Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  “It is a caravan,” said Frau von Eckthum, in answer to the question contained in my eyebrows; and turning the sheet she showed me another picture representing the same vehicle’s inside.

  Edelgard got up and looked over my shoulder.

  What we saw was certainly very nice. Edelgard said so at once. There were flowered curtains, and a shelf with books, and a comfortable chair with a cushion near a big window, and at the end two pretty beds placed one above the other as in a ship.

  “A thing like this,” said Frau von Eckthum, “does away at once with hotels, waiters, and expense. It costs fourteen pounds for two persons for a whole month, and all your days are spent in the sun.”

  She then explained her plan, which was to hire one of these vehicles for the month of August and lead a completely free and bohemian existence during that time, wandering through the English lanes, which she described as flowery, and drawing up for the night in a secluded spot near some little streamlet, to the music of whose gentle rippling, as Edelgard always easily inclined to sentiment suggested, she would probably be lulled to sleep.

  “Come too,” said she, smiling up at us as we looked over her shoulder.

  “Two hundred and eighty marks is fourteen pounds,” said I, making mental calculations.

  “For two people,” said Edelgard, obviously doing the same.

  “No hotels,” said our hostess.

  “No hotels,” echoed Edelgard.

  “Only lovely green fields,” said our hostess.

  “And no waiters,” said Edelgard.

  “Yes, no horrid waiters,” said our hostess.

  “Waiters are so expensive,” said Edelgard.

  “You wouldn’t see one,” said our hostess. “Only a nice child in a clean apron from a farm bringing eggs and cream. And you move about the whole time, and see the country in a way you never would going from place to place by train.”

  “But,” said I shrewdly, “if we move about something must either pull or push us, and that something must also be paid for.”

  “Oh, yes, there has to be a horse. But think of all the railway tickets you won’t buy and all the porters you won’t tip,” said Frau von Eckthum.

  Edelgard was manifestly impressed. Indeed, we both were. If it were a question of being in England for little money or being in Switzerland for much we felt unanimously that it was better to be in England. And then to travel through it in one of these conveyances was so distinctly original that we would be objects of the liveliest interest during the succeeding winter gaieties in Storchwerder. “The von Ottringels are certainly all that is most modern,” we could already hear our friends saying to each other, and could already see in our mind’s eye how they would press round us at soirees and bombard us with questions. We should be the centre of attraction.

  “And think of the nightingales!” cried Edelgard, suddenly recollecting those poetic birds.

  “In August they’re like Germans in Italy,” said Flitz, to whom I had mentioned our reason for giving up the idea of travelling in that country.

  “How so?” said Edelgard, turning to him with the slight instinctive stiffening of every really virtuous German lady when speaking to an unrelated (by blood) man.

  “They’re not there,” said Flitz.

  Well, of course the moment we were able to look in our Encyclopaedia at home we knew as well as he did that they do not sing in August, but I do not see how townsfolk are to keep these odds and ends of information lying loose about in their heads. We do not have the bird in Storchwerder and are therefore unable to study its habits at first hand as Flitz can, but I know that all the pieces of poetry I have come across mention nightingales before they have done, and the consequent perfectly natural impression left on my mind was that they were always more or less about. But I do not like Flitz’s tone, and never shall. It is true I have not actually seen him do it, but one feels instinctively that he is laughing at one; and there are different ways of laughing, and not all of them appear on the face. As for politics, if I were not as an officer debarred from alluding to them and were led to discuss them with him, I have no doubt that each discussion would end in a duel. That is, if he would fight.

  The appalling suspicion has just crossed my mind that he would not. He is one of those dreadful persons who cloak their cowardice behind the garb of philosophy. Well, well, I see I am growing angry with a man ten miles away, whom I have not seen for months — I, a man of the world sitting in the calm of my own flat, surrounded by quiet domestic objects such as my wife, my shirt, and my little meal of bread and ham. Is this reasonable? Certainly not. Let me change the subject.

