Book Read Free

Three Men on the Bummel

Page 12

by Jerome K. Jerome


  CHAPTER XI

  Black Forest House: and the sociability therein--Its perfume--Georgepositively declines to remain in bed after four o'clock in themorning--The road one cannot miss--My peculiar extra instinct--Anungrateful party--Harris as a scientist--His cheery confidence--Thevillage: where it was, and where it ought to have been--George: hisplan--We promenade a la Francais--The German coachman asleep andawake--The man who spreads the English language abroad.

  There was one night when, tired out and far from town or village, weslept in a Black Forest farmhouse. The great charm about the BlackForest house is its sociability. The cows are in the next room, thehorses are upstairs, the geese and ducks are in the kitchen, while thepigs, the children, and the chickens live all over the place.

  You are dressing, when you hear a grunt behind you.

  "Good-morning! Don't happen to have any potato peelings in here? No, Isee you haven't; good-bye."

  Next there is a cackle, and you see the neck of an old hen stretchedround the corner.

  "Fine morning, isn't it? You don't mind my bringing this worm of mine inhere, do you? It is so difficult in this house to find a room where onecan enjoy one's food with any quietness. From a chicken I have alwaysbeen a slow eater, and when a dozen--there, I thought they wouldn't leaveme alone. Now they'll all want a bit. You don't mind my getting on thebed, do you? Perhaps here they won't notice me."

  While you are dressing various shock heads peer in at the door; theyevidently regard the room as a temporary menagerie. You cannot tellwhether the heads belong to boys or girls; you can only hope they are allmale. It is of no use shutting the door, because there is nothing tofasten it by, and the moment you are gone they push it open again. Youbreakfast as the Prodigal Son is generally represented feeding: a pig ortwo drop in to keep you company; a party of elderly geese criticise youfrom the door; you gather from their whispers, added to their shockedexpression, that they are talking scandal about you. Maybe a cow willcondescend to give a glance in.

  This Noah's Ark arrangement it is, I suppose, that gives to the BlackForest home its distinctive scent. It is not a scent you can liken toany one thing. It is as if you took roses and Limburger cheese and hairoil, some heather and onions, peaches and soapsuds, together with a dashof sea air and a corpse, and mixed them up together. You cannot defineany particular odour, but you feel they are all there--all the odoursthat the world has yet discovered. People who live in these houses arefond of this mixture. They do not open the window and lose any of it;they keep it carefully bottled up. If you want any other scent, you cango outside and smell the wood violets and the pines; inside there is thehouse; and after a while, I am told, you get used to it, so that you missit, and are unable to go to sleep in any other atmosphere.

  We had a long walk before us the next day, and it was our desire,therefore, to get up early, even so early as six o'clock, if that couldbe managed without disturbing the whole household. We put it to ourhostess whether she thought this could be done. She said she thought itcould. She might not be about herself at that time; it was her morningfor going into the town, some eight miles off, and she rarely got backmuch before seven; but, possibly, her husband or one of the boys would bereturning home to lunch about that hour. Anyhow, somebody should be sentback to wake us and get our breakfast.

  As it turned out, we did not need any waking. We got up at four, all byourselves. We got up at four in order to get away from the noise and thedin that was making our heads ache. What time the Black Forest peasantrises in the summer time I am unable to say; to us they appeared to begetting up all night. And the first thing the Black Forester does whenhe gets up is to put on a pair of stout boots with wooden soles, and takea constitutional round the house. Until he has been three times up anddown the stairs, he does not feel he is up. Once fully awake himself,the next thing he does is to go upstairs to the stables, and wake up ahorse. (The Black Forest house being built generally on the side of asteep hill, the ground floor is at the top, and the hay-loft at thebottom.) Then the horse, it would seem, must also have itsconstitutional round the house; and this seen to, the man goes downstairsinto the kitchen and begins to chop wood, and when he has choppedsufficient wood he feels pleased with himself and begins to sing. Allthings considered, we came to the conclusion we could not do better thanfollow the excellent example set us. Even George was quite eager to getup that morning.

  We had a frugal breakfast at half-past four, and started away at five.Our road lay over a mountain, and from enquiries made in the village itappeared to be one of those roads you cannot possibly miss. I supposeeverybody knows this sort of road. Generally, it leads you back to whereyou started from; and when it doesn't, you wish it did, so that at allevents you might know where you were. I foresaw evil from the veryfirst, and before we had accomplished a couple of miles we came up withit. The road divided into three. A worm-eaten sign-post indicated thatthe path to the left led to a place that we had never heard of--that wason no map. Its other arm, pointing out the direction of the middle road,had disappeared. The road to the right, so we all agreed, clearly ledback again to the village.

  "The old man said distinctly," so Harris reminded us, "keep straight onround the hill."

  "Which hill?" George asked, pertinently.

  We were confronted by half a dozen, some of them big, some of themlittle.

  "He told us," continued Harris, "that we should come to a wood."

  "I see no reason to doubt him," commented George, "whichever road wetake."

  As a matter of fact, a dense wood covered every hill.

  "And he said," murmured Harris, "that we should reach the top in about anhour and a half."

  "There it is," said George, "that I begin to disbelieve him."

  "Well, what shall we do?" said Harris.

  Now I happen to possess the bump of locality. It is not a virtue; I makeno boast of it. It is merely an animal instinct that I cannot help. Thatthings occasionally get in my way--mountains, precipices, rivers, andsuch like obstructions--is no fault of mine. My instinct is correctenough; it is the earth that is wrong. I led them by the middle road.That the middle road had not character enough to continue for any quarterof a mile in the same direction; that after three miles up and down hillit ended abruptly in a wasps' nest, was not a thing that should have beenlaid to my door. If the middle road had gone in the direction it oughtto have done, it would have taken us to where we wanted to go, of that Iam convinced.

