Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  The ditch had a hedge on its farther side, and through a gap in it I saw the wood, cleared in places and overgrown between the remaining stumps by bracken and brambles, wherein I was, as Mrs. Menzies-Legh said, to find more sticks. The first thing to be done, then, was to find the sticks, for the handkerchief contained the merest handful; and this was a hard task among brambles at the end of a dinnerless day, and likely, besides, to prove ruinous to my stockings.

  The groups at the caravans were peeling the potatoes and other vegetables we had bought at the farm near Grip’s Common that morning, and were doing it with an expedition that showed how hunger was triumphing over fatigue. Jellaby hurried to and fro to a small spring among the bracken fetching water. Menzies-Legh and Lord Sigismund had disappeared in the distance that led to the shops. Old James was feeding the horses. I could see the two fledglings sitting on the grass with bowed heads and flushed cheeks absorbed in the shredding of cabbages. Mrs. Menzies-Legh had begun, with immense energy, to peel potatoes. Her gentle sister — I deplored it — was engaged on an onion. Nowhere, look as I might (for I needed her assistance) could I see my wife.

  Then Mrs. Menzies-Legh, raising her eyes from her potatoes, saw me standing motionless and called out that the vegetables would soon be ready for the fire, but she feared if I were not quick the fire would not soon be ready for the vegetables; and thus urged, and contrary to my first intention, I hastily emptied the sticks out of the handkerchief into the ditch and began to endeavour to light them.

  But they would not light. Match after match flared an instant, then went out. It was a windy evening, and I saw no reason for supposing that any match would stay alight long enough to get even one stick to catch fire. I went down on my knees and interposed my person between the sticks and the wind, but though the matches then burned to the end (where were my fingers) the sticks took no more notice than if they had been of iron. Losing patience I said something aloud and not, I am afraid, quite complimentary, about wives who neglect their duties and kick in shortened skirts over the traces of matrimony; and Edelgard’s voice immediately responded from the other side of the hedge. “But lieber Otto,” it said, “is it then my fault that you have forgotten the paper?”

  I straightened myself and looked at her. She had already been on the search for sticks, for as she advanced to the gap and stood in it I saw she had an apronful of them. I must say I was surprised at her courage in confronting me thus alone, when she was aware I must be gravely displeased with her and could only be waiting for an opportunity to tell her so. She, however, with the cunning common to wives, called me lieber Otto as though nothing had happened, did not allude to my overheard exclamation and sought to soften me with sticks.

  I looked at her therefore very coldly. “No,” I said, “I had not forgotten the paper.”

  And this was true, because to forget paper (or indeed anything else) you must first of all have thought of it, and I had not.

  “Perhaps,’’ I went on, my coldness descending as I spoke below zero, which is the point in our well-arranged thermometers (either Celsius or Reaumur, but none of their foolish Fahrenheits) where freezing begins, “perhaps, since you are so clever, you will have the goodness to light the fire yourself. Anyone,’’ I continued with emphasis, “can criticize. We will now, if you please, change places, and you shall bring your unquestioned gifts to bear on this matter, while I assume the role suited to lesser capacity, and merely criticize.”

  This of course, was bitter; but was it not a justified bitterness? Unfortunately I shall have to suppress the passage I suppose at the reading aloud, so shall never hear the verdict of my friends; but even without that verdict (and I well know what it would be, for they all have wives) even without it I can honestly call my bitterness justified. Besides, it was very well put.

  She listened in silence, and then just said, “Oh, Otto,” and came down at once into the ditch, and bending over the sticks began to arrange them quickly on some stones she picked up.

  I did not like to sit down and smoke, which is what I would have done at home (supposing such a situation as the Ottringels lighting a fire out-of-doors in Storchwerder were conceivable), because Mrs. Menzies-Legh would probably have immediately left off peeling her potatoes to exclaim, and Jellaby would, I dare say, have put down his buckets and come over to inquire if I were enjoying myself. Not that I care ten pfennings for their opinions, and I also passionately disapprove of the whole English attitude toward women; but I am a fair-minded man, and believe in going as far as is reasonable with the well-known maxim of behaving in Rome as the Romans behave.