  The long, then, and the short of our visit to Graf Flitz and his sister in June last was that we returned home determined to join Frau von Eckthum’s party, and not a little full of pleasurable anticipations. When she does talk she has a persuasive tongue. She talked more at this time than she ever did afterward, but of course there were reasons for that which I may or may not disclose. Edelgard listened with something like rapt interest to her really picturesque descriptions, or rather prophecies, for she had not herself done it before, of the pleasures of camp life; and I wish it to be clearly understood that Edelgard, who has since taken the line of telling people it was I, was the one who was swept off her usually cautious feet and who took it upon herself without waiting for me to speak to ask Frau von Eckthum to write and hire another of the cart3 for us. Frau von Eckthum laughed, and said she was sure we would like it. Flitz himself smoked in silence. And Edelgard developed a sudden eloquence in regard to natural phenomena such as moons and poppies that would have done credit to a young and sentimental girl. “Think of sitting in the shade of some mighty beech tree,” she said, for instance (she actually clasped her hands), “with the beams of the sinking sun slanting through its branches, and doing one’s needlework.”

  And she said other things of the same sort, things that made me, who knew she was going to be thirty next birthday, gaze upon her with a deep surprise.

  CHAPTER II

  I HAVE decided not to show Edelgard my manuscript again, and my reason is that I may have a freer hand. For the same reason I will not, as we at first proposed, send it round by itself among our relations, but will either accompany it in person or invite our relations to a cozy beer evening, with a simple little cold something to follow, and read aloud such portions of it as I think fit, omitting of course much that I say about Edelgard and probably also a good deal that I say about everybody else. A reasonable man is not a woman, and does not willingly pander to a love of gossip. Besides, as I have already hinted, the Edelgard who came back from England is by no means the Edelgard who went there. It will wear off, I am confident, in time, and we will return to the status quo ante — (how naturally that came out: it gratifies me to see I still remember) — a status quo full of trust and obedience on the one side and of kind and wise guidance on the other. Surely I have a right to refuse to be driven, except by a silken thread? When I, noticing a tendency on Edelgard’s part to attempt to substitute, if I may so express it, leather, asked her the above question, will it be believed that what she answered was Bosh?

  It gave me a great shock to hear her talk like that. Bosh is not a German expression at all. It is purest English. And it amazes me with what rapidity she picked it and similar portions of the language up, adding them in quantities to the knowledge she already possessed of the tongue, a fairly complete knowledge (she having been well educated), but altogether excluding words of that sort. Of course I am aware it was all Jellaby’s fault — but more of him in his proper place; I will not now dwell on later incidents while my narrative is still only at the point where everything was eager anticipation and preparation.

  Our caravan had been hired; I had sent, at Frau von Eckthum’s direction, the money to the owner, the price (unfortunately) having to be paid beforehand; and August the first, the very day of my wedding with poor Marie-Luise, was to see us start. Naturally there was much to do and arrange, bu
t it was pleasurable work such as getting a suit of civilian clothes adapted to the uses it would be put to, searching for stockings to match the knickerbockers, and for a hat that would be useful in both wet weather and sunshine.

  “It will be all sunshine,” said Frau von Eckthum with her really unusually pretty smile (it includes the sudden appearance of two dimples) when I expressed fears as to the effect of rain on the Panama that I finally bought and which, not being a real one, made me anxious.

  We saw her several times because of our need for hints as to luggage, meeting place, etc., and I found her each time more charming. When she was on her feet, too, her dress hid the shoes; and she was really helpful, and was apparently looking forward greatly to showing us the beauties of her sister’s more or less native land.

