Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  “Hullo,” he said, “ you’re letting the sausages get wet.”

  “You talk, Jellaby,” I resumed, obliged to hold the umbrella on its original position again and forcing myself to speak calmly, “ in great ignorance. What can you know of marriage? Whereas I am very fully qualified to speak, for I have had, as you may not perhaps know, the families scheduled in the Gotha Almanack being unlikely to come within the range of your acquaintance, two wives.”

  I must of course have been mistaken, but I did fancy I heard him say, partly concealing it under his breath, “ God help them,” and naturally greatly startled I said very stiffly, “I beg your pardon?”

  But he only mumbled unintelligibly over his pan, so that no doubt I had done him an injustice; and the sausages being, as he said (not without a note of defiance in his voice), ready, which meant that for some reason or other they had one and all come out of their skins (which lay still pink in limp and lifeless groups about the pan), and were now mere masses of minced meat, he rose up from his crouching attitude, ladled them by means of a spoon into a dish, requested my umbrella’s continued company, and proceeded to make the round of caravans, holding them up at each window in turn while the ladies helped themselves from within.

  “And us?” I said at last, for when he had been to the third he began to return once more to the first— “and us?”

  “Us will get some presently,” he replied — I cannot think grammatically — holding up the already sadly reduced dish at the Ilsa’s window.

  Frau von Eckthum, however, smiled and shook her head, and very luckily the sick fledgling, so it appeared, still turned with loathing from all nourishment. Lord Sigismund was following us round with the potato puree, and in return for being waited on in this manner, a manner that can only be described as hand and foot, Edelgard deigned to give us cups of coffee through her window and Mrs. Menzies-Legh slices of buttered bread through hers.

  Perhaps my friends will have noted the curious insistence and patience with which we drank coffee. I can hear them say, “Why this continuous coffee?” I can hear them also inquire, “Where was the wine, then, that beverage for gentlemen, or the beer, that beverage for the man of muscle and marrow?”

  The answer to that is, Nowhere. None of them drank anything more convivial than water or that strange liquid, seemingly so alert and full of promise, ginger-beer, and to drink alone was not quite what I cared for. There was Frau von Eckthum, for instance, looking on, and she had very early in the tour expressed surprise that anybody should ever want to drink what she called intoxicants.

  “My dear lady,” I had protested — tenderly, though— “you would not have a man drink milk?”

  “Why not?” said she; but even when she is stupid she does not for an instant cease to be attractive.

  On the march I often could make up for abstinences in between by going inside the inns outside which the gritless others lunched on bananas and milk, and privately drinking an honest mug of beer.

  You, my friends, will naturally inquire, “Why privately?”

  Well, I was in the minority, a position that tends to take the kick, at least the open kick, out of a man — in fact, since my wife’s desertion I occupied the entire minority all by myself; then I am a considerate man, and do not like to go against the grain (other people’s grain), remembering how much I feel it when other people go against mine; and finally (and this you will not understand, for I know you do not like her), there was always Frau von Eckthum looking on.

  CHAPTER XI

  THAT night the rain changed its character, threw off the pretence of being only a mist, and poured in loud cracking drops on to the roof of the caravan. It made such a noise that it actually woke me, and lighting a match I discovered that it was three o’clock and that why I had had an unpleasant dream — I thought I was having a bath — was that the wet was coming through the boarding and descending in slow and regular splashings on my head.

  This was melancholy. At three o’clock a man has little initiative, and I was unable to think of putting my pillow at the bottom of the bed where there was no wet, though in the morning, when I found Edelgard had done so, it instantly occurred to me. But after all if I had thought of it one of my ends was bound in any case to get wet, and though my head would have been dry my feet (if doctors are to be believed far more sensitive organs) would have got the splashings. Besides, I was not altogether helpless in the face of this new calamity: after shouting to Edelgard to tell her I was awake and, although presumably indoors, yet somehow in the rain — for indeed it surprised me — and receiving no answer, either because she did not hear, owing to the terrific noise on the roof, or because she would not hear, or because she was asleep, I rose and fetched my sponge bag (a new and roomy one), emptied it of its contents, and placed my head inside it in their stead.

