Life is a strange thing, and full of surprises. The day before, you
think you know what will happen on the morrow, and on the morrow you
find you did not. Light as you may the candle of your common sense, and
peer as you may by its shining into the future, if you see anything at
all it turns out to have been, after all, something else. We are
surrounded by tricks, by illusions, by fluidities. Even when the natural
world behaves pretty much as experience has led us to expect, the
unnatural world, by which I mean (and I say it is a fair description)
human beings, does nothing of the sort. My ripe conclusion, carefully
weighed and unattackably mellow, is that all one’s study, all one’s
thought, all one’s experience, all one’s philosophy, lead to this: that
you cannot account for anything. Do you, my friends, interrupt me here
with a query? My answer to it is: Wait.
The morning after the occurrences just described I overslept myself, and
on emerging about ten o’clock in search of what I hoped would still be
breakfast I found the table tidily set out, the stove alight, and
keeping coffee warm, ham in slices on a dish, three eggs waiting to be
transferred to an expectant saucepan, and not a single caravaner in
sight except Menzies-Legh.
Him, of course, I now pitied. For to have a treacherous friend, and a
sister-in law of whom you are fond but who in her heart cannot endure
you, to be under the delusion that the one is sincere and the other
loving, is to become a fit object for pity; and since no one can at the
same time both pity and hate, I was not nearly so much annoyed as I
otherwise would have been at finding my glum-faced friend was to keep me
company. Annoyed, did I say? Why, I was not annoyed at all. For though I
might pity I was also secretly amused, and further, the feeling that I
now had a little private understanding with Frau von Eckthum exhilarated
me into more than my usual share of good humour.
He was sitting smoking; and when I appeared, fresh, and rested, and
cheery, round the corner of the Elsa, he not only immediately said good
morning, but added an inquiry as to whether I did not think it a
beautiful day; then he got up, went across to the stove, put the eggs in
the saucepan, and fetched the coffee-pot.
This was very surprising. I tell you, my friends, the moods of persons
who caravan are as many and as incalculable as the grains of sand on
the seashore. If you doubt it, go and do it. But you cannot reasonably
doubt it after listening to the narrative. Have I not told you in the
course of it how the party’s spirits were up in the skies one hour, and
down on the ground the next; how their gaiety some days at breakfast was
childish in its folly, and their silence on others depressing; how they
quoted poetry and played at Blind Man’s Buff in the morning, and in the
afternoon dragged their feet without speaking through the mud; how they
talked far too much sometimes, and then, when I wished to, would not
talk at all; how they were suddenly polite and attentive, and then as
suddenly forgot I could possibly want anything; how the wet did not damp
their hilarity one day, and no amount of sunshine coax it forth the
next? But of all their moods this of Menzies-Legh’s in the field above
Canterbury was the one that surprised me most.
You see, he was naturally so very glum. True at the beginning there had
been gleams of light but they soon became extinguished. True, also, at
Frogs’ Hole Farm, when demonstrating truths by means of tea in glasses,
he had been for a short while pleasant--only, however, to plunge
immediately and all the deeper into gloom and ill-temper. Gloom and
ill-temper was his normal state; and to see him attending to my wants,
doing it with unmistakable assiduity, actively courteous, was
astonishing. I was astonished. But my breeding enabled me to behave as
though it were the most ordinary thing in the world, and I accepted
sugar from him and allowed him to cut my bread with the blank expression
on my face of him who sees nothing unusual or interesting anywhere,
which is, I take it, the expression of the perfect gentleman. When at
length my plate was surrounded by specimens of all the comforts
available, and I had begun to eat, he sat down again, and leaning his
elbow on the table and fixing his eyes on the city already sweltering in
heat and vapour below, resumed his pipe.
A train puffed out of the station along the line at the bottom of our
field, jerking up slow masses of white steam into the hot, motionless
air.
“There goes Jellaby’s train,” said Menzies-Legh.
“Jellaby’s what?” said I, cracking an egg.
“Train,” said he.
“Why, what has he got to do with trains?” I asked, supposing with the
vagueness of want of interest, that Jellaby, as well as being a
Socialist, was a railway director and kept a particular train as another
person would keep a pet.
“He’s in it,” said Menzies-Legh.
I looked up from my egg at Menzies-Legh’s profile.
“What?” said I.
“In it,” said he. “Obliged to go.”
“What--Jellaby gone? First Lord Sidge, and now Jellaby?”
Naturally I was surprised, for I had heard and noticed nothing of this.
