‘It was not Fate,’ interrupted the wise relative before alluded to, as I sat after my return recounting my adventures and trying to extract sympathy, ‘it was the first consequence of your having meddled. If you had not — —’
Well, well. The great comfort about relatives is that though they may make what assertions they like you need not and do not believe them; and it was Fate and nothing but Fate that had dogged me malevolently all round Rügen and joined me here at Arkona once more to Mrs. Harvey-Browne. In she came while we were bending over the book, followed by the Professor, who walked as a man may walk in a dream, his eyes fixed on nothing, and asked me without more ado whether I would let her share my carriage as far as Wiek.
‘Then, you see, dear Frau X., I shall get there,’ she observed.
‘But why do you want to get there?’ I asked, absolutely knocked over this time by the fists of Fate.
‘Oh why not? We must go somewhere, and quite the most natural thing to do is to join forces. You agree, don’t you, Brosy dear? The Professor thinks it an excellent plan, and is charming enough to want to relinquish his seat to me if you will have me, are you not, Professor? However I only ask to be allowed to sit on the small seat, for the last thing I wish to do is to disturb anybody. But I fear the Professor will not allow — —’ and she stopped and looked with arch pleasantness at the Professor who murmured abstractedly ‘Certainly, certainly ‘ — which, of course, might mean anything.
‘My dear mother — —’ began Brosy in a tone of strong remonstrance.
‘Oh I’m sure it is the best thing we can do, Brosy. I did ask the landlord about hiring a fly, and there is no such thing. It will only be as far as Wiek, and I hear that is not so very far. You don’t mind do you, dear Frau X.?’
‘Mind?’ I cried, wriggling out a smile, ‘mind? But how will your son I don’t quite see — and your maid?’
‘Oh Brosy has his bicycle, and if you’ll let the luggage be put in your luggage cart Andrews can quite well sit beside your maid. Of course we will share expenses, so that it will really be mutually advantageous.’
Mrs. Harvey-Browne being one of those few persons who know exactly what they want, did as she chose with wavering creatures like myself. She also did as she chose with Brosy, because the impossibility of publicly rebuking one’s mother shut his mouth. She even did as she chose with the Professor, who, declaring that sooner than incommode the ladies he would go in the luggage cart, was in the very act as we were preparing to start off of nimbly climbing on to the trunk next to the one on which Andrews sat, when he found himself hesitating, coming down again, getting into the victoria, subsiding on to the little seat, and all in obedience to a clear something in the voice of Mrs. Harvey-Browne.
Never did unhappy celebrity sit more wretchedly than the poor Professor. It was raining so hard that we were obliged to have the hood up, and its edge came to within an inch of his nose — would have touched it quite if he had not sat as straight and as far back as possible. He could not, therefore, put up his umbrella, and was reduced, while water trickled ceaselessly off the hood down his neck, to pretending with great heroism that he was perfectly comfortable. It was impossible to sit under the snug hood and contemplate the drenched Professor outside it. It was impossible to let an old man of seventy, and an old man, besides, of such immense European value, catch his death before my very eyes. Either he must come between us and be what is known as bodkin, or some one must get out and walk; and the bodkin solution not commending itself to me it was plain that if some one walked it must be myself.
In an instant the carriage was stopped, protestations filled the air, I got out, the Professor was transferred to my place, the bishop’s wife turned deaf ears to his entreaties that he might go in the luggage cart and hold his big umbrella over the two poor drowning maids, the hood became vocal with arguments, suggestions, expostulations, apologies — and ‘Go on, August,’ I interrupted; and dropped behind into sand and silence.
We were already beyond Putgarten, in a flat, uninteresting country of deep sand and treeless, hedgeless cornfields. I had no umbrella, but a cloak with a hood to it which I drew over my head, throwing Gertrud my hat when she too presently heaved past in a cloud of expostulations. ‘Go on, go on,’ I called to the driver with a wave of my hand seeing him hesitate; and then stood waiting for Brosy who was some little way behind pushing his bicycle dismally through the sand, meditating no doubt on the immense difficulties of dealing with mothers who do things one does not like. When he realised that the solitary figure with the peaked hood outlined against the sullen grey background was mine he pushed along at a trot, with a face of great distress. But I had no difficulty in looking happy and assuring him that I liked walking, because I really was thankful to get away from the bishop’s wife, and I rather liked, besides, to be able to stretch myself thoroughly; while as for getting wet, to let oneself slowly be soaked to the skin while walking in a warm rain has a charm all its own.
