What a place to be in at five in the morning. I shivered only to hear of it. Well, that which makes one man brisk is the undoing of another, and a bath in that cold, unfriendly stream would undoubtedly have undone me. I could only conclude that, pasty and loosely put together as they outwardly were, they must be of a very great secret leatheriness.
This surprised me. Not that Jellaby should be leathery, for if he were not neither would he be a Socialist; but that the son of so noble a house as the house of Hereford should have anything but the thinnest, most sensitive of skins, really was astonishing. No doubt, however. Lord Sigismund combined, like the racehorse of purest breed, a skin thin as a woman’s with a mettle and spirit nothing could daunt. Nothing was daunting him that morning, that was very clear, for he sat at the end of the table shedding such contented beams through his spectacles on the company and on the food that it was as if, unconsciously true to his future calling, he was saying a continual grace.
I think they must all have been up very early, for except the cups and plates actually in use everything was already stowed away. Even the tent and its furniture was neatly rolled up preparatory to being distributed among the three caravans. Such activity, after the previous day, was surprising; and still more so was the circumstance that I had heard nothing of the attendant inevitable bustle.
“How do you feel this morning?” I asked solicitously of Frau von Eckthum on meeting her a moment alone behind her larder; I hoped she, at least, had not been working too hard.
“Oh, very well,” said she.
“Not too weary?”
“Not weary at all.”
“Ah — youth, youth,” said I, shaking my head playfully, for indeed she looked singularly attractive that morning.
She smiled, and mounting the steps into her caravan began to do things with a duster and to sing.
For a moment I wondered whether she too had been made brisk by early contact with the Medway (of course in some remoter pool or bay), so unusual in her was this flow of language; but the idea of such delicacy being enveloped and perhaps buffeted by that rude volume of muddy water was, I felt, an impossible one. Still, why should she feel brisk? Had she not walked the day before the entire distance in the dust? Was it possible that she too, in spite of her poetic exterior, was really inwardly leathery? I have my ideals about women, and believe there is much of the poet concealed somewhere about me; and there is a moonlight intangibleness about this lady, an etherealism amounting at times almost to indistinctness, that made the application to her of such an adjective as leathery one from which I shrank. Yet if she were not, how could she — but I put these thoughts resolutely aside, and began to prepare for our departure, moving about mechanically as one in a bleak and chilly dream.
That is a hideous bridge, that one the English have built themselves across the Medway. A great gray-painted iron structure, with the dusty highroad running over it and the dirty river running under it, I hope never to see it again, unless officially at the head of my battalion. On the other side was a place called Paddock Wood, also, it seemed to me, a dreary thing as I walked through it that morning at my horse’s side. The sun came out just there, and the wind with its consequent dust increased. What an August, thought I; what a climate; what a place. An August and a climate and a place only to be found in the British Isles. In Storchwerder at that moment a proper harvest mellowness prevailed. No doubt also in Switzerland, whither we so nearly went, and certainly in Italy. Was this a reasonable way of celebrating one’s silver wedding, plodding through Paddock Wood with no one taking any notice of me, not even she who was the lawful partner of the celebration? The only answer I got as I put the question to myself was a mouthful of dust.
Nobody came to walk with me, and unless some one did my position was a very isolated one, wedged in between the Ailsa and the Ilsa, unable to leave the Elsa, who, like a wife, immediately strayed from the proper road if I did. The back of the Ailsa prevented my seeing who was with whom in front, but once at a sharp turning I did see, and what I saw was Frau von Eckthum walking with Jellaby, and Edelgard — if you please — on his other side. The young Socialist was slouching along with his hands in his pockets and his bony shoulders up to his ears listening, apparently, to Frau von Eckthum who actually seemed to be talking, for he kept on looking at her, and laughing as though at the things she said. Edelgard, I noticed, joined in the laughter as unconcernedly as if she had nothing in the world to reproach herself with. Then the Elsa followed round the corner and the scene in front was blotted out; but glancing back over my shoulder I saw how respectably Lord Sigismund, true to his lineage, remained by the Ilsa’s horse’s head, reflectively smoking his pipe and accompanied only by his dog.
