Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated)

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

  “No,” said he.

  “Another point, then,” said I, with the jesting manner one uses to gild unpalatable truth, “on which we Germans are ahead.”

  Jellaby pushed his wisp of hair back and mopped his forehead. From my position at my horse’s head I had called to him as he was walking quickly past me, for I perceived he had my poor gentle little friend in tow and was once again inflicting his society on her. He could not, however, refuse to linger on my addressing him, and I took care to ask him so many questions about Canterbury and its ecclesiastical meaning that Frau von Eckthum was able to have a little rest.

  A faint flush showed she understood and appreciated. No longer obliged to exert herself conversationally, as I had observed she was doing when they passed, she dropped into her usual calm and merely listened attentively to all I had to say. But we had hardly begun before Mrs. Menzies-Legh, who was in front, happened to look round, and seeing us immediately added her company to what was already more than company enough, and put a stop to anything approaching real conversation by herself holding forth. No one wanted to hear her; least of all myself, to whom she chiefly addressed her remarks. The others, indeed, were able to presently slip away, which they did to the rear of our column, I think, for I did not see them again; but I, forced to lead my horse, was helpless.

  I leave it to you, my friends, to decide what strictures should be passed on such persistency. I cannot help feeling that it was greatly to my credit that I managed to keep within bounds of politeness under such circumstances. One thing, however, is eternally sure: the more a lady pursues, the more a gentleman withdraws, and accordingly those ladies who throw feminine decorum to the winds only defeat their own ends.

  I said this — slightly veiled — to Mrs. Menzies-Legh that morning, taking an opportunity her restless and leaping conversation offered to administer the little lesson. No veils, however, were thin enough for her to see through, and instead of becoming red and startled she looked at me through her eyelashes with an air of pretended innocence and said, “But, Baron dear, what is feminine decorum?”

  As though feminine decorum or modesty or virtue were things that could be explained in any words decent enough to fit them for a gentleman to use to a lady!

  That was a tiring day. Canterbury is a tiring place; at least it would be if you let it. I did not, however, let it tire me. And such a hot place! It is a steaming town with the sun beating down on it, and full of buildings and antiquities one is told one must be longing to look at. After a day’s march in the dust it is not antiquities one longs for, and I watched with some contempt the same hypocritical attitude take possession of the party that had distinguished it at Bodiam.

  We arrived there about four, and Menzies-Legh pitched on an exceedingly ugly camping ground on a slope just outside the city, with villa residences so near that their inhabitants could observe us, if they had telescopes, from their windows. It was a field from which the corn had been cut, and the hard straw remaining hurt one’s weary feet; nor had it any advantages that I could see, though the others spoke of the view. This, if you please, consisted of the roofs of the houses in the town and a cathedral rising from their midst in a network of scaffolding. I pointed this out to them as they stood staring, but Menzies-Legh was quite unshaken in his determination to stay just on that spot, in spite of there being a railway line running along the bottom of the field and a station with all its noises within a stone’s throw. I thought it odd to have come to a town at all, for till then the party had been unanimous in its desire to avoid even villages, but on my remarking on this they murmured something about the cathedral, as though the building below, or rather the mass of scaffolding, were enough to excuse the most inconsistent conduct.

  The heat of that shadeless stubblefield was indescribable. It did not possess a tree. At the bottom was, as I have said, the railway. At the top, just above where we were, a market garden, a thing of vegetables, whose aim is to have as few shadows as possible. Languidly the party made preparations for settling down. Languidly and after a long delay Menzies-Legh dragged out the stew-pot. In spite of the heat I was as hungry as a man ought to be who, at four o’clock, has not yet dined, and as I watched the drooping caravaners listlessly preparing the potatoes and cabbages and boiled bacon that I now knew so very thoroughly, this having been our meal (except once or twice when we had chickens, or, in extremity, underdone sausages) since the beginning of the tour, a brilliant thought illuminated the gloom of my brain: Why not slip away unnoticed, and down in the town cause myself to be served in the dining-room of an hotel with freshly roasted meat and generous wine?

