The next day one of those unfortunate incidents happened which may, of
course, happen to anybody, but really need not have happened just to me.
We left our camp at twelve, after the usual feverish endeavour to start
much earlier, the caravans as usual nearly capsizing getting out to the
field, and breaking, also as usual, in their plungings several hitherto
unbroken articles, and with the wind and dust in our faces and gray,
lowering clouds over our heads we resumed our daily race after pleasure.
The Sunday had been fine throughout, and there had been dew and stars at
the end of it which, together with windlessness, made us expect a fine
Monday. But it was nothing of the sort. Monday provided the conditions I
always now associate with caravaning--a high wind, a threatening sky,
clouds of dust, and a hard white road.
The day began badly and continued badly, so that even writing about it
at this distance I drop unconsciously into a fretful tone. Perhaps our
dinner at the inn on the Sunday had been more than constitutions used
to starvation could suddenly endure, or perhaps some of us may have
eaten beyond the limits of discretion, remembering that another week was
to pass before the next real meal, and these, becoming cross, had
infected the rest; anyhow on Monday troubles seemed to accumulate,
beginning with a bill from the farmer for the field and care of the
horses of a most exorbitant nature, going on to the losing of various
things in the hasty packing up, continuing with the hurting of
Menzies-Legh’s foot owing to his folly in placing it where the advancing
hoof of my horse was bound to go and with his being in consequence
unable to do his proper share of work, and ending with the unfortunate
incident I referred to above and shall presently relate.
Menzies-Legh, indeed, was strangely irritable. Perhaps his foot hurt
him, but he ought not to have minded that, considering, as I told him,
it was nobody’s fault but his own. I was leading the horse at the
moment, and saw Menzies-Legh’s foot but never dreamed he would not
remove it in time, and you cannot, as I said to him, blame a dumb
animal.
“Certainly not,” agreed Menzies-Legh; but with a singular gloom.
And when I saw the exorbitance of the bill I felt bound to point out to
him that strict honesty did not seem to be characteristic of his
countrymen, and to enlarge on the difference between them and my own,
and that seemed to irritate him too, though he said nothing.
Seeing this suppressed irritation I sought to remove it by reminding him
of his wealth, and of how the rapacity of the various farmers would at
the worst only mean for him one stove the less for one undeserving old
woman the fewer; but even that did not cheer him--he was and remained in
a bad temper. So that, vexed as I was myself at the expense of the
holiday that was to have been so cheap, I could not prevent a temporary
good-humour taking possession of me, which is the invariable effect
produced on me by other people’s crossness. Even then, with his hurt
foot, Menzies-Legh was such a slave to duty that while I was in the very
act of talking the recollection of something he ought to do made him
struggle up from the low chair and rugs in which his wife had carefully
placed him, and limp away; and I saw no more of him for a long while
beyond an occasional glimpse of his sallow visage at the window in front
of his van, where he sat all day in silence driving his horse.
Behold us, then, crawling along an ugly highroad with our mouths full of
dust.
The weather was alternately hot and cold, but uninterruptedly windy, and
rain threatened to descend on us and actually did as the afternoon wore
on. My hearers must remember that in caravaning afternoons wear on and
mornings merge into them with no such thing as a real meal throughout
their entire length. Long before this I had realized that plums were to
be my portion: plums, or bananas, or very green apples, mitigated by a
biscuit unless biscuits chanced to be scarce (in which case the ladies
got them), at a time of day when the rest of Europe was sitting down
comfortably to its luncheon; and I had learned to acquiesce in this as I
acquiesced in all the other privations, for I saw for myself that it was
impossible to arrange a cooked meal except before leaving or after
arriving in camp. A reasonable man is silent before the impossible;
still, plums are poor things to march on. March on them, however, I had
to, and Hunger (a most unpleasant and reverberating companion) came too,
and marched with me every day.