Beyond Paddock Wood and its flat and dreary purlieus the road began to ascend and to wind, growing narrower and less draughty, with glimpses of a greener country and a hillier distance, in fact improving visibly as we neared Sussex. All this time I had walked by myself, and I was still too tired after the long march the day before to have any but dull objections. It would have been natural to be acutely indignant at Edelgard’s persistent defiance, natural to be infuriated at the cleverness with which she shifted the entire charge of our caravan on to me while she, on the horizon. gesticulated with Jellaby. I realized, it is true, that the others would not have let her lead the horse even had she offered to, but she ought at least to have walked beside me and hear me, if that were my mood, grumble. However, a reasonable man knows how to wait. He does not, not being a woman, hasten and perhaps spoil a crisis by rushing at it. And if no opportunity should present itself for weeks, would there not be years in our flat in Storchwerder consisting solely of opportunities?
Besides, my feet ached, I think there must have been some clumsy darning of Edelgard’s in my socks that pressed on my toes and made them feel as if the shoes were too short for them. And small stones kept on getting inside them, finding out the one place they could get in at and leaping through it with the greatest dexterity, dropping gradually by unpleasant stages down to underneath my socks, where they remained causing me discomfort till the next camp. These physical conditions, to which the endless mechanical trudging behind the Ailsa’s varnished back must be added, reduced me as I said before to a condition of dull and bovine acquiescence. I ceased to make objections. I hardly thought. I just trudged.
At the top of the ascent, at a junction of four roads called Four Winds (why, when they were four roads, the English themselves I suppose best know), we met a motor.
It came scorching round a corner with an insolent shriek of its tooting apparatus, but the shriek died away as it were on its lips when it saw what was filling up the way. It hesitated, stopped, and then began respectfully to back. Pass us it could not at that point, and charge into such vast objects as the caravans was a task before which even bloodthirstiness quailed. I record this as the one pleasing incident that morning, and when it was my turn to walk by the thing I did so with squared shoulders and held-up head and a muttered (yet perfectly distinct) “Road hogs” — which is the term Menzies-Legh had applied to them the day before when relating how one had run over a woman near where he lives, and had continued its career, leaving her to suffer in the road, which she did for the space of two hours before the next passer-by passed in time to see her die. And she was a quite young woman, and a pretty one into the bargain.
(‘l don’t see what that has to do with it,” said the foolish Jellaby when, in answer to my questions, I extracted this information from Menzies-Legh.)
Therefore, remembering this shocking affair, and being as well a great personal detester of these conveyances, the property invariably of the insolent rich, who with us are chiefly Jews, I took care to be distinct as I muttered “Road hogs,” The two occupants in goggles undoubtedly heard me, for they started and even their goggles seemed to shrink back and be ashamed of themselves, and I continued my way with a slight reviving of my spirits, the slight reviving of which he is generally conscious who has h
ad the courage to say what he thinks of a bad thing.
The post whose finger we were following had Dundale inscribed on it, and as we wound downward the scenery considerably improved. Woods on our left sheltered us from the wind, and on our right were a number of pretty hills. At the bottom — a bottom only reached after care and exertion, for loose stones imperilled the safety of my horse’s knees, and I had besides to spring about applying and regulating the brake — we found a farm with a hop-kiln in the hollow on the left, and opposite it a convenient, indeed attractive, field.
No other house was near. No populace. No iron bridge. No donkeys. No barrel-organ. Stretches of corn, so ripe that though the sky had clouded over they looked as if the sun were shining on them, alternated very pleasantly with the green of the hop-fields, and portions of woods climbed up between the folds of the hills. It was a sheltered spot, with a farm capable no doubt of supplying food, but I feared that because it was only one o’clock my pedantic companions, in defiance of the previous day’s experience, would decline to camp. Taking therefore the law into my own hands I pulled up my caravan in front of the farm gate. The Ilsa behind me was forced to pull up too; and the Ailsa, in the very act of lumbering round the next corner, was arrested by my loud and masterful Brrr.