Accordingly, after the preliminary explanations, we plodded along comfortably enough towards Wiek, keeping the carriage in sight as much as possible, and talking about all the things that interested Brosy, which were mostly things of great obscurity to myself. I suppose he thought it safest to keep to high truths and generalities, fearing lest the conversation in dropping to an everyday level should also drop on to the Nieberleins, and he seemed quite anxious not to know why Charlotte was at Wiek by herself while her husband and I were driving together without her. Therefore he soared carefully in realms of pure reason, and I, silent and respectful, watched him from below; only I could not help comparing the exalted vagueness of his talk with the sharp clearness of all that the old and wise Professor said.
Wiek after all turned out to be hardly more than five miles from Arkona, but it was heavy going. What with the bicycle and my wet skirts and the high talk we got along slowly, and my soul grew more chilled with every step by the thought of the complications the presence of the Harvey-Brownes was going to make in the delicate task of persuading Charlotte to return to her husband.
Brosy knew very well that there was something unusual in the Nieberlein relations, and was plainly uneasy at being thrust into a family meeting. When the red roofs and poplars of Wiek came in sight he sank into thoughtfulness, and we walked the last mile in our heavy, sand-caked shoes in almost total silence. The carriage and cart had disappeared long ago, urged on, no doubt, by the Professor’s eagerness to get to Charlotte and away from Mrs. Harvey-Browne, and we were quite near the first cottages when August appeared coming back to fetch us, driving very fast, with Gertrud’s face peering anxiously round the hood. It was only a few yards from there to the open space in the middle of the village in which the two inns are, and Brosy got on his bicycle while I drove with Gertrud, wrapped in all the rugs she could muster.
There are two inns at Wiek, and one is the best. The Professor had gone to each to inquire for his wife, and I found him striding about in front of the one that is the best, and I saw at once by the very hang of his cloak and position of his hat that Charlotte was not there.
‘Gone! gone!’ he cried, before the carriage stopped even. ‘Gone this very day — this very morning, gone at eight, at the self-same hour we wasted over those accursed flounders. Is it not sufficient to make a poor husband become mad? After months of patience? To miss her everywhere by a few miserable hours? I told thee, I begged thee, to bring me on last night — —’
Brosy, now of a quite deadly anxiety to keep out of Nieberlein complications, removed himself and his bicycle with all possible speed. Mrs. Harvey-Browne, watching my arrival from an upper window, waved a genial hand with ill-timed cordiality whenever I looked her way. The landlord and his wife carried in all the rugs that dropped off me unheeded into the mud when I got out, and did not visibly turn a hair at my peaked hood and draggled garments.
‘Where has she gone?’ I asked, as soon as I could get the Professor to keep still and listen. ‘We’ll drive after her the first t
hing to-morrow morning — to-night if you like — —’
‘Drive after her? Last night, when it would have availed, thou wouldest not drive after her. Now, if we follow her, we must swim. She has gone to an island — an island, I tell thee, of which I never till this day heard — an island to reach which requires much wind from a favourable quarter — which without wind is not to be reached at all — and in me thou now beholdest a broken-hearted man.’
THE TENTH DAY
FROM WIEK TO HIDDENSEE
The island to which Charlotte had retired was the island of Hiddensee, a narrow strip of sand to the west of Rügen. Generally so wordy, the guide-book merely mentions it as a place to which it is possible for Rügen tourists to make excursions, and proffers with a certain timidity the information that pleasure may be had there in observing the life and habits of sea-birds.
