I have observed on frequent occasions in a life now long enough to have
afforded many, a tendency on the part of Providence to punish the just
man because he has been just. Not one to criticize Providence if I can
avoid it, I do feel that this is to be deplored. It is also
inexplicable. Marie-Luise died, I recollect, the very day I had had
occasion to speak sharply to her, which almost looked, I remember
thinking at the time, like malice. I was aware, however, that it was
only Providence. My poor wife was being wielded as the instrument which
was to put me in the wrong, and I need not say to you, my friends, who
knew her and know me and were witness of the harmony of our married
life, that her death had nothing to do with my rebukes. You all remember
she was in perfect health that day, and was snatched from my side late
in the afternoon by means of a passing _droschke_. The _droschke_ passed
over her, and left me, with incredible suddenness, a widower on the
pavement. This might have happened to anybody, but what was so
peculiarly unfortunate was that I had been forced, if I would do my
duty, to rebuke her during the hours immediately preceding the
occurrence. Of course, I could not know about the _droschke_. I could
not know about it; I did my duty; and by the evening I was the most
crushed of men, a prey to the crudest regrets and self-reproaches. Yet
had I not acted aright? Conscience told me Yes. Alas, how little could
Conscience do for my comfort then! In time I got over it, and regained
the calm balance of mind that saw life would stand still if we feared to
speak out because people might die. Indeed, I saw this so clearly that I
not only married again within the year, but made up my mind that no past
experience should intimidate me into not doing my duty by my second
wife; I assumed, that is, from the first my proper position in the
household as its guide and censor, and up to now I am glad to say
Providence has left Edelgard alone, and has not used her (except in
minor matters) as a weapon for making me regret I have done right.
But here, now, was this business with the Duke. Nothing could have been
warmer and more cordial than my feelings toward him and his family. I
admired and liked his son; I infinitely respected his sister; and I only
asked to be allowed to admire, like, and respect himself. Such was my
attitude toward him. Toward motors it was equally irreproachable. I
detested their barbarous methods, and was as anxious as any other
decent man to give them a lesson and help avenge their many unhappy
victims. Now came Providence, stepping in between these two meritorious
intentions, and frustrating both at one blow by the simple expedient of
combining the Duke with the motor. It confounded me; it punished me; it
put me in the wrong; and for what? For doing what I knew was right.
“No one, not even a pastor, can expect me to like that sort of thing,” I
complained to Mrs. Menzies-Legh, to whom I had been talking, owing to
her sister’s being somewhere else.
“No,” said she; and looked at me reflectively as though tempted to say
more. But (no doubt remembering my dislike of talkative women) she
refrained.
I was sitting under one of the ruined arches of Bodiam Castle (never, my
friends, go there; it is a terribly damp place), with the lean lady,
while the others peered about as well as they could, being too tired to
do anything but sit, and weary, too, of spirit, for I am a sensitive
man, and had had a troubled day. The evening had done that which English
people call drawing in. Lord Sigismund was gone--gone with his
unreasonably incensed father in the motor to some place whose name I did
not catch, and was not to be back till the next day. The others,
including myself, had, after a prolonged search, found a very miserable
camp with cows in it. It was too late to object to anything, so there we
huddled round our stew-pot in an exposed field, while the wind howled
and a fine rain fell. Our party was oddly silent and cheerless
considering its ordinary spirits. No one said it was healthy and jolly;
even the children did not speak, and sat buttoned up in mackintoshes,
their hands clasped round their knees, their faces, shining with rain,
set and serious. I think the way the Duke had behaved after getting out
of the gutter had depressed them. It had been a disagreeable scene--I
should say he was a man of a hot and uncontrolled temper--and my
apologies had been useless. Then the supper took an unconscionable time
preparing. For some reason the chickens would not boil (they missed Lord
Sigismund’s persuasive talent) and the potatoes could not because the
stove on which they stood went out and nobody noticed it. How bleak and
autumnal that field, bare of trees, with the rain driving over it,
looked after the unsatisfactory day I cannot describe to you. Its
dreariness, combined with what had gone before, and with the bad supper,
made me dislike it more than any camp we had had. The thought that up
there on those dank cow-ridden heights we were to spend the night, while
down in Bodiam lights twinkled and happy cottagers undressed in rooms
and went into normal beds instead of inserting themselves sideways into
what was in reality a shelf, was curiously depressing. And when, after
supper, our party was washing up by the flickering lantern-light, with
the rain wetting the plates as quickly as they were dried, I could not
refrain from saying as I stood looking down at them, “So this is what is
called pleasure.”