“Anything wrong?” asked Lord Sigismund, running up from the back.
“What is it?” asked Menzies-Legh, coming toward me from the front.
Strange to say they listened to reason; and yet not strange, for I have observed that whenever one makes up one’s mind beforehand and unshakably other people give in. One must know what one wants — that is the whole secret; and in a world of flux and shilly-shally the infrequent rock is the only person who really gets it.
Jellaby (who seemed to think he was irresistible) volunteered to go to the farmer and get permission to camp in the field, and I was pleased to see that he made so doubtful an impression that the man came back with him before granting anything, to find out whether the party belonging to this odd emissary were respectable. I dare say he would have decided that we were not had he only seen the others, for the gentlemen were in their shirt sleeves again; but when he saw me, well and completely dressed, he had no further hesitations. Readily he let us use the field, recommending a certain lower portion of it on account of the nearness of the water, and then he prepared to go back and, as he said, finish his dinner.
But we, who wanted dinner too, could not be content with nothing more filling than a field, and began almost with one voice to talk to him of poultry.
He said he had none.
Of eggs.
He said he had none.
Of (anxiously) butter.
He said he had none. And he scratched his head and looked unintelligent for a space, and then repeating that about finishing his dinner turned away.
I went with him.
“Take the caravans into the field and I will forage,” I called back, waving my hand; for the idea of accompanying a man who was going to finish his dinner exhilarated me into further masterfulness.
My rapid calculation was, as I kept step with him, he looking at me sideways, that though it was very likely true he had not enough for ten it was equally probable that he had plenty for one. Besides, he might be glad to let an interesting stranger share the finishing of his no doubt lonely meal.
In the short transit from the lane to his back door (the front door was choked with grass and weeds) I chatted agreeably and fluently about the butter and eggs we desired to buy, adopting the “Come, come, my dear fellow ““ tone, perhaps better described as the man to man form of appeal.
“Foreign?”“ said he, after I had thus flowed on, pausing on his doorstep as though intending to part from me at that point.
“Yes, and proud of it,”“ said I, lifting my hat to my distant Fatherland.
“Ah,” said he. “No accountin’ for tastes.”’
This was disappointing after I had thought we were getting on. Also it was characteristically British. I would at once have resented it if with the opening of the door the unfinished dinner had not, in the form of a most appetizing odour, issued forth to within reach of my nostrils. To sit in a room with shut windows at a table and dine, without preliminary labours, on food that did not get cold between the plate and one’s mouth, seemed to me at that moment a lot so blessed that tears almost came into my eyes.
“Do you never have — guests?’” I asked, faltering but hurried, for he was about to shut the door with me still on the wrong side of it.
He stared. Red-faced and over stout his very personal safety demanded that he should not by himself finish that dinner.
“Guests?”’ he repeated stupidly. “No, I don’t have no guests,”
“Poor fellow,” said I.
“I don’t know about poor fellow,” said he, getting redder.
“Yes. Poor fellow. And poor fellow inasmuch as I suppose in this secluded spot there are none to be had, and so you are prevented from exercising the most privileged and noble of rites.”
“Oh, you’re one of them Social Democrats?”
“Social Democrats?” I echoed.
“Them chaps that go about talkin’ to us of rights, and wrongs too, till we all get mad and discontented — which is pretty well all we ever do get,” he added with a chuckle that was at the same time scornful. And he shut the door.
Filled with the certitude that I had been misunderstood, and that if only he could be made aware that he had one of the aristocracy of the first nation in the world on his step willing to be his guest and that such a chance would never in all human probability occur again he would be too delighted to welcome me, I knocked vigorously.