  I therefore just stood with my back to the caravans and watched Edelgard. In less time than I take to write it she had piled up the sticks, stuffed a bit of newspaper she drew from her apron underneath them, lit them by means (as I noted) of a single match, and behold the fire, crackling and blazing and leaping upward or outward as the wind drove it.

  No proof, if anything further in that way were needed, could be more convincing as to the position women are intended by nature to fill. Their instincts are all of the fire-lighting order, the order that serves and tends; while to man, the noble dreamer, is reserved the place in life where there is room, dignity, and uninterruption. Else how can he dream? And without his dreams there would be no subsequent crystallization of dreams; and all that we see of good and great and wealth-bringing was once some undisturbed man’s dream.

  But this is philosophy; and you, my friends, who breathe the very air handed down to you by our Kegels and our Kants, who are born into it and absorb it whether you want to or not through each one of your infancy’s pores, you do not need to hear the Ottringel echo of your own familiar thoughts. We in Storchwerder speak seldom on these subjects for we take them for granted; and I will not in this place describe too minutely all that passed through my mind as I watched, in that grassy solitude, at the hour when the sun in setting lights up everything with extra splendour, my wife piling sticks on the fire.

  Indeed, what did pass through it was of a mixed nature. It seemed so strange to be there; so strange that that meadow, in all its dampness, its high hedge round three sides of it, its row of willows brooding over the sulky river, its wood on the one hand, its barren expanse of mole-ridden field on the other, and for all view another meadow of exact similarity behind another row of exactly similar willows across the Medway, it seemed so strange that all this had been lying there silent and empty for heaven knows how many years, the exact spot on which Edelgard and I were standing waiting, as it were, for its prey throughout the entire period of our married life in Storchwerder and of my other married life previous to that, while we, all unconscious, went through the series of actions and thoughts that had at length landed us on it. Strange fruition of years. Stranger the elaborate leading up to it. Strangest the inability of man to escape such a destiny. Regarded as the fruition of years it was certainly paltry, it was certainly a disproportionate destiny. I had been led from Pomerania, a most remote place if measured by its distance from the Medway, in order to stand at evening with damp feet on this exact spot. A believer, you will cry, in predestination? Perhaps. Anyhow, filled with these reflections (and others of the same character) and watching my wife doing in silence that for which she is fitted and intended, my feeling toward her became softer; I began to excuse; to relent; to forgive. Indeed I have tried to do my duty. I am not hard, unless she forces me to be. I feel that no one can guide and help a wife except a husband. And I am older than she is; and am I not experienced in wives, who have had two, and one of them for the enormous (sometimes it used to seem endless) period of twenty years?

  I said nothing to her at the moment of a softer nature, being well aware of the advantage of allowing time, before proceeding to forgiveness, for the firmer attitude to sink in; and Jellaby bringing the iron stew-pot Mrs. Menzies-Legh had bought that morning — or rather dragging it, for he is, as I have said, a weedy creature — across to us, spilling much of the water it contained on the
way, I was obliged to help him get it on to the fire, fetching at his direction stones to support it and then considerably scorching my hands in the efforts to settle the thing safely on the stones.

  “Please don’t bother. Baroness,” said Jellaby to Edelgard when she began to replenish the fire with more sticks. “We’ll do that. You’ll get the smoke in your eyes.”

  But would we not get the smoke in our eyes too? And would not eyes unused to kitchen work smart far more than eyes that did the kind of thing at home every day? For I suppose the fires in the kitchen of Storchwerder smoke sometimes, and Edelgard must have been perfectly inured to it.