Well, I was often glad at this time that my poor Marie-Luise was spared
her silver wedding journey, and that a more robust and far less
deserving wife went through it in her stead. Marie-Luise was a most
wifely wife, with no whalebone (if I may so express it) either about her
clothes or her character. All was soft, womanly, overflowing. Touch her,
and you left a dimple. Bring your pressure, even the slightest, to bear
anywhere on her mind, and it immediately gave way.
“But do you _like_ that sort of thing?” asked Mrs. Menzies-Legh, to
whom, as we plodded along that day, I was talking in this reminiscent
strain for want of a better companion.
Ahead walked Edelgard, visibly slimmer, younger, moving quickly and
easily in her short skirt and new activity. It was this figure--hardly
now at a distance to be distinguished from the figures of the scanty
sisters--walking before me that made me think with tenderness of
Marie-Luise. Edelgard was behaving badly, and when I told her so at
night in our caravan she did not answer. At home she used to express
immediate penitence; here she either said nothing, or said short things
that reminded me of Mrs. Menzies-Legh, little odd sentences quite unlike
her usual style and annoyingly difficult to reply to. And the more she
behaved in this manner the more did my thoughts go back regretfully to
my gentle and yielding first wife. Sometimes, I recollect, those twenty
years with her had seemed long; but that was because, firstly, twenty
years are long, and secondly, because we are none of us perfect, and
thirdly, because a wife, unless she is careful, is apt to get on to
one’s nerves. But how preferable is gentleness to an aggressive activity
of mind and body. How annoying to see one’s wife striding on ahead with
an ease I could not imitate and therefore in itself a slight on her
husband. A man wants a wife who sits still, and not only still but on
the same chair every day so that he knows where to find her should he
happen to want anything. Marie-Luise was a very calm sitter; she never
moved, except to follow the then Clothilde about. Only her hands moved,
in a tireless guiding of the needle through those of my under-garments
which had become defective.
“But do you _like_ that sort of thing?” asked Mrs. Menzies-Legh,
unsympathetic as usual. Her gentle sister would have coo’d an interested
Oh? and I would have felt soothed and understood.
“Like what?” I asked rather peevishly, for it occurred to me at that
moment as I watched the figures in front--my wife and Jellaby and Frau
von Eckthum--that I had not had a word with the latter since the walk
back from church more than twenty-four hours previously, and that her
sister, on the other hand, seemed never to leave my side.
“Calm sitters,” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, “and dimples all over one’s mind
wherever you touch it. I suppose when you used to remove the pressure
they slowly filled out again. It rather makes one think of india-rubber,
doesn’t it?”
“A wife’s first duty is to be submissive,” said I, conscious that I had
the Prayer-book behind me and waving side issues, such as india-rubber,
resolutely aside.
“Yes, yes,” agreed Mrs. Menzies-Legh, “but----”
“And I am thankful to say,” I continued quickly, for she was about to
add something that I was sure was going to be aggressive, “I am thankful
to say I was very fortunate in my Marie-Luise.”
“And very fortunate in your Edelgard,” said she--they had got to
Christian names the second day.
“Of course,” said I.
“She is a person everybody must love,” said she.
“Undoubtedly,” said I.
“So adaptable and quick,” continued the tactless lady.
“You are very good,” said I, raising my Panama in stiff acknowledgment
of these compliments.
“And so unselfish,” said she.
I bowed again, more stiffly than before.
“Look how she cuts all the bread and butter.”
I bowed again.
“Look how she makes the coffee.”
I bowed again.
“Look how cheerful she is.”
I bowed again.
“And how clever, dear Baron.”
Clever? That indeed was a new way of looking at poor Edelgard. I could
not at this repress a smile of amusement. “I am gratified that you
should have so good an opinion of my wife,” I said; and wished much to
add, “But what is my wife to you that you should take it upon yourself
to praise her? Is she not solely and exclusively my property?”