  I submit this was resourcefulness. A sponge bag is but a little thing, and to remember it is also but a little thing, but it is little things such as these that have won the decisive battles of the world and are the finger-posts to the qualities in a man that would win more decisive battles if only he were given a chance. Many a great general, many a great victory, have been lost to our Empire owing to its inability to see the promise contained in some of its majors and its consequent dilatoriness in properly promoting them.

  How the rain rattled. Even through the muffling sponge bag I could hear it. The thought of Jellaby in his watery tent on such a night, gradually, as the hours went on, ceasing to lie and beginning to float, would have amused me if it had not been that poor Lord Sigismund, nolens volens, must needs float too.

  From this thought I somehow got back to my previous ones, and the longer I lay wakeful the more pronouncedly stern did they become. I am as loyal and loving a son of the Fatherland as it will ever in all human probability beget, but what son after a proper period of probation does not like the ring on the finger, the finer raiment, the paternal embrace, and the invitation to dinner? In other words (and quitting parable), what son after having served his time among such husks as majors does not like promotion to the fatted calves of colonels? For some time past I have been expecting it every day, and if it is not soon granted it is possible that my patience may be so changed to anger that I shall refuse to remain at my post and shall send in my resignation; though I must say I should like a hit at the English first.

  Once embarked on these reflections I could not again close my eyes, and lay awake for the remaining hours of the night with as great a din going on as ever I heard in my life. I have described this — the effect of heavy rain when you are in a caravan — in that portion of the narrative dealing with the night on Grip’s Common, so need only repeat that it resembles nothing so much as a sharp pelting with unusually hard stones. Edelgard, if she did indeed sleep, must be of an almost terrifying toughness, for the roof on which this pelting was going on was but a few inches from her head.

  As the cold dawn crept in between the folds of our window-curtains and the noise had in no way abated, I began very seriously to wonder how I could possibly get up and go out and eat breakfast under such conditions. There was my mackintosh, and I also had galoshes, but I could not appear before Frau von Eckthum in the sponge bag, and yet that was the only sensible covering for my head. But what after all could galoshes avail in such a flood? The stubble field, I felt, could be nothing by then but a lake; no fire could live in it; no stove but would be swamped. Were it not better, if such was to be the weather, to return to London, take rooms in some water-tight boarding-house, and frequent the dryness of museums? Of course it would be better. Better? Must not anything in the world be better than that which is the worst?

  But, alas, I had been made to pay beforehand for the Elsa, and had taken the entire responsibility for her and her horse’s safe return and even if I could bring myself to throw away such a sum as I had disbursed one cannot leave a caravan lying about as though it were what our neighbours across the Vosges call a mere bagatelle. It is not a bagatelle. On
the contrary, it is a huge and complicated mechanism that must go with you like the shell on the poor snail’s back wherever you go. There is no escape from it, once you have started, day or night. Where was Panthers by now, Panthers with its kind and helpful little lady? Heaven alone knew, after ail our zigzagging. Find it by myself I certainly could not, for not only had we zigzagged in obedience to the caprices of Mrs. Menzies-Legh, but I had walked most of the time as a man in a dream, heeding nothing particularly except my growing desire to sit down.

  I wondered grimly as six o’clock drew near, the hour at which the rest of the company usually burst into activity, whether there would be many exclamations of healthy and jolly that day. There is a point, I should say, at which a thing or a condition becomes so excessively healthy and jolly that it ceases to be either. I drew the curtain of my bunk together — for a great upheaval over my head warned me that my wife was going to descend and dress — and feigned slumber. Sleep seemed to me such a safe thing. You cannot make a man rise and do what you consider his duty if he will not wake up. The only free man, I reflected with my eyes tightly shut, is the man who is asleep. Pushing my reflection a little further I saw with a slight start that real freedom and independence are only, then, to be found in the unconscious — a race (or sect; call it what you will) of persons untouched by and above the law. And one step further and I saw with another slight start that perfect freedom, perfect liberty, perfect deliverance from trammels, are only to be found in a person who is not merely unconscious but also dead.