To this place of sea-birds Charlotte had gone, as she wrote in a letter left with the landlady for me, because during the night she spent at Wiek a panic had seized her lest the Harvey-Brownes should by some chance appear there in their wanderings before I did. ‘I daresay they will not dream of coming round this way at all,’ she continued, ‘but you never know.’
You certainly never know, I agreed, Mrs. Harvey-Browne being at that very moment in the room Charlotte had had the panic in; and I lay awake elaborating a most beautiful plan by which I intended at one stroke to reunite Charlotte and her husband and free myself of both of them.
This plan came into my head during the evening while sitting sadly listening to something extremely like a scolding from the Professor. It seemed to me that I had done all in my power short of inhumanity to the horses to help him, and it was surely not my fault that Charlotte had not happened to stay anywhere long enough for us to catch her up. My intentions were so good. Far preferring to drive alone and stop where and when I pleased — at Vitt for instance, among the walnut trees — I had yet given up all my preferences so that I might help bring man and wife together. If anything, did not this conduct incline towards the noble?
‘Your extreme simplicity amazes me,’ remarked the wise relative when, arrived at this part of my story on my return home, I plaintively asked the above question. ‘Under no circumstances is the meddler ever thanked.’
‘Meddler? Helper, you mean. Apparently you would call every person who helps a meddler.’
‘Armes Kind, proceed with the story.’
Well, the Professor, who had suffered much in the hood between Arkona and Wiek, and was more irritated by his disappointment on getting to Wiek than seemed consistent with the supposed serenity of the truly wise, was telling me for the tenth time that if I had brought him on at once from Glowe as he begged me to do we would not only have escaped the Harvey-Brownes but would have caught his Charlotte by now, seeing that she had not left Wiek for Hiddensee till eight o’clock of this Saturday we had now got to, and I was drooping more and more under these reproaches when, with the suddenness of inspiration, the beautiful plan flooded my dejected brain with such a cheerful light that I lifted my head and laughed in the Professor’s face.
‘Now pray tell me,’ he exclaimed, stopping short in his strides about the room, ‘what thou seest to laugh at in my present condition?’
‘Nothing in your present condition. It’s the glories of your future one that made me laugh.’
‘Surely that is not a subject on which one laughs. Nor will I discuss it with a woman. Nor is this the place or the moment. I refer thee’ — and he swept round his arm as though to sweep me altogether out of sight,— ‘I refer thee to thy pastor.’
‘Dearest Professor, don’t be so dreadfully cross. The future state I was thinking of isn’t further off than to-morrow. Sometimes there’s a cunning about a woman’s wit that you great artists in profundity don’t possess. You can’t, of course, because you are so busy being wise on a large scale. But it’s quite useful to have some cunning when you have to work out petty schemes. And I tell you solemnly that at this moment I am full of it.’
He stopped again in his striding. The good landlady and her one handmaiden were laying the table for supper. Mrs. Harvey-Browne had gone upstairs to put on those evening robes in which, it appeared, she had nightly astonished the ignorant tourists of Rügen. Brosy had not been seen at all since our arrival.
‘What thou art full of is nothing but poking of fun at me, I fear,’ said the Professor; but his kind old face began to smooth out a little.
‘I’m not. I’m only full of artfulness, and anxious to put it all at your disposal. But you mustn’t be quite so cross. Pray, am I no longer then your little and dear cousin?’
‘When thou art good, yes.’
‘Whom to pat is pleasant?’
‘Yes, yes, it is pleasant, but if unreasonableness develops — —’
‘And with whom to sit under one umbrella is a joy?’
‘Surely, surely — but thou hast been of a great obstinacy — —’
‘Well, come and sit here and let us be happy. We’re very comfortable here, aren’t we? Don’t let us think any more about the wet, horrid, obstinate, disappointing day we’ve had. And as for to-morrow, I’ve got a plan.’