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, however, was absolutely rebuke-proof, and had so many
answers ready that I thought it better not to bring them upon me in
crowds. I did though rather cleverly turn the tables upon her, and at
the same time bring the conversation to a point which really interested
me, by beginning to praise her sister.
“It is good of you,” I said, “to commend my family. In return permit me
to praise yours.”
“What--John?” she asked, with a quick look and something of a smile.
(John was her ill-conditioned husband.) “Are you--do you like him so
much?”
Now as I thought John a very poor thing indeed this question would have
seemed difficult to answer to any one less ready.
“Like,” said I, with conspicuously careful courtesy, “is not at all the
word that describes my feelings toward your husband.”
She looked at me sideways, then dropped her eyelashes. “Dear Baron,” she
murmured, “how very----”
“I was not, however,” I interrupted hastily, for I felt the ice would
not bear much skating on, “thinking of him. I was referring to your
sister.”
“Oh?” said she--almost like the charming relative herself.
“She is of course, and as you know, delightful. But of all her
delightfulness do you know what strikes me as most delightful?”
“No,” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, watching me with obvious interest.
“Her conversation.”
“Yes. She is a good talker,” she admitted.
“What I call a perfect talker,” said I enthusiastically.
“I know. Everybody says so.”
“Never too much,” I said meaningly.
“Oh?” said she. “You think so? I rather imagined----” She stopped.
“So extremely sympathetic,” I continued.
“And so amusing,” said she.
“Amusing?” said I, slightly surprised, for I must say I had not till
then considered it possible to be amusing on one single note, however
flute-like.
“Even more--really witty. Don’t you think so?”
“Witty?” said I, with increased surprise.
She looked at me and smiled. “You evidently have not found her so,” she
said.
“No. Nor do I care for wit in ladies. Your sister has been everything
that is perfect--sympathetic, an interested listener, one who shares
one’s opinions completely, and who never says a word more than is
absolutely necessary; but thank goodness I have not yet observed her
descend to the unwomanliness of wit.”
Mrs. Menzies-Legh looked at me as though I were being funny. It was a
way she had, and one which I particularly disliked; for surely few
things are more offensive than to be treated as amusing when you are
not. “Evidently,” said she, “you have a soothing and restraining
influence over Betti, dear Baron. Has she, then, never made you laugh?”
“Certainly not,” said I with conviction.
“But look at Mr. Jellaby--do you see how he is laughing?”
“At his own dull jokes, I should say,” I said, bestowing a momentary
glance on the slouching figure in front. His face was turned toward Frau
von Eckthum, and he was certainly laughing, and to an unbecoming extent.
“Oh, not a bit. He is laughing at Betti.”
“I have heard your sister,” said I emphatically, “talking in general
company--such company, that is, as this tour affords--and she has done
it invariably seriously, and rather poetically, but never has more than
smiled herself, and never raised that doubtful tribute, a laugh.”
“That,” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, “was because you were there, dear Baron.
I tell you, you soothe and restrain.”
I bowed. “I am glad,” I said, “that I exert a good influence over the
party.”
“Oh, very,” said she, her eyelashes cast down. “But what does Betti talk
to you about, then? The scenery?”
“Your tactful sister, my dear lady, does not talk at all. Or rather,
what she says consists entirely of one word, spoken indeed with so great
a variety of expression that it expands into volumes. It is that that I
admire so profoundly in her. If all ladies would take a lesson----”
“But--what word?” interrupted Mrs. Menzies-Legh, who had been listening
with a growing astonishment on her face--astonishment, I suppose, that
so near a relative should be also a person of tact and delicacy.
“Your sister simply says Oh. It sounds a small thing, and slightly bald
stated in this manner, yet all I can say is that if every woman----”
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, however, made a little exclamation and bent down
hastily.
“Dear Baron,” she said, “I’ve got a thorn or something in my shoe. I’ll
wait for our caravan to come up, and get in and take it out. _Auf
Wiedersehen._”
And she fell behind.