Nobody had anything to say to that.
In self-defense we went down later on, dark and wild though it was, to
the ruins. Sit up there in the wet we could not, and it was too early to
go to bed. Nor could we play at cards in each other’s caravans, because
of questions of decorum. Mrs. Menzies-Legh did, indeed, suggest it, but
on my pointing this out to her with a severity I was prepared to
increase if she had made the least opposition, the suggestion was
dropped. Forced to stay out-of-doors we were forced to move, or
rheumatism would certainly have claimed us for its own, so we set out
once again along the muddy lanes, leaving Menzies-Legh (who was sulking
terribly) to mind the camp, and trudged the two miles down to the
castle.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh walked with me. Directly she saw I was alone, the
others hurrying on ahead at a pace I did not care to keep up with, she
loitered behind till I overtook her and walked with me.
I have made no secret of the fact that this lady seemed to mark me
during the tour for her special prey. You, my hearers, must have noticed
it by now, for I conceal nothing. I can safely say I was not to blame,
for in no way did I encourage her. Not only must she have been over
thirty, but more than once she had allowed herself to do that which can
only be described as poking fun at me. Besides, I do not care for the
type. I dislike the least suggestion of wiriness in woman; and there was
nothing of her bodily (except wire) and far too much intellectually--I
mean so far as a woman can be intellectual, which, of course, is not far
at all. I therefore feel entirely conscience-clear, and carefully
avoiding any comments which might give the impression of vanity on my
part, merely state the bare facts that the lady was constantly at my
elbow, that my elbow was reluctant, and that no other member of the
party clung to it like that.
There she sat with me, for instance, in the ruins, pretending she was
tired too, though of course she was not, for never was any one more
active, and for want of a better listener--Frau von Eckthum had from the
first melted away among the shadows--I was obliged to talk to her in the
above strain. However, one cannot really _talk_ to such a woman, not
really converse with her. She soon reminded me of this fact (which I
well knew) by inquiring whether I did not think people were very apt to
call that Providence which was in reality nothing more nor less than
their own selves--“Or,” she added (profanely) “if they’re in another
mood they call it the Devil, but it is always just themselves.”
Well, I had not come through the mud to Bodiam to be profane, so I
gathered my wraps about me and prepared to go.
“But I do see your point,” she said, noticing these preparations, and
realizing, perhaps, that she had gone too far. “Things do sometimes
happen very unluckily, and punishments are out of all proportion to the
offence. I think, for instance, it was perfectly terrible for you that
you should have been scolding your wife----”
“Not scolding. Rebuking.”
“It’s the same thing----”
“Certainly not.”
“Rebuking her, then, up to the very moment--oh, it would have killed
me!”
And she shivered.
“My dear lady,” said I, slightly amused, “a man has certain duties, and
he performs them. Sometimes they are unpleasant, and he still performs
them. If he allowed himself to be killed each time there would be a
mighty dearth of husbands in the world, and what would you all do then?”
Women however have no sense of humour, and she was unable to catch at
this straw of it offered her for the purpose of lightening the
conversation. On the contrary, she turned her head and looking at me
gravely (pretty eyes, wasted) she said, “But how much better never,
never to do your duty.”
“Really----” I protested.
“Yes. If it means being unkind.”
“Unkind? Is a mother unkind who rebukes her child?”
“Oh, call it by its proper name--scolding, preaching, advising,
abusing--it’s all unkind, wickedly unkind.”
“Abusing, my dear lady?”
“Come, now, Baron, what you said to the Duke----”
“Ah. That was an unfortunate accident. I did what under any other
circumstances would have been my duty, and Providence----”
“Oh, Baron dear, leave Providence alone. And leave your duty alone. A
tongue doing its duty is such a terrible instrument of destruction. Why,
you can almost see all the little Loves and Charities turning paler and
paler and weaker and weaker the longer it wags, and shrivelling up quite
at last and being snuffed out. Really I have been thankful on my knees
every time I have not said what I was going to say when I’ve been
annoyed.”
“Indeed?” said I, ironically.
I might have added that no great strain could have been put upon her
knees, for I could conceive no woman less likely to be silent if she
wanted to speak. But, candidly, what did it matter? I have always found
it quite impossible to take a woman seriously, even when I am attracted;
and heaven knows I had no desire to sit on stones in that wet place
while this one spread out her little stock of ill-assimilated wisdom for
my (presumable) improvement.
I therefore began to button up my cloak with an unmistakable finality,
determined to seek the others and suggest a return to the camp.