  “Oh,” said Edelgard, in the pleasant little voice she manages to have when speaking to persons who are not her husband, “it is no bother. I do not mind the smoke.”

  “Why, what are we here for?” said Jellaby. And he took the sticks she was still holding from her hands.

  Again the thought crossed my mind that Jellaby must be attracted by Edelgard; indeed, all three gentlemen. This is an example of the sort of attention that had been lavished on her ever since we started. Inconceivable as it seemed, there it was; and the most inconceivable part of it was that it was boldly done in the very presence of her husband. I, however, knowing that one should never trust a foreigner, determined to bring round the talk, as I had decided the day before, to the number of Edelgard’s birthdays that very evening at supper.

  But when supper, after an hour and a halfs waiting, came, I was too much exhausted to care. We all were very silent. Our remaining strength had gone out of us like a flickering candle in a wind when we became aware of the really endless time the potatoes take to boil. Everything had gone into the pot together. Mrs. Menzies-Legh had declared that was the shortest, and indeed the only way, for the oil-stoves in the caravans and their small saucepans had sufficiently proved their inadequacy the previous night. Henceforth, said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, our hope was to be in the stew-pot; and as she said it she threw in the potatoes, the cabbages, the onion sliced by her tender sister, a piece of butter, a handful of salt, and the bacon her husband and Lord Sigismund had brought back with them from the village. It all went in together; but it did not all come out together, for we discovered after savoury fragrances had teased our nostrils for some time that the cabbage and the bacon were cooked, while the potatoes, in response to the proddings of divers anxious forks, remained obstinately hard.

  We held a short council, gathered round the stew-pot, as to the best course to pursue. If we left the bacon and the cabbage in the pot they would be boiled certainly to a pulp, and perhaps — awful thought — altogether away, before the potatoes were ready. On the other hand, to relinquish the potatoes, the chief feature of our supper, would be impossible. We therefore, after much anxious argument, decided to take out that which was already cooked, put it carefully on plates, and at the last moment return it to the pot to be warmed up again.

  This was done, and we sat round on the grass to wait. Now was the moment, now that we were all assembled silent in a circle, to direct the conversation into the birthday channel, but I found myself so much enfeebled and the rest so unresponsive that after a faltering beginning, which had no effect except to draw a few languid gazes upon me, I was obliged perforce to put it off. Indeed, our thoughts were wholly concentrated on food; and looking back it is almost incredible to me that that meagre supper should have roused so eager an interest.

  We all sat without speaking, listening to the bubbling of the pot. Now and then one of the young men thrust more sticks beneath it. The sun had set long since, and the wind had dropped. The meadow seemed to grow much damper, and while our faces were being scorched by the fire our backs were becoming steadily more chilly. The ladies drew their wraps about them. The gentlemen did that for their comfort which they would not do for politeness, and put on their coats. I whose coat had never left me, fetched my mackintosh and hung it over my shoulders, careful to keep it as much as possible out of reach of the fire-glow in case it should begin to melt.

  Long before, the ladies had spread the tables and cut piles of bread and butter, and one of them — I expect it was Frau von Eckthum — had concocted an uncooked pudding out of some cakes they alluded to as sponge, with some cream and raspberry jam and brandy, which, together with the bacon and excepting the brandy, were the result of the foraging expedition.

  Toward these tables our glances often wandered. We were but human, and presently, overcome, our bodies wandered thither too.

  We ate the bread and butter.

  Then we ate the bacon and cabbage, agreeing that it was a pity to let it get any cooler.

  Then we ate the pudding they spoke of — for after this they began to be able to speak — as a trifle.

  And then — and it is as strange to relate as it is difficult to believe — we returned to the stew-pot and ate every one of the now ready and steaming hot potatoes; and never, I can safely say, was there anything so excellent.

  Later on, entering our caravan much softened by these various experiences and by a cup of extremely good coffee made by Edelgard, but feeling justified in withdrawing, now that darkness had set in, from the confusions of the washing up, I found my wife searching in the depths of the yellow box for dishcloths.