This was the first really agreeable conversation I had had with Mrs.
Menzies-Legh. I walked on alone for some miles, turning it over with
pleasure. It was of course pleasant to reflect that I alone of the party
had a beneficial influence over her whom her sister was entitled to
describe as Betti; and it was also pleasant (though only what was to be
expected) that I should exercise a good influence over the entire party.
“Soothing” was Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s word. Well, what was happening was
that these English people were being leavened hourly and ceaselessly
with German yeast; and now that it had been put into so many words I did
see that I soothed them, for I had observed that whenever I approached a
knot of them, however loudly it had been laughing and talking it sank
into a sudden calm--it was soothed, in fact--and presently dispersed
about its various duties.
But nothing occurred after this that day that was pleasant. I plodded
along alone. Rain came down and mud increased, but still I plodded. It
was pretended to me that we were unusually unlucky in the weather and
that England does not as a rule have a summer of the sort; I, however,
believe that it does, regularly every year, as a special punishment of
Providence for its being there at all, or how should the thing be so
very green? Mud and greenness, mud and greenness, that is all the place
is made of, thought I, trudging between the wet hedges after an hour’s
rain had set everything dripping.
Stolidly I followed, at my horse’s side, whither the others led. In the
rain we passed through villages which the ladies in every tone of
childish enthusiasm cried out were delightful, Edelgard joining in,
Edelgard indeed loudest, Edelgard in fact falling in love in the
silliest way with every thatched and badly repaired cottage that
happened to have a show of flowers in its garden, and saying--I heard
her with my own ears--that she would like to live in one. What new
affectation was this, I asked myself? Not one of our friends who would
not (very properly) leave off visiting us if we looked as poor as
thatch. To get and to keep friends the very least that you must have is
a handsome sofa-set in a suitably sized drawing-room. Edelgard till then
had been justly proud of hers, which cost a sum so round that it seems
written in velvet letters all over it. It is made of the best of
everything--wood, stuffing, covers, and springs, and has a really
beautiful walnut-wood table in the middle, with its carved and shapely
legs resting on a square of carpet so good that many a guest has
exclaimed in tones of envy as her feet sank into it, “But dearest
Baroness, where and how did you secure so truly glorious a carpet? It
must have cost----!” And eyes and hands uplifted complete the sentence.
To think of Edelgard with this set and all that it implies in the
background of her consciousness affecting a willingness to leave it,
tried my patience a good deal; and about three o’clock, having all
collected in a baker’s shop in a wet village called Salehurst for the
purpose of eating buns (no camp being in immediate prospect), I told her
in a low tone how ill enthusiasms about things like thatch sit on a
woman who is going to be thirty next birthday.
“Dear wife,” I begged, “do endeavour not to be so calf-like. If you
think these pretences pretty let me tell you you are mistaken. The
others will not tell you so, because the others are not your husband.
Nobody is taken in, nobody believes you. Everybody sees you are old
enough to be sensible. But, not being your husband, they are obliged to
be polite and feign to agree and sympathize, while they are really
secretly lamenting your inability to adjust your conversation to your
age.”
This I said between two buns; and would have said more had not the
eternal Jellaby thrust himself between us. Jellaby was always coming
between man and wife, and this time he did it with a glass of fizzy
lemonade. Edelgard refused it, and Jellaby (pert Socialist) thanked her
earnestly for doing so, saying he would be wholly unable to respect a
woman who drank fizzy lemonade.
Respect a woman? What a tone to adopt to a married lady whose husband is
within ear-shot. And what could Edelgard’s tone have been to him before
such a one on his side came within the range of the possible?