“Let me in. I am hungry. You do not know who I am,” I called out.
“Well,” said he, opening the door a few inches after a period during which I had continued knocking and he, as I could hear, had moved about the room inside, “here’s a quarter of a pound of butter for you. I ain’t got no more. It’s salt. I ain’t got no fresh. I send it away to the market as soon as it’s made. It’ll be fourpence. Tell your party they can pay when they settle for the field.”
And he thrust a bit of soft and oily butter lying on a piece of paper into my hand and shut the door.
“Man,” I cried in desperation, rattling the handle, “you do not know who I am. I am a gentleman — an officer — a nobleman”
He bolted the door.
When I got back I found them encamped in a corner at the far end of the field, as close into the shelter of a hedge as they could get, and my butter was greeted with a shout (led by Jellaby) of laughter. He and the fledglings at once started off on a fresh foraging expedition, on my advice in another direction, but all they bore back with them was the promise, from another farmer, of chickens next morning at six, and what is the good of chickens next morning at six? It was my turn to shout, and so I did, but I seemed to have little luck with my merriment, for the others were never merry at the moment that I was, and I shouted alone.
Jellaby, pretending he did not know why I should, looked surprised and said as usual, “Hullo, Baron, enjoying yourself?”
“Of course,” said I, smartly— “is not that what I have come to England for?’’
We dined that day on what was left of our bacon and some potatoes we had over. An attempt which failed was made to fry the potatoes— “as a pleasant change,” said Lord Sigismund good humouredly — but the wind was so high that the fire could not be brought to frying pitch, so about three o’clock we gave it up, and boiled them and ate them with butter and the bacon, which was for some reason nobody understood half raw.
That was a bad day. I hope never to revisit Dundale. The field, which began dry and short-grassed at the top of the slope, was every bit as deep and damp by the time it got down to the corner we were obliged to camp in because of the wind as the meadow by the Med way had been. We had the hedge between us (theoretically) and the wind, but the wind took no notice of the hedge. Also we had a bla
ck-looking brook of sluggish movement sunk deep below some alders and brambles at our side, and infested, it appeared, with a virulent species of fly or other animal, for while we were wondering (at least I was) what we were going to do to pass the hours before bed time, and what (if any) supper there would be, and reflecting (at least I was) on the depressing size and greenness of the field and on the way the threatening clouds hung lower and lower over our heads, the fledgling Jumps appeared, struggling up from the brook through the blackberry bushes, and crying that she had been stung by some beast or beasts unknown, flung herself down on the grass and immediately began to swell.
Everybody was in consternation, and I must say so was I, for I have never seen anything to equal the rapidity of her swelling. Her face and hands even as she lay there became covered with large red, raised blotches, and judging from her incoherent remarks the same thing was happening over the rest of her. It occurred to me that if she could not soon be stopped from further swelling the very worst thing might be anticipated, and I expressed my fears to Menzies-Legh.
“Nonsense,” said he, quite sharply; but I overlooked it because he was obviously in his heart thinking the same thing.
They got her into the Ilsa and put her, I was informed, to bed; and presently, just as I was expecting to be scattered with the other gentlemen in all directions in search of a doctor, Mrs. Menzies-Legh appeared in the doorway and said that Jumps had been able to gasp out, between her wild scratchings, that when anything stung her she always swelled, and the only thing to do was to let her scratch undisturbed until such time as she should contract to her ordinary size again.
Immensely relieved, for a search for a doctor in hedges and ditches would surely have been a thing of little profit and much fatigue, I sat down in one of the only three chairs that were at all comfortable and spent the rest of the afternoon in fitful argument with Jellaby as he came and went, and in sustained, and not, I trust, unsuccessful efforts to establish my friendship with Lord Sigismund on such a footing that an invitation to meet his Serene Aunt, the Princess of Grossburg-Niederhausen, would be the harmonious result.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 120