  Very cautiously I raised myself from the hard hot stubble.

  Casually I glanced at the view.

  With an air of preoccupation I went behind the Elsa, the first move toward freedom, as though to fetch some accessory of the meal from our larder.

  “Do you want anything. Otto?” asked my officious and tactless wife trotting after me — a thing she never does when I do want anything.

  Naturally I was a little snappish: but then if she had left me alone would I have snapped? Wives are great forcers of faults upon a man. So I snapped; and she departed, chidden.

  Looking about me, up at the sky, and round the horizon, as though intent on thoughts of weather, I inconspicuously edged toward the market garden and the gate. With a man in the garden searching for slugs I spent a moment or two conversing, and then, a backward glance having assured me the caravaners were still drooping in listless preparation round the stewpot, I sauntered, humming, through the gate.

  Immediately I ran into Jellaby, who, a bucket of water in each hand, was panting along the road.

  “Hullo, Baron,” he gasped; “enjoying yourself?”

  “I am going,” said I with much presence of mind combined with the seriousness that repudiates any idea of enjoyment, “to buy some matches. Ours are running short.”

  “Oh,” said he, plumping down his buckets and fumbling among the folds of his flappy clothes, “I can lend you some. Here you are.”

  And he held out a box.

  “Jellaby,” said I, “what is one box to a whole — shall we call it household? My wife requires many matches. She is constantly striking them. It is her husband’s duty to see that she has enough. Keep yours. And farewell.”

  And walking at a pace that prohibited pursuit by a man with buckets I left him.

  I have had so many dinners in dining-rooms since that one at Canterbury, ordered repasts without grease and that kept hot, that the wonder of it has lost in my memory much of its first brightness. You, my hearers, who dine as I now do regularly and well, would hardly if I could still describe be able to enter into my feelings. I found a cool room in an inn with the pleasantly un-English name Fleur de Lys, and a sympathetic waiter who fell in at once with my views about fresh air and shut all the windows. I had a newspaper, and I sipped a cognac while the meal was preparing. I ordered everything on the list except bacon, chickens, and sausages. I also would not eat potatoes, and declined, as a vegetable, cabbage. I drank much wine, full-bodied and generous, but I refused after dinner to drink coffee.

  Filled and hallowed, once more in thorough tune with myself and life and ready to take any further experiences the day might bring with unruffled geniality, I left toward dusk the temple that had thus blest me (after debating within myself whether it would not be prudent having regard to the future in further lanes and fields to sup first, and regretfully realizing that I could not), and leisurely made my way across the street to that other temple, whose bells announced the inevitable service.

  My decision to peep cautiously in and see whether the parson were alone before definitely committing myself to a pew was unnecessary, first because there were no pews but a mighty emptiness, and secondly because, along the dusk of this emptiness, groups of persons made their way to a vast flight of steps dividing the place into two and leading up to a region, into which they disappeared, of glimmering lights. Too clever now b
y far to go where there were lights and praying might be demanded of me, I wandered on tiptoe among the gathering shadows at the other end. It grew quickly darker among the towering pillars and dim, painted windows. The bells left off; the organ began to rumble about; and a distant voice, with a family likeness to that of Raggett, sing-songed something long. It had no ups and downs, no breaks; it was a drawn out thread of sound, thin and sweet like a trickle of liquid sugar. Then many voices took up the singsong, broadening it out from a thread to a band. Then came the single trickle again; and so they went on alternately, while I, hidden among the pillars, listened very well pleased.

  When the organ began, and an endless singing and repeating of the same tune, I cautiously advanced nearer in search of something to sit on. To the right of the steps I found what I wanted, an empty space in itself as big as our biggest church in Storchwerder but small in comparison to the rest, with immense windows full of the painted glass that becomes so confused and meaningless in the dusk, no lights, and here and there a chair or two.