Also the way one after the other left without saying good-bye seemed to
me inconsiderate--at least that: probably more.
“Yes,” said Menzies-Legh. “We are--we are very sorry.”
I could not, however, honestly join in any sorrow over Jellaby, so
merely remarked that the party was shrinking.
“Yes,” said Menzies-Legh, “that’s rather our feeling too.”
“But why has Jellaby----?”
“Oh, well, you know, public man. Parliament. And all that.”
“Does your Parliament reassemble so shortly?”
“Oh, well, soon enough. You have to prepare, you know. Collect your
wits, and that sort of thing.”
“Ah, yes. Jellaby should not leave that to the last minute. But he
might,” I added with a slight frown, “have taken leave of me according
to the customs of good society. Manners are manners, after all is said
and done.”
“He was in a great hurry,” said Menzies-Legh.
There was a silence, during which Menzies-Legh smoked and I breakfasted.
Once or twice he cleared his throat as though about to say something,
but when I looked up prepared to listen he continued his pipe and his
staring at the city in the sun below.
“Where are the ladies?” I inquired, when the first edge of my appetite
had been blunted and I had leisure to look about me.
Menzies-Legh shifted his legs, which had been crossed.
“They went to the station with Jellaby to see the last of him,” said he.
“Indeed. All of them?”
“I believe so.”
Jellaby then, though he could not have the courtesy to say good-bye to
me, could take a prolonged farewell of my wife and of the other members
of our party.
“He is not what we in our country would call a gentleman,” I said, after
a silence during which I finished the third egg and regretted there were
no more.
“Who is not?” asked Menzies-Legh.
“Jellaby. No doubt the term bounder would apply to him quite as well as
to other people.”
Menzies-Legh turned his sallow visage to me. “He’s a great friend of
mine,” he said, the familiar scowl weighing down his eyebrows.
I could not help smiling and shaking my head at that, all I had heard
the night before so very fresh in my memory.
“Ah, my dear sir,” I said, “be careful how you trust your great friends.
Do not give way too lavishly to confidence. Belief in them is all very
well, but it should not go beyond the limits of reason.”
“He’s a great friend of mine,” repeated Menzies-Legh, raising his voice.
“I wish then,” said I, “you would tell me what a bounder is.”
He glowered at me a moment from beneath black brows. Then he said more
quietly:
“I’m not a slang dictionary. Suppose we talk seriously.”
“Certainly,” said I, reaching out for the jam.
He cleared his throat. “I got a lot of letters and telegrams last
night,” he said.
“How did you manage that?” I asked.
“They were waiting for me at the post-office here. I had telegraphed for
them to be forwarded. And I’m afraid--I’m sorry, but it’s inevitable--we
shall have to be off.”
“Off what?” said I, for a few of the more intimate English idioms still
remained for me to master.
“Off,” said he. “Go. Leave this.”
“Oh,” said I. “Well, we are used to that. This tour, my dear sir, is
surely the very essence of what you call being off. Where do we go next?
I trust to a place with trees in it.”
“You don’t understand, Baron. We don’t go anywhere next as far as the
caravans are concerned. My wife and I are obliged to go home.”
I was, of course, surprised. “We are, indeed,” said I, after a moment,
“shrinking rapidly.”
Then the thought of being rid of Mrs. Menzies-Legh and her John and
Jellaby at, so to speak, one swoop, and continuing the tour purged of
these baser elements with the tender lady entirely in our charge, made
me unable to repress a smile of satisfaction.
Menzies-Legh looked in his turn surprised. “I am glad,” he said, “that
you don’t mind.”
“My dear sir,” I said courteously, “of course I mind, and we shall miss
you and your--er--er--” it was difficult on the spur of the moment to
find an adjective, but Frau von Eckthum’s praises of her sister the
night before coming into my mind I popped in the word suggested
suggested--“angelic wife----”
He stared--ungratefully I thought, considering the effort it had been.
“But,” I continued, “you may be very sure we shall take every care of
your sister-in-law, and return her safe and well into your hands on
September the first, which is the date my contract with the owner of the
Elsa expires.”
“I’m afraid,” said he, “I wasn’t clear. We all go. Betti included, and
Jumps and Jane too. I’m very sorry,” he interrupted, as I opened my
mouth, “very sorry indeed that things should have turned out so
unexpectedly, but it is absolutely impossible for us to go on. Out of
the question.”
And he set his jaws, and shut his mouth into a mere line of opposition
and finality.
