‘‘Are you not dancing?” said he, fidgetting and looking about him.
I think one is often angry with people because, having assumed on first acquaintance that they are on one’s own level of intelligence, their speech and actions presently prove that they are not. This is unjust; but, like most unjust things, natural. I, however, as a reasonable man do my best to fight against it, and on Raggett’s asking this question for all response to the opportunity I gave him of embarking on an interesting discussion, I checked my natural annoyance by realizing that he was what Menzies-Legh probably was, merely stupid. Stupidity, my hearers will agree, is of various kinds, and one kind is want of interest in what is interesting. Of course this particular stupid was hopelessly ill-bred besides, for what can be more so than meeting a series of, to put them at their lowest, suggestive remarks by inquiring if one is not dancing?
“My dear sir,” I said, preserving my own manners at least, “in my country it is not the custom for married gentlemen over thirty to dance. Perhaps you were paying me the compliment (often, I must say, paid me before) of supposing I am not yet that age, but I assure you that I am. Nor do ladies continue to dance in our country once their early youth is past and their outlines become — shall we say, bolder? Seats are then provided for them round the walls, and on them they remain in suitable passivity until the oasis afforded by the Lancers is reached, when the elder gentlemen pour gallantly out of the room in which they play cards all the evening and lead them through its intricacies with the ceremony that satisfies Society’s sense of the becoming. In this country, on the contrary ‘‘
“Really,’’ he interrupted, his habit of fidgeting more pronounced than ever, “you talk English with such a flow and volume that after all you very well might have joined”
I now saw that the man was a fanatic, a type of unbalanced person I have always particularly disliked. Good breeding is little if at all appreciated by fanatics, and I might have been excused if, at this point, I had flung mine to the winds. I did not do so, however, but merely interrupted him in my turn by informing him with cold courteousness that I was a Lutheran.
“And Lutherans,” I added, “do not pray. At least, not audibly, and certainly never in duets. More,” I continued, putting up my hand as he opened his mouth to speak, “more. I am a philosopher, and the prayers of a philosopher cannot be confined within the limits of any formula. Formulas are for the undeveloped. You tie a child into its chair lest, untied, it should fall disastrously to the floor. You tie the undeveloped adult to a creed lest, untied, he should fall goodness really knows where. The grown man, of full stature in mind as well as body, requires no tying. His whole life is his creed. Nothing cut and dried, nothing blatant, nothing gaudily apparent to the outside world, but a subtle saturation, a continual soaking”
“Excuse me,” said he, “one of those candles is guttering.”
And he hurried across the room with an expedition I would not have thought possible in a man so gray and glassy to where, in the windows, the illuminating rows of candles had been placed.
Nor did he come back, I am glad to say, for I found him terribly fatiguing; and I remained alone, leaning against the wall by the door.
Down at the further end of the room danced my gentle friend, and also her sister; also all the other members of our party except Menzies-Legh who, recalled to decency by my good-natured shafts, spent the rest of his time soberly either helping the pastor pinch off candle-wicks or turning over the ghost’s music for it.
Desiring to watch Frau von Eckthum more conveniently (for I assure you it was a pretty sight to see her grace, and how the same tune that made my wife whirl moved her to nothing more ruffling than an appearance of being wafted) and also in order to be at hand should Jellaby become too tactless, I went down to where our party seemed to be gathered in a knot and took up my position near them against another portion of the wall.
I had hardly done so before they seemed to have melted away to the upper end.
As they did not come back I presently strolled after them. They then appeared to melt back again to the bottom.
It was very odd. It was almost like an optical illusion. When I went up, they went down; when I went down, they went up. I felt at last as one may feel who plays at see-saw, and began to doubt whether I were really on firm ground — on terra cotta, as I (amusingly, I thought) called it to Edelgard when we alighted from the steamer at Queenboro’, endeavouring to restore her spirits and make her laugh. (Quite in vain I may add, which inclined me to wonder, I remember, whether the illiteracy which is one of the leading characteristics of people’s wives had made it impossible for her to understand even so simple a classical play on words as that. In the train I realized that it was not illiteracy but the crossing; and I will say for Edelgard that up to the time the English spirit of criticism got, like a devastating microbe, hold of her German womanliness, she had invariably laughed when I chose to jest.)