“And I must warn you,” I continued with a slightly less pronounced
patience, “very seriously against the consequences likely to accrue if
you allow a person of Jellaby’s sex and standing to treat you with
familiarity. Familiarity and disrespect are one and the same thing. They
are inseparable. They are, in fact, twins. But not ordinary
twins--rather that undividable sort of which there have been luckily
only a few examples----”
“Dear Otto, do have another bun,” said she, pointing to these articles
in a pile on the counter; and as I paused to choose (by means of
squeezing) the freshest, she, although aware I had not finished
speaking, slipped away.
I begin to doubt as I proceed with my narrative whether any but
relations had better be admitted to the readings aloud after all.
Friends have certain Judas-like qualities, and might, perhaps, having
listened to these sketches of Edelgard with every appearance of
sympathy, go away and misrepresent me. Relations on the other hand are
very sincere and never pretend (which is why one prefers friends, I
sometimes think) and they have, besides, the family feeling which
prevents their discussing each other to the unrelated. It is possible
that I may restrict my invitations solely to them; and yet it seems a
pity not to let my friends in as well. Have they not often suffered in
the same way too? Have they not wives themselves? God help us all.
Continuing our march in the rain we left Salehurst (where I earnestly
but vainly suggested we should camp in the back-yard of the inn) and
went toward Bodiam--a ruined castle, explained Lord Sigismund coming and
walking with me, of great interest and antiquity, rising out of a moat
which at that time of the year would be filled with white and yellow
water-lilies.
He knew it well and talked a good deal about it, its position, its
preservation, and especially its lilies. But I was much too wet to care
about lilies. A tight roof and a shut window would have interested me
far more. However, it was agreeable to converse with him, and I soon
deftly turned the conversation while at the same time linking it, as it
were, on to the next subject, by remarking that his serene Aunt in
Germany must also be very old. He vaguely said she was, and showed a
tendency to get back to the ruins nearer at hand, which I dodged by
observing that she must make a perfect picture in her castle in
Thuringia, the background being so harmonious, such an appropriate
setting for an old lady, for, as is well known, the castle grounds
contain the most magnificent ruins in Europe. “And your august Aunt, my
dear Lord Sigismund,” I continued, “is, I am certain, not one whit less
magnificent than the rest.”
“Well, I don’t think Aunt Lizzie actually crumbles yet, you know,
Baron,” said Lord Sigismund smiling. “You should see her going about in
gaiters looking after things.”
“There is nothing I would like better than to see her,” I replied with
enthusiasm, for this was surely almost an invitation.
He, however, made no direct answer but got back to the Bodiam ruins
again, and again I broke the thread of what threatened to become a
narrative by inquiring how long it took to go by train from London to
his father the Duke’s place in Cornwall.
“Oh, it’s at the end of the world,” said he.
“I know, I know. But my wife and I would not like to leave England
without having journeyed thither and looked at a place so famous
according to Baedeker both for its size, its splendour, and its
associations. Of course, my dear Lord Sigismund,” I added with the
utmost courtesy, “we expect nothing. We would be content to go as the
merest tourists. In spite of the length of the journey we should not
hesitate to put up at the inn which is no doubt not far from the ducal
gates. There should be no trading on what has become, certainly on my
side and I hope and believe on yours, a warm friendship.”
“My dear Baron,” said Lord Sigismund heartily, “I agree entirely with
you. Friendship should be as warm as one can possibly make it. Which
reminds me that I haven’t asked poor Menzies-Legh how his foot is
getting on. That wasn’t very warm of me, was it? I must go and see how
he is.”
And he dropped behind.
At this time I was leading the procession (by some accident of the start
from the bun shop) and had general orders to go straight ahead unless
signalled to from the rear. I went, accordingly, straight ahead down a
road running along a high ridge, the blank space of rain and mist on
either side filled in no doubt on more propitious days by a good view.
