolding
my literary wings for the first time that I digress so frequently. At
least I am aware of it, which is in itself, I should say, a sign of
literary instinct. My Muse has been, so to speak, kept in bed without
stopping till middle age, and is now suddenly called upon to get up and
go for a walk. Such a muse must inevitably stagger a little at first. I
will, however, endeavour to curb these staggerings, for I perceive that
I have already written more than can be conveniently read aloud in one
evening, and though I am willing the same friends should come on two, I
do not know that I care to see them on as many as three. Besides, think
of all the sandwiches.
(This last portion of the narrative, from “one evening” to “sandwiches”
will, of course, be omitted in public.)
I will, therefore, not describe my conversation with Lord Sigismund in
the ditch beyond saying that it was extremely interesting, and conducted
on his side (and I hope on mine) with the social skill of a perfect
gentleman.
It was brought to an end by the arrival of Jellaby and his dog, which
was immediately pounced on by Lord Sigismund’s dog, who very properly
resented his uninvited approach, and they remained inextricably mixed
together for what seemed an eternity of yells, the yells rending the
Sabbath calm and mingling with the distant church bells, and all
proceeding from Jellaby’s dog, while Lord Sigismund’s, a true copy of
his master, did that which he had to do with the silent self-possession
of, if I may so express it, a dog of the world.
The entire company of caravaners, including old James, ran up with
cries and whistling to try to separate them, and at last Jellaby, urged
on I suppose to deeds of valour by knowing the eyes of the ladies upon
him, made a mighty effort and tore them asunder, himself getting torn
along his hand as the result.
Menzies-Legh helped Lord Sigismund to drag away the naturally infuriated
bull-terrier, and Jellaby, looking round, asked me to hold his dog while
he went and washed his hand. I thought this a fair instance of the
brutal indifference to other people’s tastes that characterizes the
British nation. Why did he not ask old James, who was standing there
doing nothing? Yet what was I to do? There were the ladies looking on,
among them Edelgard, motionless, leaving me to my fate, though if either
of us knows anything about dogs it is she who does. Jellaby had got the
beast by the collar, so I thought perhaps holding him by the tail would
do. It was true it was the merest stump, but at least it was at the
other end. I therefore grasped it, though with no little trouble, for,
for some unknown reason, just as my hand approached it, it began to wag.
“No, no--catch hold of the collar. He’s all right, he won’t do anything
to you,” said Jellaby, grinning and keeping his wounded hand well away
from him while the nondescripts ran to fetch water.
The brute was quiet for a moment, and under the circumstances I do
think Edelgard might have helped. She knows I cannot bear dogs. If she
had held his head I would not have minded going on holding his tail, and
at home she would have made herself useful as a matter of course. Here,
however, she did nothing of the sort, but stood tearing up a perfectly
good, clean handkerchief into strips in order, forsooth, to render that
assistance to Jellaby which she denied her own husband. I did take the
dog by the collar, there being no other course open to me, and was
thankful to find that he was too tired and too much hurt to do anything
to me. But I have never been a dog lover, carefully excluding them from
my flat in Storchwerder, and selling the one Edelgard had had as a girl
and wanted to saddle me with on her marriage. I remember how long it
took, she being then still composed of very raw material, to make her
understand I had married her and not her _Dachshund_. Will it be
believed that her only answer to my arguments was a repeated parrot-like
cry of “But he is so sweet!” A feeble plea, indeed, to set against the
logic of my reasons. She shed tears, I remember, in quantities more
suited to fourteen than twenty-four (as I pointed out to her), but later
on did acknowledge, in answer to my repeated inquiries, that the
furniture and carpets were, no doubt, the better for it, though for a
long time she had a tendency which I found some difficulty in
repressing, to make tiresomely plaintive allusions to the fact that the
buyer (I sold the dog by auction) had chanced to be a maker of sausages
and she had not happened to meet the dog since in the streets. Also,
until I spoke very seriously to her about it, for months she would not
touch anything potted, after always having been particularly fond of
this type of food.
I soon found myself alone and unheeded with Jellaby’s dog, while Jellaby
himself, the flattered centre of the entire body of ladies, was having
his wound dressed. My wife washed it, Jumps held the bucket, Mrs.
Menzies-Legh bound it up, Frau von Eckthum provided one of her own
safety pins (I saw her take it out of her blouse), and Jane lent her
sash for a sling. As for Lord Sigismund, after having seen to his own
dog’s wounds (all made by Jellaby’s dog) he came back and, with truly
Christian goodness, offered to wash and doctor Jellaby’s dog. His
attitude, indeed, during these dog-fights was only one possible to a
person of the very highest breeding. Never a word of reproach, yet it
was clear that if Jellaby’s dog had not been there there would have been
no fighting. And he exhibited a real distress over Jellaby’s wound,
while Jellaby, thoroughly thick-skinned, laughed and declared he did not
feel it; which, no doubt, was true, for that sort of person does not, I
am convinced, feel anything like the same amount we others do.
The end of this pleasant Sabbath morning episode was that Jellaby took
his dog to the nearest village containing a veterinary surgeon, and
Menzies-Legh was found in the ditch almost as green as the surrounding
leaves because--will it be believed?--he could never stand the sight of
blood!
My hearers will, I am sure, be amused at this. Of course, many Britons
must be the same, for it is unlikely that I should have chanced in those
few days to meet the solitary instance, and I could hardly repress a
hearty laugh at the spectacle of this specimen of England’s manhood in a
half fainting condition because he had seen a scratch that produced
blood. What will he and his kind do on that battle-field of, no doubt,
the near future, when the finest army in the world will face them? It
will not be scratches that poor Menzies-Legh will have to look at then,
and I greatly fear for his complexion.
Everybody ran in different directions in search of brandy. Never have I
seen a man so green. He was, at least, ashamed of himself, and finding I
was a moment alone with him and he not in a condition to get up and go
away, I spoke an earnest word or two about the inevitably effeminating
effect on a man of so much poetry-reading and art-admiring and dabbling
in the concerns of the poor. Not thus, I explained, did the Spartans
spend their time. Not thus did the ancient Romans, during their greatest
period, behave. “You feel the situation of the poor, for instance, far
more than the poor feel it themselves,” I said, “and allow yourself to
be worried into alleviating a wretchedness that they are used to, and do
not notice. And what, after all, is art? And what, after all, is poetry?
And what, if you come to that, is wretchedness? Do not weaken the
muscles of your mind by feeding it so constantly on the pap of either
your own sentimentality or the sentimentality of others. Pull down these
artificial screens. Be robust. Accustom yourself to look at facts
without flinching. Imitate the conduct of the modern Japanese, who take
their children, as part of their training, to gaze on executions, and on
their return cause the rice for their dinner to be served mixed with the
crimson juices of the cherry, so that they shall imagine----”
But Menzies-Legh turned yet greener, and fainted away.