  I stood in the narrow gangway lighting a cigar, and when I had done lighting it I realized that I was close to her and alone. One is never at any time far from anything in these vehicles, but on this occasion the nearness combined with the privacy suggested that the moment had arrived for the words I had decided she must hear — kind words, not hard as I had at first intended, but needful.

  I put out my arm, therefore, and proposed to draw her toward me as a preliminary to peace.

  She would not, however, come.

  Greatly surprised — for resentment had not till then been one of her failings — I opened my mouth to speak, but she, before I could do so, said, “Do you mind not smoking inside the caravan?”

  Still more surprised, and indeed amazed (for this was petty) but determined not to be shaken out of my kindness, I gently began, “ Dear wife “ and was going on when she interrupted me.

  “Dear husband,” she said, actually imitating me, “I know what you are going to say. I always know what you are going to say. I know all the things you ever can or ever do say.”

  She paused a moment, and then added in a firm voice, looking me straight in the eyes, “ By heart.”

  And before I could in any way recover my presence of mind she was through the curtain and down the ladder and had vanished with the dishcloths in the darkness.

  CHAPTER IX

  THIS was rebellion.

  But unconsciousness supervened before I had had time to consider how best to meet it, the unconsciousness of the profound and prolonged sleep which is the portion of caravaners. I fell into it almost immediately after her departure, dropping into my berth, a mere worn-our collection of aching and presently oblivious bones, and remaining in that condition till she had left the Elsa next morning.

  Therefore I had little time for reflection on the new side of her nature the English atmosphere was bringing out, nor did I all that day find either the leisure or the privacy necessary for it. I felt, indeed, as I walked by my horse along roads broad and roads narrow, roads straight and roads winding, roads flat and convenient and roads hilly and tiresome, my eyes fixed principally on the ground, for if I looked up there were only hedges and in front of me only the broad back of the Ailsa blocking up any view there might be, I felt a numb sensation stealing over me, a kind of dull patience, such as I have observed (for I see most things) to be the leading characteristic of a team of oxen, a tendency becoming more marked with every mile toward the merely bovine.

  The weather that day was disagreeable. There was a high wind and a leaden sky and the dust blew hard and gritty. When, on rising, I peeped out between the window curtains, it all looked very cold and wretched, the Medway — a most surly river — muddier than ever, the leaves of the willow trees
wildly fluttering and showing their gray undersides. It seemed difficult to believe that one was really there, really about to go out into that gloom to breakfast instead of into a normal dining-room with a stove and a newspaper. But, on emerging, I found that though it looked so cold it was not intolerably so, and no rain in the night had, by drenching the long grass, added to our agonies.

  They were all at breakfast beneath the willows, holding on their hats with one hand and endeavouring to eat with the other, and they all seemed very cheerful. Edelgard, who had taken the coffee under her management, was going round replenishing the cups, and was actually laughing when I came out at something some one had just said. Remembering how we parted this struck me as at least strange.

  I made a point of at once asking for porridge, but luckily old James had not brought the milk in time, so there was none. Spared, I ate corned beef and jam, but my feet were still sore from the previous day’s march, and I was unable to enjoy it very much. The tablecloth flapped in my face, and my mackintosh blew almost into the river when I let it go for an instant in order to grasp the milk jug, and I must say I could not quite understand why they should all be so happy. I trust I am as willing to be amused as any man, but what is there amusing in breakfasting in a draughty meadow with everything flapping and fluttering, and the coffee cold before it reaches one’s mouth? Yet they were happy. Even Menzies-Legh, a gray-haired, badly-preserved man, older a good deal, I should say, than I am, was joking and then laughing at his jokes with the fledglings, and Lord Sigismund and Jellaby were describing almost with exultation how brisk they had felt after a bath they had taken at five in the morning in the Medway.