  These, of course, as I need not tell my hearers, are metaphysics. I do not often embark on their upsetting billows for I am, principally, a practical man. But on this occasion they were not as fruitless as usual, for the thought of a person dead suggested at once the thought of a person engaged in going through the sickness preliminary to being dead, and a sick man is also to a certain extent free — nobody, that is, can make him get up and go out into the rain and hold his umbrella over Jellaby’s back while he concocts his terrible porridge. I decided that I would slightly exaggerate the feelings of discomfort which I undoubtedly felt, and take a day off in the haven of my bed. Let them see to it that the horse was led; a man in bed cannot lead a horse. Nor would it even be an exaggeration, for one who has been wakeful half the night cannot be said to be in normal health. Besides, if you come to that, who is in normal health? I should say no one. Certainly hardly any one. And if you appeal to youth as an instance, what could be younger and yet more convulsed with apparent torment than the newly born infant? Hardly any one, I maintain, is well without stopping during a single whole day. One forgets, by means of the anodynes of work or society or other excitement; but cut off a person’s means of doing anything or seeing any one and he will soon find out that at least his head is aching.

  When, therefore, Edelgard had reached the stage of tidying the caravan, arranging my clothes, and emptying the water out of the window preparatory to my dressing, I put the curtains aside and beckoned to her and made her understand by dint of much shouting (for the rain still pelted on the roof) that I was feeling very weak and could not get up.

  She looked at me anxiously, and pushing up the sponge bag — at which she stared rather stupidly — laid her hand on my forehead. I thought her hand seemed hot, and hoped we were not both going to be ill at the same time. Then she felt my pulse. Then she looked down at me with a worried expression and said — I could not hear it, but knew the protesting shape her mouth assumed: “But Otto”

  I just shook my head and closed my eyes. You cannot make a man open his eyes. Shut them, and you shut out the whole worrying, hurrying world, and enter into a calm cave of peace from which, so long as you keep them shut no one can possibly pull you. I felt she stood there awhile longer looking down at me before putting on her cloak and preparing to face the elements; then the door was unbolted, a gust of wet air came in, the caravan gave a lurch, and Edelgard had jumped into the stubble.

  Only for a short time was I able to reflect on her growing agility, and how four days back she could no more jump into stubble or anything else than can other German ladies of good family, and how the costume she had bought in Berlin and which had not fitted her not only without a wrinkle but also with difficulty, seemed gradually to be turning into a misfit, to be widening, to be loosening, and those parts of it which had before been smooth were changing every day into a greater bagginess — I was unable, I say, to think about these things because, worn out, I at last fell asleep.

  How long I slept I do not know, but I was very roughly awakened by violent tossings and heavings, and looking hastily through my curtains saw a wet hedge moving past the window.

  So we were on the march.

  I lay back on my pillow and wondered who was leading my horse. They might at least have brought me some breakfast. Also the motion was extremely disagreeable, and likely to give me a headache. But presently, after a dizzy swoop round, a pause and much talking showed me we had come to a gate, and I understood that we had been getting over the stubble and were now about to rejoin the road. Once on that the motion was not unbearable — not nearly so unbearable, I said to myself, as tramping in the rain; but I could not help thinking it very strange that none of them had thought to give me breakfast, and in my wife the omission was more than strange, it was positively illegal. If love did not bring her to my bedside with hot coffee and perhaps a couple of (lightly boiled) eggs, why did not duty? A fasting man does not mind which brings her, so long as one of them does.