Well, my friends, what do you say to that? What do you think of this
example of the surprises life has in store for one? And, incidentally,
what do you think of human nature? Especially of human nature when it
caravans? And still more especially of human nature that is also
English? Not without reason do our neighbours label the accursèd island
_perfide Albion_. It is true I am not clear about the _Albion_, but I am
very clear about the _perfide_.
“Do you mean to tell me,” I said, leaning toward him across the table
and forcing him to meet my gaze, “that your sister-in-law _wishes_ to go
with you?”
“She does,” said he.
“Then, sir----” I began, amazement and indignation struggling together
within me.
“I tell you, Baron,” he interrupted, “we are very sorry things have
turned out like this. My wife is most genuinely distressed. But she too
sees the impossibility--unforeseen complications demand we should go
home.”
“Sir----” I again began.
“My dear Baron,” he again interrupted, “it needn’t in the least
interfere with you. Old James will stay with you if you and the Baroness
would like to go on.”
“Sir, I have paid for a month, and have only had a week.”
“Well, go on and finish your month. Nobody is preventing you.”
“But I was persuaded to join the tour on the understanding that it was a
party--that we were all to be together--four weeks together----”
“My dear fellow,” said he (never had I been addressed as that before),
“you talk as if it were a business arrangement, a buying and selling, as
if we were bound by a contract, under agreement----”
“Your sister-in-law inveigled me into it,” I exclaimed, emphasizing what
I said by regular beats on the table with my forefinger, “on the
definite understanding that it was to be a party and she--was--to
be--a--member of it.”
“Pooh, my dear Baron--Betti’s definite understandings. She’s in love,
and when a woman’s that it’s no earthly use----”
“What?” said I, startled for a moment out of all self-possession.
“Well?” he said, looking at me in surprise. “Why not? She’s young. Or do
you consider it improper for widows----”
“Improper? Natural, sir--natural. How long----?”
“Oh, before the tour even started. And propinquity, seeing each other
every day--well,” he finished suddenly, “one mustn’t talk about it, you
know.”
But you, my friends, what do you say to that? What do you think of this
second example of the surprises life has in store for us? I have been in
two minds as to whether I would tell you this one at all, but to a
law-abiding man, calm and objective as I know myself to be and as you by
now must know me too, such an incident though pleasurable could not in
any way affect or alter my conduct. Strictly Menzies-Legh was to be
censured for mentioning it; however that, I suppose, was what Jellaby
called the bounder coming out in him, and I perceived that whatever they
exactly may be bounders have their uses. I repeat, I make no attempt to
deny that it was a pleasurable incident, and although I am aware
Storchwerder never liked her (chiefly, I firmly believe, because she
would not ask it to her dinners) I am convinced that not one of you, my
friends, and I say it straight in your faces, but would have been glad
to stand at that moment in my shoes. I did not forget I was a husband,
but you can be a husband and yet remain a man. I think I behaved very
creditably. Only for an instant was there the least little lapse from
complete self-possession. Immediately I became and remained perfectly
calm. Edelgard; duty; my position in life; my beliefs; I remembered them
all. It also occurred to me (but I could not well tell Menzies-Legh)
that having regard to the behaviour throughout the tour of his wife it
was evident these things ran in families. I could not tell him, but I
felt myself inwardly in every way tickled. All I could do, indeed all I
did do, was to say “Strange, strange world,” and get up from my chair
because I found myself unable to continue sitting in it.
“But what do you propose to do?” Menzies-Legh asked, after he had
watched me taking a hasty turn or two up and down in the sun.
“Behave,” said I, stopping in front of him, “as an officer and a
gentleman.”
He stared. Then he got up and said with a touch of impatience--a most
unreliable person as regards temper: “Yes, yes--no doubt. But what shall
I tell old James about your caravan? Are you going on or not? If not,
he’ll pilot it home for you. I’m afraid I must know soon. I haven’t much
time. I must get away to-day.”
“What? To-day?”
“I must. I’m very sorry. Obliged to, you know----”
“And the Ailsa?”
“Oh, that’s all arranged. I telegraphed last night for one of the
grooms. He’ll be down in an hour or two and take charge of it back to
Panthers.”
“And the Ilsa?”
“He’ll take that too.”
“No, my dear sir,” said I firmly. “You leave the Ilsa in our charge--it
and its contents.”
“Eh?” said he.
“It and its contents--human and otherwise.”