  I sat down at the foot of a huge pillar in this dark and unobserved corner, while the organ above me and the singing voices filled the spaces of the roof with their slumber-inciting repetitions. Presently, as a tired and comfortable man would do, I fell asleep, and was only wakened by the subdued murmur just round the edge of the pillar of two people talking, and I instantly, almost before my eyes opened, recognized that it was Frau von Eckthum and Jellaby.

  They were apparently sitting on some chairs I had noticed as I came round to the greater obscurity of mine. They were so close that it was practically into my ear that they spoke. The singing was finished, and I fancy the congregation had dispersed, for the organ was playing softly and the glimmer of lights had gone out.

  My ears are as quick as any man’s, and I was greatly amused at the situation. “‘Now,” thought I, “I shall hear what sort of stuff Jellaby inflicts ‘on patient and inexperienced ladies.’”

  It also occurred to me that it would be interesting to hear how she talked to him, and so discover whether the libel were true that except in my presence she chatted and was jocular. Jocular? Can anything be less what one wishes in the woman one admires? Of course she was not, and Mrs. Menzies-Legh was only (very naturally) jealous. I therefore sat quite still, and became extremely alert and wide awake.

  They were certainly not laughing. That, however, may have been the cathedral — not that men of Jellaby’s stamp have even a rudimentary sense of reverence and decency — but anyhow part of the libel was disposed of, for the gentle lady was serious. She was, it is true, a good deal more fluent than I knew her, but she seemed moved by some strong emotion which no doubt accounted for that. What I could not account for was her displaying emotion to a person like Jellaby. The first thing, for instance, that I heard her say was, “It is all my fault.” And her voice vibrated with penitence.

  “Oh, but it wasn’t, you know,” said Jellaby.

  “Yes, it was. And I feel I ought to take a double share of the burden, and instead I don’t take any.”

  Burden? What burden could the tender lady possibly have to bear that would not gladly be borne for her by many a masculine shoulder, including mine? I was about to put my head round the pillar’s edge to assure her of this when she began to speak again.

  “I did try — at first,” she said. “But I — I simply cant. So I shift it on to Di.”

  Di, my friends, is Mrs. Menzies-Legh, christened with prophetic paganism Diana.

  “An extremely sensible thing to do,” thought I, remembering the wiriness of Di.

  “She is very wonderful,” said Jellaby.

  “Yes,” I silently agreed, “most.”

  “She is an angel,” said her (I suppose naturally) partial sister, whose sentiments were besides, no doubt, at that moment coloured by the surroundings in which she found herself. But I could not help being entertained by this example of lovable blindness.

  “It is so sweetly good of her to keep him off us,” continued Frau von Eckthum. “She does it so kindly. So unselfishly. What can it be like to have such a husband? ‘‘

  “Ah,” thought I, a light illuminating my mind, “ they are talking of our friend John. Naturally his charming sister-in-law cannot bear him. Nor should she be called upon to do so. To bear her husband is solely a wife’s affair.”

  “What can it be like?” repeated Frau von Eckthum, in the voice of one vainly trying to realize something beyond words bad.

  “I can’t think,” said Jellaby, basely, I thought, for he professed much outward friendship for John.

  “Of course she is amused — in a way,” continued Frau von Eckthum, “but that sort of amusement soon palls, doesn’t it?”

  “Extraordinarily soon,” said Jellaby.

  “Before it has so much as begun,” thought I, recollecting the man’s sallow, solemn visage. But then it is no part of a wife’s functions to be amused.

  “And she is really sorry for him,” said Frau von Eckthum.

  “Indeed?” thought I, entertained by the patronizing attitude implied.

  “She says,” continued her gentle sister, “that his loneliness, whether he knows it or not, makes her ache,”

  Well, I did not mind Mrs. Menzies-Legh aching, so thought nothing definite there.