  As soon as my costume was ready I put it on and drove out to see her. The stockings had been a difficulty because I could not bear, accustomed as I am to cotton socks, their woollen feet. This was at last surmounted by cutting off their feet and sewing my ordinary sock feet on to the woollen legs. It answered splendidly, and Edelgard assured me that with care no portion of the sock (which was not of the same colour) would protrude. She herself had sent to Berlin to Wertheim for one of the tailor-made dresses in his catalogue, which turned out to be of really astonishing value for the money, and in which she looked very nice. With a tartan silk blouse and a little Tyrolese hat and a pheasant’s feather stuck in it she was so much transformed that I declared I could not believe it was our silver wedding journey, and I felt exactly as I did twenty-five years before.

  “But it is not our silver wedding journey,” she said with some sharpness.

  ‘‘Dear wife,” I retorted surprised, “you know very well that it is mine, and what is mine is also by law yours, and that therefore without the least admissible logical doubt it is yours.’’

  She made a sudden gesture with her shoulders that was almost like impatience; but I, knowing what victims the best of women are to incomprehensible moods, went out and bought her a pretty little bag with a leather strap to wear over one shoulder and complete her attire, thus proving to her that a reasonable man is not a child and knows when and how to be indulgent.

  Frau von Eckthum, who was going to stay with her sister for a fortnight before they both joined us (the sister, I regretted to hear, was coming coo), left in the middle of July. Flitz, at that time incomprehensibly to me, made excuses for not taking part in the caravan tour, but since then light has been thrown on his behaviour: he said, I remember, that he could not leave his pigs.

  “Much better not leave his sister,” said Edelgard who, I fancy, was just then a little envious of Frau von Eckthum.

  “Dear wife,” I said gently, “we shall be there to take care of her and he knows she is safe in our hands. Besides, we do not want Flitz. He is the last man I can imagine myself ever wanting.”

  It was perfectly natural that Edelgard should be a little envious, and I felt it was and did not therefore in any way check her. I need not remind those relatives who will next winter listen to this that the Flitzes of Flitzburg, of whom Frau von Eckthum was one, are a most ancient and still more penniless family. Frau von Eckthum and her gaunt sister (last time she was staying in Prussia both Edelgard and I were struck with her extreme gauntness) each married a wealthy man by two most extraordinary strokes of luck; for what man nowadays will marry a girl who cannot take, if not the lion’s share, at least a very substantial one of the household expenses upon herself? What is the use of a father if he cannot provide his daughter with the money required suitably to support her husband and his children? I myself have never been a father, so that I am qualified to speak with perfect impartiality; that is, strictly, I was one twice, but only for so few minutes each time that they can hardly be said to count. The two von Flitz girls married so young and so well, and have been, without in any way really deserving it, so snugly wrapped in comfort ever since (Frau von Eckthum actually losing her husband two years after marriage and coming into everything) that naturally Edelgard cannot be expected to like it. Edelgard had a portion herself of six thousand marks a year besides an unusual quantity of house linen, which enabled her at last — she was twenty-four when I married her — to find a good husband; and she cannot understand by what wiles the two sisters, without a penny or a table cloth, secured theirs at eighteen. She does not see that they are— “were’’ is the better word in the case of the gaunt sister — attractive; but then the type is so completely opposed to her own that she would not be likely to. Certainly I agree that a married woman verging, as the sister must be, on thirty should settle down to a smooth head and at least the beginnings of a suitable embonpoint. We do not want wives like lieutenants in a cavalry regiment; and Edelgard is not altogether wrong when she says that both Frau von Eckthum and her sister make her think of those lean and elegant young men. Your lean woman with her restlessness of limb and brain is far indeed removed from the soft amplitudes and slow movements of her who is the ideal wife of every German better-class bosom. Privately, however, I feel I can at least understand that there may have been something to be said at the time for the Englishman’s conduct, and I more than understand that of the deceased Eckthum. No one can deny that his widow is undoubtedly — well, well; let me return to the narrative.

  We had naturally told everybody we met what we were going to do, and it was intensely amusing to see the astonishment created. Bad health for the rest of our days was the smallest of the evils predicted. Also our digestions were much commiserated. “Oh,” said I with jaunty recklessness at that, “we shall live on boiled hedgehogs, preceded by mice soup,” — for I had studied the article Gipsies in our Encyclopaedia, and discovered that they often eat the above fare.