“You forget,” I said, while I buttoned, “that an outburst of annoyance
has nothing whatever to do with the calm discharge of a reasonable man’s
obligations.”
“What, you’ve been quite calm and happy when you’ve been doing what you
call rebuke?” said she, looking up at me. “Oh, Baron.” And she shook her
head and smiled.
“Calm, I hope and believe, but not happy. Nor did I expect to be. Duty
has nothing to do with one’s happiness.”
“No, nor with the other one’s,” said she quickly.
Of course I could have scattered her reasoning to the winds if I had
chosen to bring real logic to bear on it, but it would have taken time,
she being very unconvinceable, and I really could not be bothered.
“Let Menzies-Legh convince her,” thought I, making myself ready for the
walk back in the rain, aware that I had quite enough to do convincing my
own wife.
“Try praising,” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh.
Not seeing the point, I buttoned in silence.
“Praising and encouraging. You’d be astonished at the results.”
In silence, for I would not be at the trouble of asking what it was I
was to praise and encourage, I turned up my collar and fastened the
little strap across the front. She, seeing I had no further intention of
talking, began to get ready too for the plunge out into the rain.
“You’re not angry, Baron dear?” she asked, leaning across and looking
into as much of my face as appeared above the collar.
This mode of addressing me was one that I had never in any way
encouraged, but no amount of stiffening at its use discouraged it. In
justice, I must remind you who have met her that her voice is not
disagreeable. You will remember it is low, and so far removed from
shrillness that it lends a spurious air to everything she says of being
more worth listening to than it is. Edelgard described it fancifully,
but not altogether badly, as being full of shadows. It vibrated, not
unmusically, up and down among these shadows, and when she asked me if I
were angry it took on a very fair semblance of sympathetic concern.
I, however, knew very well that the last thing she really was was
sympathetic--all the aptitude for sympathy the Flitz family had produced
was concentrated in her gentle sister--so I was in no way hoodwinked.
“My dear lady,” I said, shaking out the folds of my cloak, “I am not a
child.”
“Sometimes I think,” said she, getting up too, “that you are not
enjoying your holiday. That it’s not what you thought it would be. That
perhaps we are not a very--not a very congenial party.”
“You are very good,” said I, with a stiffness that relegated her at once
to an immense and proper distance away, for was not this a tending
toward the confidential? And a man has to be careful.
She looked at me a moment at this, her head a little on one side,
considering me. Her want of feminine reserve--conceive Edelgard staring
at a living gentleman with the frank attention one brings to bear on an
inanimate object--struck me afresh. She seemed absolutely without a
vestige of that consciousness of sex, of those _arrière-pensées_ (as our
conquered but still intelligent neighbours say) very properly called
female modesty. A well brought up German lady soon casts down her eyes
when facing a gentleman. She at once recollects that she is a woman and
he is a man, and continues to recollect it during the whole time they
are together. I am sure in the days when Mrs. Menzies-Legh was yet a
Flitz she did so, but England had blunted if not completely destroyed
those finer Prussian feelings, and there she stood considering me with
what I can only call a perfectly sexless detachment. What, I wondered,
was she going to say that would annoy me at the end of it? But she said
nothing; she just gave her head a little shake, turned suddenly, and
walked away.
Well, I was not going to walk too--at least, not with her. The ruins
were not my property, and she was not my guest, so I felt quite
justified in letting her go alone. Chivalry, too, has its limits, and
one does not care to waste any of one’s stock of it. No man can be more
chivalrous than I if provided with a proper object, but I do not
consider that objects are proper once they have reached an age to be
able to take care of themselves, neither are they so if Nature has
encrusted them in an armour of unattractiveness; in this latter case
Nature herself may be said to be chivalrous to them, and they can safely
be left to her protection.
I therefore followed at my leisure in Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s wake,
desiring to return to the camp, but not desiring to do it with her. I
thought I would search for Frau von Eckthum and she and I would walk
back happily together; and, passing under the arch leading into what had
been the banqueting hall, I immediately found the object of my search
beneath an umbrella which was being held over her head by Jellaby.
When I was a child, and still in charge of my mother, she, doing her
best by me, used to say, “Otto, put yourself in his place,” if my
judgments chanced to be ill-considered or headlong.