The Professor, who had begun to calm, sat down beside me on the sofa. The landlord, deft and noiseless, was giving a finishing touch of roses and fruit and candles to the supper table. He had been a butler in a good family, and was of the most beautiful dignity and solemnity. We were sitting in a very queer old room, used in past years for balls to which the quality drove in from their distant estates and danced through winter nights. There was a gallery for the fiddlers, and the chairs and benches ranged round the walls were still covered with a festive-looking faded red stuff. In the middle of this room the landlord had put a table for us to sup at, and had arranged it in a way I had not seen since leaving home. No one else was in the house but ourselves. No one, hardly, of the tourist class comes to Wiek; and yet, or because of it, this inn of all the inns I had stayed at was in every way quite excellent.
‘Tell me then thy plan, little one,’ said the Professor, settling himself comfortably into the sofa corner.
‘Oh, it’s quite simple. You and I to-morrow morning will go to Hiddensee.’
‘Go! Yes, but how? It is Sunday, and even if it were not, no steamers seem to go to what appears to be a spot of great desolation.’
‘We’ll hire a fishing-smack.’
‘And if there is no wind?’
‘We’ll pray for wind.’
‘And I shall spend an entire day within the cramped limits of a vessel in the company of the English female bishop? I tell thee it is not to be accomplished.’
‘No, no — of course they mustn’t come too.’
‘Come? She will come if she wishes to. Never did I meet a more commanding woman.’
‘No, no, we must circumvent the Harvey-Brownes.’
‘Do thou stay here then, and circumvent. Then shall I proceed in safety on my way.’
‘Oh no,’ I exclaimed in some consternation; the success of my plan, which was by no means to be explained in its entirety to the Professor, wholly depended on my going too. ‘I — I want to see Charlotte again. You know I’m — fond of Charlotte. And besides, long before you got to Hiddensee you would have sunk into another abstraction and begun to fish or something, and you’d come back here in the evening with no Charlotte and only fishes.’
‘Tut, tut — well do I now know what is the object I have in view.’
‘Don’t be so proud. Remember Pilatus.’
‘Tut, tut. Thou art beginning to be like a conscience to me, rebuking and urging onwards the poor old man in bewildering alternations. But I tell thee there is no hope of setting sail without the English madam unless thou remainest here while I secretly slip away.’
‘I won’t remain here. I’m coming too. Leave the arrangements to me, dearest Professor, and you’ll see we’ll secretly slip away together.’
Mrs. Harvey-Browne sweeping in at that moment in im
pressive garments that trailed, our conversation had to end abruptly. The landlord lit the candles; the landlady brought in the soup; Brosy appeared dressed as one dresses in civilised regions. ‘Cheer up,’ I whispered to the Professor as I got up from the sofa; and he cheered up so immediately and so excessively that before I could stop him, before I could realise what he was going to do, he had actually chucked me under the chin.
We spent a constrained evening. The one remark Mrs. Harvey-Browne addressed to me during the hours that followed this chin-chucking was: ‘I am altogether at a loss to understand Frau Nieberlein’s having retired, without her husband, to yet another island. Why this regrettable multiplicity of islands?’
To which I could only answer that I did not know.
The next day being Sunday, a small boy went up into the wooden belfry of the church, which was just opposite my window, and began to toll two bells. The belfry is built separate from the church, and commands a view into the room of the inn that was my bedroom. I could see the small boy walking leisurely from bell to bell, giving each a pull, and then refreshing himself by leaning out and staring hard at me. I got my opera-glasses and examined him with equal care, trying to stare him out of countenance; but though a small he was also a bold boy and not to be abashed, and as I would not give in either we stared at each other steadily between the tolls till nine o’clock, when the bell-ringing ceased, service began, and he reluctantly went down into the church, where I suppose he had to join in the singing of the tune to which in England the hymn beginning ‘All glory, laud, and honour,’ is sung, for it presently floated out into the quiet little market-place, filling it with the feeling of Sunday. While I lingered at the window listening to this, I saw Mrs. Harvey-Browne emerge from the inn door in her Sunday toque, and, crossing the market-place followed by Brosy, go into the church. In an instant I had whisked into my hat, and hurrying downstairs to the Professor who was strolling up and down a rose-bordered path in the garden at the back of the house, informed him breathlessly that the Harvey-Brownes might now be looked upon as circumvented.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 315