But gradually the profitless see-sawing began to tire me. The dance ended, another began, and still my little white-bloused friend had not once been within reach. I made a determined effort to get to her in the pauses between the dances in order to offer to break the German rule on her behalf and give her one dance (for I fancy she was vexed that I did not) and also to help her out of the clutches of Jellaby, but I might as well have tried to dance with and help a moonbeam. She was here, she was there, she was everywhere, except where I happened to be. Once I had almost achieved success when, just as I was sure of her, she ran up to the ghost resting at that moment from its labours and embarked in an apparently endless and absorbing discussion with it, deaf and blind to all beside; and as I had made up my mind that nothing would induce me to extend my Raggett acquaintance by causing myself to be introduced to the psychical phenomenon bearing that name, I was forced to retreat.
Moodily, though. My first hilarity was extinguished. Bon enfant though I am I cannot go on being bon enfant forever — I must have, so to speak, the encouragement of a bottle at intervals; and I was thinking of taking Edelgard away and giving her, before the others returned to their caravans, a brief description of what maturity combined with calf-like enjoyment looks like to bystanders, when Mrs. Menzies-Legh passing on the arm of a partner caught sight of my face, let her partner go, and came up to me.
“I suppose,” she said (and she had at least the grace to hesitate), “it would be no good asking — asking you to — dance?”
I stared at her in undisguised astonishment.
“Are you not dreadfully bored, standing there alone?” she said, as I did not answer. “Won’t you—” (again she had the grace to hesitate)— “won’t you — dance?”
Pointedly, and still staring amazed, I inquired of her with whom, for really I could hardly believe”
“With me, if — if you will,” said she, a rather lame attempt at a smile and a distinctly anxious look in her eyes showing that at least it was only a momentary aberration.
Momentary or not, however, I am not the man to smile with feigned gratification when what is needed is rebuke, especially in the case of this lady who of all others needed one so often and so badly.
“Why?” I exclaimed, not caring to conceal my opinion, “why — this is matriarchy!”
And turning on my heel I made my way at once to my wife, stopped her whirlings, drew her away from her partner’s arm (Jellaby’s, by the way), made her take her husband’s and without a word led her out of the room.
But, as I passed the door I saw the look of (I should think pretended) astonishment of Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s face give way to the appearance of the dimple, to a sudden screwing together of the upper and lower eyelashes, and my friends will be able to form a notion of how complete was the havoc England had wrought in all she had been taught to understand and reverence in her youth when I tell them that what she was manifestly trying not to do was to laugh.
CHAPTER XIX
ESSENTIALLY, as I have already pointed out, bon enfant, I seldom le
t a bad yesterday spoil a promising to-day; and when on peeping through my curtains next morning I saw the sun had turned our forbidding camp of the night before into a bland warm place across which birds darted singing, a cheery whistle formed itself on my lips and I became aware of that inward satisfaction our neighbours (to whom we owe, I frankly acknowledge, much besides Alsace and Lorraine) have aptly named the joie de vivre.
Left to myself this joie would undoubtedly always continue uninterruptedly throughout the day. The greater then, say I, the responsibility of those who damp it. Indeed, the responsibility resting on the shoulders of the people who cross one’s path during the day is far more tremendous than they in the thickness of their skins imagine. I will not, however, at present go into that, having gradually in the course of writing this become aware that what I shall probably do next will be to collect and embody all my more metaphysical side into a volume to itself with plenty of room in it, and will here, then, merely ask my hearers to behold me whistling in my caravan on that bright August morning, whistling, and ready, as every sound man should be, to leave the annoyances of yesterday beneath their own dust and begin the new day in the spirit of “Who knows but before nightfall I shall have conquered the world?’’