  The faces of our friends when I happened to be in this jocose vein were a study. “God in heaven,” they cried, “what will become of your poor wife?”

  But a sense of humour carries a man through anything, and I did not allow myself to be daunted. Indeed it was not likely, I reminded myself sometimes when inclined to be thoughtful at night, that Frau von Eckthum, who so obviously was delicately nurtured, would consent to eat hedgehogs or risk years in which all her attractiveness would evaporate on a sofa of sickness.

  “Oh, but Frau von Eckthum!” was the invariable reply, accompanied by a shrug when I reassured the ladies of our circle by pointing this out.

  I am aware Frau von Eckthum is unpopular in Storchwcrder. Perhaps it is because the art of conversation is considerably developed there, and she will not talk. I know she will not go to its balls, refuses its dinners, and turns her back on its coffees. I know she is with difficulty induced to sit on its philanthropic boards, and when she finally has been induced to sit on them does not do so after all but stays at home. I know she is different from the type of woman prevailing in our town, the plain, flat-haired, tightly buttoned up. God-fearing wife and mother, who looks up to her husband and after her children, and is extremely intelligent in the kitchen and not at all intelligent out of it. I know that this is the type that has made our great nation what it is, hoisting it up on ample shoulders to the first place in the world, and I know that we would have to request heaven to help us if we ever changed it. But — she is an attractive lady.

  Truly it is an excellent thing to be able to put down one’s opinions on paper as they occur to one without risk of irritating interruption — I hope my hearers will not interrupt at the reading aloud — and now that I have at last begun to write a book — for years I have intended doing so — I see clearly the superiority of writing over speaking. It is the same kind of superiority that the pulpit enjoys over the (very properly) muzzled pews. When, during my stay on British soil, I said anything, however short, of the nature of the above remarks about our German wives and mothers, it was most annoying the way I was interrupted and the sort of questions that were instantly put me by, chiefly, the gaunt sister. But of that more in its place. I am still at the point where she had not yet loomed on my
horizon, and all was pleasurable anticipation.

  We left our home on August 1st, punctually as we had arranged, after some very hard-worked days at the end during which the furniture was beaten and strewn with napthalin (against moths), curtains, etc., taken down and piled neatly in heaps, pictures covered up in newspapers, and groceries carefully weighed and locked up. I spent these days at the Club, for my leave had begun on the 25th of July and there was nothing for me to do. And I must say, though the discomfort in our flat was intense, when I returned to it in the evening in order to go to bed I was never anything but patient with the unappetisingly heated and disheveled Edelgard. And she noticed it and was grateful. It would be hard to say what would make her grateful now. These last bad days, however, came to their natural end, and the morning of die first arrived and by ten we had taken leave, with many last injunctions, of Clothilde who showed an amount of concern at our departure that gratified us, and were on the station platform with Hermann standing respectfully behind us carrying our hand luggage in both his gloved hands, and with what he could not carry piled about his feet, while I could see by the expression on their faces that the few strangers present recognized we were people of good family or, as England would say, of the Upper Ten, We had no luggage for registration because of die new law by which every kilo has to be paid for, but we each had a well-filled, substantial hold-all and a leather portmanteau, and into these we had succeeded in packing most of the things Frau von Eckthum had from time to time suggested we might want. Edelgard is a good packer, and got far more in than I should have thought possible, and what was left over was stowed away in different bags and baskets. Also we took a plentiful supply of vaseline and bandages. “For,” as I remarked to Edelgard when she giddily did not want to, quoting the most modern (though rightly disapproved of in Storchwerder) of English writers, “you never can possibly tell,” — besides a good sized ox-tongue, smoked specially for us by our Storchwerder butcher and which was later on to be concealed in our caravan for private use in case of need at night.