Bodiam lay below somewhere in the flat, and we were going there; for
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, and indeed all the others including Edelgard, wished
(or pretended to wish) to see the ruins. I must decline to believe in
the genuineness of such a wish when expressed, as in this case, by the
hungry and the wet. Ruins are very well, no doubt, but they do come
last. A man will not look at a ruin if he is honest until every other
instinct, even the smallest, has been satisfied. If, not having had his
dinner, he yet expresses eagerness to visit such things, then I say that
that man is a hypocrite. To enjoy looking at the roofless must you not
first have a roof yourself? To enjoy looking at the empty must you not
first be filled? For the roofless and the empty to visit and admire
other roofless and other empties seems to me as barren as for ghosts to
go to tea with ghosts.
Alone I trudged through a dripping world. My thoughts from ruins and
ghosts strayed naturally--for when you are seventy there must be a good
deal of the ghost about you--once more to Lord Sigismund’s august and
aged Aunt in Thuringia, to the almost invitation (certainly
encouragement) he had given me to go and behold her in princely gaiters,
to the many distinct advantages of having such a lady on our visiting
list, to conjecture as to the extent of the Duke her brother’s
hospitality should we go down and take up our abode very openly at the
inn at his gates, to the pleasantness (apart from every other
consideration) of staying in his castle after staying in a caravan, and
to the interest of Storchwerder when it heard of it.
The hooting of a yet invisible motor interrupted these musings. It was
hidden in the mist at first, but immediately loomed into view, coming
down the straight road toward me at a terrific pace, coming along with a
rush and a roar, the biggest, swiftest, and most obviously expensive
example I had yet seen.
The road was wide, but sloped away considerably on either side from the
crown of it, and on the crown of it I walked with my caravan. It was a
clay road, made slippery by the rain; did these insolent vulgarians, I
asked myself, suppose I was going to slide down one side in order to
make room for them? Room there was plenty between me in the middle and
the gutter and hedge at the sides. If there was to be sliding, why
should it not be they who slid?
The motor, with the effrontery usual to its class, was right on the top
of the road, in the very pick and middle of it. I perceived that here
was my chance. No motor would dare dash straight on in the face of so
slow and bulky an obstacle as a caravan, and I was sick of them--sick of
their dust, their smell, and their vulgar ostentation. Also I felt that
all the other members of our party would be on my side, for I have
related their indignant comments on the slaying of a pretty young woman
by one of these goggled demons. Therefore I kept on immovably, swerving
not an inch from the top of the road.
The motor, seeing this and now very near, shrieked with childish rage
(it had a voice like an angry woman) at my daring to thwart it. I
remained firmly on my course, though I was obliged to push up the horse
which actually tried of itself to make way. The motor, still shrieking,
saw nothing for it but to abandon the heights to me, and endeavoured to
pass on the slope. As it did it skidded violently, and after a short
interval of upheaval and activity among its occupants subsided into calm
and the gutter.
An old gentleman with a very red face struggled into view from among
many wrappers.
I waited till he had finally emerged, and then addressed him
impressively and distinctly from the top of the road. “Road hog,” I
said, “let this be a lesson to you.”
I would have said more, he being unable to get away and I holding, so to
speak, the key to the situation, if the officious Jellaby and the too
kind Lord Sigismund had not come running up from behind breathlessly
eager to render an assistance that was obviously not required.
The old gentleman, shaking himself free from his cloak and rising in the
car, was in the act of addressing me in his turn, for his eyes were
fixed on me and his mouth was opening and shutting in the spasms
preliminary to heated conversation (all of which I observed calmly,
leaning against my horse’s shaft and feeling myself to be in the right)
when Lord Sigismund and Jellaby arrived.
[Illustration: _The old gentleman was in the act of addressing me in his
turn_]
“I do hope you’ve not been hurt----” began Lord Sigismund with his usual
concern for those to whom anything had happened.
The old gentleman gasped. “What? Sidge? It’s your lot?” he exclaimed.
“Hullo, Dad!” was Lord Sigismund’s immediate and astonished response.
It was the Duke.
Now was not that very unfortunate?