My mother (a remarkable woman) used to tell me it was a good plan to start like that, and indeed I believe the results by nightfall would be surprisingly encouraging if only other people would leave one alone. For, as they meet you, each one by his behaviour takes away a further portion of that which in the morning was so undimmed. Why, sometimes just Edelgard at breakfast has by herself torn off the whole stock of it at once; and generally by dinner there is but little left. It is true that occasionally after dinner a fresh wave of it sets in, but sleep absorbs that before it has had time, as the colloquialists would say, so much as to turn round.
My hearers, then, without my going further into this, must conceive me whistling and full of French joie in the subdued sunlight of the Elsa’s curtained interior on that bright summer morning at Frogs’ Hole Farm.
The floor sloped, for during the night the Elsa’s left hind wheel had sunk into an uncobbled portion of the yard where the soft mud offered no resistance, but even the prospect of having to dig this out before we could start did not depress me. I thought I had noticed my head sinking lower and lower during my dreams, and after having, half asleep, endeavoured to correct this impression by means of rolling up my day clothes and putting them beneath my pillow and finding that it made no difference, I decided it must be a nightmare and let well alone. In the morning, on waking after Edelgard’s departure, I realized what had happened, and if any of you ever caravan you had better see when you go to bed that all four of your wheels are on that which I called at Queenboro’ terra cotta (you will remember I explained why it was my wife was unable to be amused) or you will have some pretty work cut out for you next morning.
Even this prospect, however, did not, as I say, depress me. Dumb objects like caravans have no such power, and as nobody not dumb had yet crossed my path I was still, so to speak, untarnished. I had even made up my mind to forget the half-hour with Edelgard the previous night after the ball, and since a willingness to forget is the same thing as a willingness to forgive I think you will all agree that I began that day very well.
Descending to breakfast, I experienced a slight shock (the first breath of tarnish) on finding no one but Mrs. Menzies-Legh and the nondescripts there. Mrs. Menzies-Legh, however, though no doubt feeling privately awkward managed to behave as though nothing had happened, hoped I had slept well, and brought my coffee. She did not talk as much as usual, but attended to my wants with an assiduousness that pointed to her being, after all, ashamed.
I inquired of her with the dignity that means determined distance where the others were, and she said gone for a walk.
She remarked on the beauty of the day, and I replied, “It is indeed.”
She then said, slightly sighing, that if only the weather had been like that from the first the tour would have been so much more enjoyable.
On which I observed, with reserved yet easy conversation, that the greater part still lay before us, and who knew but that from then on it was not going to be fine?
At this she looked at me in silence, her head poised slightly on one side, seriously and pensively, as she had done among the Bodiam ruins; then opened her mouth as though to speak, but thinking better of it got up instead and fetched me more food.
At last, thought I, she was learning the right way to set about pleasing; and I could not prevent a feeling of gratification at the success of my method with her. There was an unusually good breakfast too, which increased this feeling — eggs and bacon, a combined luxury not before seen on our table. The fledglings hung over the stove with heated cheeks preparing relays of it under Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s directions, who, while she directed, held the coffee-pot in her arms to keep it warm. She explained she did so for my second cup. I might and indeed I would have suspected that she did so not to keep the coffee but her arms warm, if it had not been such a grilling day. Heat quivered in a blue haze over the hop-poles of the adjacent field. The sunless farmhouse looked invitingly cool and shady now that the surrounding hill-tops were one glare of light. To hold warm coffee in one’s arms on such a morning could not possibly show anything but a meritorious desire to make amends; and as I am not a man to do what the scriptural call quench the smoking flax, and yet not a man to forgive too quickly recently audacious ladies, I dexterously ‘ mingled extreme politeness with an unshakable reserve.