  “She doesn’t want him to notice we get out of his way — she is afraid he might be hurt. Do you think he would be?”

  “No,” said Jellaby. “ Pure leather.”

  I agreed, though once again surprised at Jellaby’s baseness.

  “I can’t think,” continued Frau von Eckthum— “I suppose it’s because I am so bad — but I really cannot think how she can endure him, and in such doses.”

  “He is undoubtedly,” said Jellaby, “a very grievous bounder.”

  “What,” I wondered, “is a bounder?” But I applauded Jellaby’s sentiment nevertheless, for there was no mistaking its nature, though his baseness was really amazing.

  “It must be because Di has such a vivid imagination,” continued her sister musingly. “She sees what he might have been, what he probably was meant to be.”

  “And what he would still be,” put in Jellaby, “if only he would allow his nice wife to influence him a little.”

  “But John,” thought I, “in that is right. Let us be fair and admit his good sides. A wife should never, under any circumstances, be allowed”

  Then, suddenly struck by the point of view, by the feminine idea (Socialists have the minds of women) of a man’s being restored to what he was primarily intended to be when he issued newly-made (as poets and parsons would say) from the hands of his Maker through the manipulations of Mrs. Menzies-Legh, my sense of humour played me a nasty trick (for I would have liked to have heard more) and I found myself bursting into a loud chuckle.

  “What’s that?” exclaimed Jellaby, jumping up.

  He soon saw what it was, for I immediately put my head round the edge of the pillar.

  They both stared at me in a strange alarm.

  “Pray do not suppose,” I said, smiling reassuringly, “that I am a ghost.”

  They stared without a word.

  “You look as though I might be.”

  They went on staring.

  “I could not help, as I sat here, hearing what you were saying.”

  They stared as speechless as though they had been caught killing somebody.

  “I really am not a spirit,” said I, getting up. “Look — do I look like one?”

  And striking a match I playfully passed it backward and forward across my features.

  But its light at the same time showed me a flush of the most attractive and vivid crimson on Frau von Eckthum’s face, colouring it from her hair to her throat. She looked so beautiful like that, she who was ordinarily white, that immediately lighting another I gazed at her in undisguised admiration.

  “Pardon me,” I said, holding it very near her while her eyes, fixed on mine, still seemed full of superstitious terror,
“ pardon me, but I must as a man and a judge look at you.”

  Jellaby, however, unforgivably ill-bred as ever, knocked the match out of my hand and stamped on it. “ Look here, Baron,” he said with unusual heat, “I am very sorry — as sorry as you like, but you really mustn’t hold matches in front of somebody’s face.”

  ‘‘Why sorry, Jellaby?” I inquired mildly, for I was not going to have a scene. “I do not mind about the match. I have more.”

  “Sorry, of course, that you should have heard”

  “Every word, Jellaby,” said I.

  “I tell you I’m frightfully sorry — I can’t tell you how sorry”

  “You may be assured,” said I, “that I will be discreet,”

  He stared, with a face of stupid surprise.

  “Discreet?’’ said he.

  “Discreet, Jellaby. And it may be a relief to you to know,” I continued, “that I heartily endorse your opinion.”

  Jellaby’s mouth dropped open.

  “Every word of it.”

  Jellaby’s mouth remained open.

  “Even the word bounder, which I did not understand but which, I gathered from your previous remarks, is a very suitable expression.”

  Jellaby’s mouth remained open.

  I waited a moment, then seeing that it would not shut and that I had really apparently shattered their nerves beyond readjustment by so suddenly popping round on them in that ghostly place, I thought it best to change the subject, promising myself to return to it another time.

  So I picked up my hat and stick from the chair I had vacated — Jellaby peered round the pillar at this piece of furniture with his unshut mouth still denoting unaccountable shock — bowed, and offered my arm to Frau von Eckthum.