“Nonsense, Baron. What on earth would you do with Jane and Jumps?
They’re going up to town with me by train. And my wife and Betti--oh,
yes, by the way, my wife gave me instructions to tell you how very sorry
she was not to be able to say good-bye to you. I assure you she was
really greatly distressed, but she and Betti are motoring up to London
and felt they ought to start as early as possible----”
“But--motoring? You said they had gone to the sta----”
“So they did. They saw Jellaby off, and then were picked up by a motor I
ordered for them last night in the town, and went straight from
there----”
I heard no more. He went on speaking, but I heard no more. The series of
surprises had done their work, and I could attend to nothing further. I
believe he continued to express regret and offer advice, but what he
said fell on my ear with the indifferent trickling of water when one is
not thirsty. At first anger, keen resentment, and disappointment surged
within me, for why, I asked myself, did she not say good-bye? I walked
up and down on the hot stubble, my hands deep in my pockets and myself
deep in conflicting emotions, while Menzies-Legh supposing I was
listening regretted and advised, asking myself why she did not say
good-bye. Then, gradually, I could not but see that here was tact, here
was delicacy, the right feeling of the truly feminine woman, and began
to admire her all the more because she had not said it. By degrees
composure stole upon me. Reason returned to my assistance. I could
think, arrange, decide. And before Edelgard came back with the two
children, mere heated _débris_ of that which had lately been so
complete, what I had decided with the clear-headed rapidity of the
practical and sensible man was to give up the Elsa, lose my money, and
go home. Home after all is the best place when life begins to wobble;
and home in this case was very near the Eckthum property--I only had to
borrow a vehicle, or even in extremity take a _droschke_, and there I
was. There too the delightful lady must sooner or later be, and I would
at least see her from time to time, whereas in England among her English
relations she was entirely and hopelessly cut off.
Thus it was, my friends, that I did not see Frau von Eckthum again. Thus
it was our caravaning came to an untimely end.
You can figure to yourselves what kind of reflections a man inclined to
philosophize would reflect as the reduced party hastily packed, in the
heat and glare of the summer morning, that which they had unpacked a
week previously amid howling winds and hail showers in the yard at
Panthers. Nature then had frowned, but vainly, on our merriment. Nature
now was smiling, equally vainly on our fragments. One brief week; and
what had happened? Rather, I should say, what had not happened?
On the stubble I walked up and down lost in reflection, while Edelgard,
helped (officiously I thought, but I did not care enough to mind) by
Menzies-Legh, stuffed our belongings into bags. She had asked no
questions. If she had I would not have answered them, being little in
the mood as you can imagine to put up with wives. I just told her, on
her return from seeing Jellaby off, of my decision to cross by that
night’s boat, and bade her get our things together. She said nothing,
but at once began to pack. She did not even inquire why we were not
going to look at London first, as we had originally planned. London? Who
cared for London? My mood was not one in which a man bothers about
London. With reference to that city it can best be described by the
single monosyllable Tcha.
I will not linger over the packing, or relate how when it was finished
Edelgard indulged in a prolonged farewell (with embraces, if you please)
of the two uninteresting fledglings, in a fervent shaking of both
Menzies-Legh’s hands combined with an invitation--I heard it--to stay
with us in Storchwerder, and the pressing upon old James in a remote
corner of something that looked suspiciously like a portion of her
dress-allowance; or how she then set out by my side for the station
steeped in that which we call _Abschiedsstimmung_, old James preceding
us with our luggage while the others took care for the last time of the
camp; or with what abandonment of apparent affectionate regret she hung
herself out of the train window as we presently passed along the bottom
of the field and waved her handkerchief. Such rankness of sentiment
could only make me shrug my shoulders, filled as I was by my own
absorbing thoughts.
I did glance up, though, and there on the stubble, surrounded by every
sort of litter, stood the three familiar brown vehicles blistering in
the sun, with Menzies-Legh and the fledglings knee-deep in straw and
saucepans and bags and other forlorn discomforts, watching us depart.
Strange how alien the whole thing seemed, how little connection it
seemed to have with me now that the sparkling bubbles (if I may refer to
Frau von Eckthum as bubbles) had disappeared and only the dregs were
left. I could not help feeling glad, as I raised my hat in courteous
acknowledgment of the frantic wavings of the fledglings, that I was
finally out of all the mess.
Menzies-Legh gravely returned my salute; our train rounded a curve; and
camp and caravaners disappeared at once and forever into the
unrecallable past.