But I did not care to prolong what was practically a tête-à-tête one moment more than necessary, and could not but at last perceive in her persistent replenishings of my cup and plate the exactly contrary desire in the lady. So I got up with a courteously declining, “No, no — a reasonable man knows when to leave off,” murmured something about seeing to things, bowed, and withdrew.
Where I withdrew to was the hop-field and a cigar.
I lay down in the shade of these green promises of beer in a corner secure from observation, and reflected that if the others could waste time taking supererogatory exercise I might surely be allowed an interval of calm; and as there are no mosquitoes in England, at least none that I ever saw, it really was not unpleasant for once to contemplate nature from the ground. But I must confess I was slightly nettled by the way the rest of the party had gone off without waiting to see whether I would not like to go too. At first, busied by breakfast, I had not thought of this. Presently, in the hop-field, it entered my mind, and though I would not have walked far with them it would have been pleasant to let the rest go on ahead and remain myself in some cool corner talking to my gentle but lately so elusive friend.
I must say also that I felt no little surprise that Edelgard should gad away in such a manner before our caravan had been tidied up and after what I had said to her the last thing the night before. Did she then think, in her exuberant defiance, that I would turn to and make our beds for her?
My cigar being finished I lay awhile thinking of these things, fanned by a gentle breeze. Country sounds, at a distance to make them agreeable, gradually soothed ear and brain. A cock crowed just far enough away. A lark sang muffled by space. The bells of an invisible church — Raggett’s, probably — began a deadened and melodious ringing. Well, I was not going; I smiled as I thought of Raggett and the eagle, forced to make the best of things by themselves. All round me was a hum and a warmth that was irresistible. I did not resist it. My head dropped; my limbs relaxed; and I fell into a doze.
This doze was, as it turned out, extremely a proposy for by the time it was over and I had once more become conscious, the morning was well advanced and the caravaners had had ample time to get back from their walk and through their work. Sauntering in among them I found everything ready for a start except the Elsa, which, still with its left hind wheel sunk in the soil, was being doctored by Menzies-Legh, Jellaby, and old James.
“Hullo,’’ said Jellaby, lo
oking up in the midst of his heated pushing and pulling as I appeared, “been enjoying yourself?”
Menzies-Legh did not even look up, but continued his efforts with drops of moisture on his saturnine brow.
Well, here my experience as an artillery officer accustomed to getting gun-carriages out of predicaments enabled me at once to assume authority, and drawing up a camp stool I gave them directions as they worked. They did not, it is true, listen much, thinking as English people so invariably do that they knew better, but by not listening they merely added another half-hour to their labour, and as it was fine and warm and sitting superintending them much less arduous than marching, I had no real objection.
I told Menzies-Legh this at the time, but he did not answer, so I told him again when we were on the road about the half-hour he might have saved if he had worked on my plan. He seemed to be in a more than usually bad temper, for he only shrugged his shoulders and looked glum; and my hearers will agree that Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s John was not a possession for England to be specially proud of.
We journeyed that day toward Canterbury, a town you, my friends, may or may not have heard of. That it is an English town I need not say. for if it were not would we have been going there? And it is chiefly noted, I remembered, for its archbishop.
This gentleman, I was told by Jellaby on my questioning him, walks directly behind the King’s eldest son, and in front of all the nobles in processions. He is a pastor, but how greatly glorified! He is the final expansion, the last word, of that which in the bud was only a curate. Every English curate, like Buonaparte’s soldiers are said to have done, carries in his handbag the mitre of an archbishop. I can only regard it as a blessing that our Church has not got them, for I for one would find it difficult with this possibility in view ever to be really natural to a curate. As it is I am perfectly natural. With absolute simplicity I show ours his place and keep him to it; and I am equally simple with our Superintendents and General Superintendents, the nearest approach our pure and frugal Church goes to bishops and archbishops. There is nothing glorified about them. They are just respectable elderly men, with Godfearing wives who prepare their dinner for them day by day. ‘‘And, Jellaby,” said I, “can as much be said for the wives of your archbishops?”
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 132