I did so; it became a habit; and in consequence I arrived at conclusions
I would probably not otherwise have arrived at. So now, coming across my
gentle friend beneath Jellaby’s umbrella, I mechanically carried out my
mother’s injunction. At once I began to imagine what my feelings would
be in her place. How, I rapidly asked myself, would I enjoy such close
proximity to the boring Socialist, to the common man of the people if I
were a lady of exceptionally refined moral and physical texture, the
fine flower and latest blossom of an ancient, aristocratic,
Conservative, and right-thinking family? Why, it would be torture; and
so was this that I had providentially chanced upon torture.
“My dear friend,” I cried, darting forward, “what are you doing here in
the wet and darkness unprotected? Permit me to offer you my arm and
conduct you to your sister, who is, I believe, preparing to return to
camp. Allow me----”
And before Jellaby could frame a sentence I had drawn her hand through
my arm and was leading her carefully away.
He, I regret to say, quite unable (owing to his thick skin) to see when
his presence was not desired, came too, making clumsy attempts to hold
his umbrella over her and chiefly succeeding, awkward as he is, in
jerking the rain off its tips down my neck.
Well, I could not be rude to him before a lady and roundly tell him to
take himself off, but I do not think he enjoyed his walk. To begin with
I suddenly remembered that no members of our party, except Edelgard and
myself, possessed umbrellas, so that I was able to say with the mildness
that is sometimes so telling: “Jellaby, what umbrella is this?”
“The Baroness kindly lent it to me,” he replied.
“Oh, indeed. Community of goods, eh? And what is she doing herself
without one, may I inquire?”
“I took her home. She said she had some sewing to do. I think it was to
mend a garment of yours.”
“Very likely. Then, since it is my wife’s umbrella, and therefore mine,
as you will hardly deny, for if two persons become by the marriage law
one flesh they must equally become one everything else, and therefore
also one umbrella, may I request you instead of inserting it so
persistently between my collar and my neck to hand it over to me, and
allow its lawful owner to hold it for this lady?”
And I took it from him, and looked down at Frau von Eckthum and laughed,
for I knew she would be amused at Jellaby’s being treated as he ought to
be.
She, of my own nation and class, must often have been, I think,
scandalized at the way the English members of the party behaved to him,
absolutely as though he were one of themselves. Her fastidiousness must
often and often have been wounded by Jellaby’s appearance and manner of
speech, by his flannel collar, his untidy clothes, the wisp of hair
forever being brushed aside from his forehead only forever to fall
across it again, his slender, almost feminine frame, his round face, and
the ridiculous whiteness of his skin. Really, the only way to treat this
person was as a kind of joke; not to take him seriously, not to allow
oneself to be, as one so often was on the verge of being, angry with
him. So I gave the hand resting on my arm a slight pressure expressive
of mutual understanding, and looked down at her and laughed.
The dear lady was not, however, invariably quick of comprehension. As a
rule, yes; but once or twice she gave the last touch to her femininity
by being divinely stupid, and on this occasion, whether it was because
her little feet were wet and therefore cold, or she was not attending to
the conversation, or she had had such a dose of Jellaby that her brain
refused any new impression, she responded neither to my look nor to my
laugh. Her eyes were fixed on the ground, and the delicate and serious
outline of her nose was all that I was permitted to see.
Respecting her mood, as a tactful man naturally would, I did not again
directly appeal to her, but laid myself out to amuse her on the way up
the hill by talking to Jellaby in a strain of mock solemnity and
endeavouring to draw him out for her entertainment. Unfortunately he
resisted my well-meant efforts, and was more taciturn than I had yet
seen him. He hardly spoke, and she, I fear, was very tired, for only
once did she say Oh. So that the conversation ended by being a
disquisition on Socialism held solely by myself, listened to by Frau von
Eckthum with absorbed and silent interest, and by Jellaby with, I am
sure, the greatest rage. Anyhow, I made some very good points, and he
did not venture a single protest. Probably his fallacious theories had
never had such a thorough pulling to pieces before, for there were two
miles to go up hill and I made the pace as slow as possible. My hearers
must also bear in mind that I exclusively employed that most deadly
weapon for withering purposes, the double-barrelled syringe of irony and
wit. Nothing can stand against the poison pumped out of these two, and I
could afford to bid Jellaby the cheeriest good night as I helped the
tender lady up the steps of her caravan.
He, it is amusing to relate, barely answered. But the moment he had gone
Frau von Eckthum found her tongue again, for on my telling her as she
was about to disappear through her doorway how greatly I had enjoyed
being able to be of some slight service to her, she paused with her hand
on the curtain and looking down at me, said: “What service?”
“Rescuing you from Jellaby,” said I.
“Oh,” said she; and drew back the curtain and went in.