  My impulse was to ring the bell angrily, but it died away on my recollecting that there was no bell. The rain, I could see, had now lightened and thinned into a drizzle, and I could hear cheerful talk going on between some persons evidently walking just outside. One voice seemed to be Jellaby’s, but how could it be he who was cheerful after the night he must have had? And the other was a woman’s — no doubt, I thought bitterly, Edelgard’s, who, warmed herself and invigorated by a proper morning meal, cared nothing that her husband should be lying there within a stone’s throw like a cold, neglected tomb.

  Presently, instead of the hedge, the walls and gates of gardens passed the window, and then came houses, singly at first, but soon joining on to each other in an uninterrupted string, and raising myself on my elbow and putting two and two together, I decided that this must be Wadhurst.

  It was. To my surprise about the middle of the village the caravan stopped, and raising myself once more on my elbow I was forced immediately to sink back again, for I encountered a row of eager faces pressed against the pane with eyes rudely staring at the contents of the caravan, which, of course, included myself as soon as I came into view from between the curtains of the berth.

  This was very disagreeable. Again I instinctively and frantically sought the bell that was not there. How long was I to be left thus in the street of a village with my window-curtains unclosed and the entire population looking in? I could not get out and close them myself, for I am staunch to the night attire, abruptly terminating, that is still, thank heaven, characteristic during the hours of darkness of every honest German gentleman: in other words, I do not dress myself, as the English do, in a coat and trousers in order to go to bed. But on this occasion I wished that I did, for then I could have leaped out of my berth and drawn the curtains in an instant myself, and the German attire allows no margin for the leaping out of berths. As it was, all I could do was to lie there holding the berth-curtains carefully together until such time as it should please my dear wife to honour me with a visit.

  This she did after, I should say, at least half an hour had passed, with the completely composed face of one who has no reproaches to make herself, and a cup of weak tea in one hand and a small slice of dry toast on a plate in the other, though she knows I never touch tea and that it is absurd to offer a large-framed, fine man one piece of toast with no butter on it for his breakfast.

  “What are we stopping for?” I at once asked on her appearing.

  “For breakfast,”
said she.

  “What?”

  “We are having it in the inn to-day because of the wet. It is so nice, Otto. Table-napkins and everything. And flowers in the middle. And nothing to wash up afterward. What a pity you can’t be there! Are you better?”

  “Better? “ I repeated, with a note of justified wrath in my voice, for the thought of the others all enjoying themselves, sitting at a good meal on proper chairs in a room out of the reach of fresh air, naturally upset me. Why had they not told me? Why, in the name of all that was dutiful, had she not told me?

  “I thought you were asleep,” said she when I inquired what grounds she had for the omission.

  “So I was, but that”

  “And I know you don’t like being disturbed when you are,” said she, lamely as I considered, for naturally it depends on what one is disturbed for — of course I would have got up if I had known.

  “I will not drink such stuff,” I said, pushing the cup away. “Why should I live on tepid water and butterless toast? ‘‘

  “But — didn’t you say you were ill?” she asked, pretending to be surprised. “I thought when one is ill.”

  “Kindly draw those curtains,” I said, for the crowd was straining every nerve to see and hear, “and remove this stuff. You had better,” I added, when the faces had been shut out, “ return to your own breakfast. Do not trouble about me. Leave me here to be ill or not. It does not matter. You are my wife, and bound by law to love me, but I will make no demands on you. Leave me here alone, and return to your breakfast.”

  “But, Otto, I couldn’t stay in here with you before. The poor horse would never”

  “I know, I know. Put the horse before your husband. Put anything and anybody before your husband. Leave him here alone. Do not trouble. Go back to your own, no doubt, excellent breakfast.”

  “But Otto, why are you so cross?”

  “Cross? When a man is ill and neglected, if he dare say a word he is cross. Take this stuff away. Go back to your breakfast. I, at least, am considerate, and do not desire your omelettes and other luxuries to become cold.”