  Even as it was, I would have continued to use this gift of mine todiscover a fresh way had a proper spirit been displayed towards me. ButI am not an angel--I admit this frankly,--and I decline to exert myselffor the ungrateful and the ribald. Besides, I doubt if George and Harriswould have followed me further in any event. Therefore it was that Iwashed my hands of the whole affair, and that Harris entered upon thevacancy.

  "Well," said Harris. "I suppose you are satisfied with what you havedone?"

  "I am quite satisfied," I replied from the heap of stones where I wassitting. "So far, I have brought you with safety. I would continue tolead you further, but no artist can work without encouragement. Youappear dissatisfied with me because you do not know where you are. Forall you know, you may be just where you want to be. But I say nothing asto that; I expect no thanks. Go your own way; I have done with youboth."

  I spoke, perhaps, with bitterness, but I could not help it. Not a wordof kindness had I had all the weary way.

  "Do not misunderstand us," said Harris; "both George and myself feel thatwithout your assistance we should never be where we now are. For that wegive you every credit. But instinct is liable to error. What I proposeto do is to substitute for it Science, which is exact. Now, where's thesun?"

  "Don't you think," said George, "that if we made our way back to thevillage, and hired a boy for a mark to guide us, it would save time inthe end?"

  "It would be wasting hours," said Harris, with decision. "You leave thisto me. I
have been reading about this thing, and it has interested me."He took out his watch, and began turning himself round and round.

  "It's as simple as A B C," he continued. "You point the short hand atthe sun, then you bisect the segment between the short hand and thetwelve, and thus you get the north."

  He worried up and down for a while, then he fixed it.

  "Now I've got it," he said; "that's the north, where that wasps' nest is.Now give me the map."

  We handed it to him, and seating himself facing the wasps, he examinedit.

  "Todtmoos from here," he said, "is south by south-west."

  "How do you mean, from here?" asked George.

  "Why, from here, where we are," returned Harris.

  "But where are we?" said George.

  This worried Harris for a time, but at length he cheered up.

  "It doesn't matter where we are," he said. "Wherever we are, Todtmoos issouth by south-west. Come on, we are only wasting time."

  "I don't quite see how you make it out," said George, as he rose andshouldered his knapsack; "but I suppose it doesn't matter. We are outfor our health, and it's all pretty!"

  "We shall be all right," said Harris, with cheery confidence. "We shallbe in at Todtmoos before ten, don't you worry. And at Todtmoos we willhave something to eat."

  He said that he, himself, fancied a beefsteak, followed by an omelette.George said that, personally, he intended to keep his mind off thesubject until he saw Todtmoos.

  We walked for half an hour, then emerging upon an opening, we saw belowus, about two miles away, the village through which we had passed thatmorning. It had a quaint church with an outside staircase, a somewhatunusual arrangement.

  The sight of it made me sad. We had been walking hard for three hoursand a half, and had accomplished, apparently, about four miles. ButHarris was delighted.

  "Now, at last," said Harris, "we know where we are."

  "I thought you said it didn't matter," George reminded him.

  "No more it does, practically," replied Harris, "but it is just as wellto be certain. Now I feel more confidence in myself."

  "I'm not so sure about that being an advantage," muttered George. But Ido not think Harris heard him.

  "We are now," continued Harris, "east of the sun, and Todtmoos is south-west of where we are. So that if--"

  He broke off. "By-the-by," he said, "do you remember whether I said thebisecting line of that segment pointed to the north or to the south?"

  "You said it pointed to the north," replied George.

  "Are you positive?" persisted Harris.

  "Positive," answered George "but don't let that influence yourcalculations. In all probability you were wrong."

  Harris thought for a while; then his brow cleared.

  "That's all right," he said; "of course, it's the north. It must be thenorth. How could it be the south? Now we must make for the west. Comeon."

  "I am quite willing to make for the west," said George; "any point of thecompass is the same to me. I only wish to remark that, at the presentmoment, we are going dead east."

  "No we are not," returned Harris; "we are going west."

  "We are going east, I tell you," said George.

  "I wish you wouldn't keep saying that," said Harris, "you confuse me."

  "I don't mind if I do," returned George; "I would rather do that than gowrong. I tell you we are going dead east."

  "What nonsense!" retorted Harris; "there's the sun."

  "I can see the sun," answered George, "quite distinctly. It may be whereit ought to be, according to you and Science, or it may not. All I knowis, that when we were down in the village, that particular hill with thatparticular lump of rock upon it was due north of us. At the presentmoment we are facing due east."

  "You are quite right," said Harris; "I forgot for the moment that we hadturned round."

  "I should get into the habit of making a note of it, if I were you,"grumbled George; "it's a manoeuvre that will probably occur again morethan once."

  We faced about, and walked in the other direction. At the end of fortyminutes' climbing we again emerged upon an opening, and again the villagelay just under our feet. On this occasion it was south of us.

  "This is very extraordinary," said Harris.

  "I see nothing remarkable about it," said George. "If you walk steadilyround a village it is only natural that now and then you get a glimpse ofit. Myself, I am glad to see it. It proves to me that we are notutterly lost."

  "It ought to be the other side of us," said Harris.

  "It will be in another hour or so," said George, "if we keep on."

  I said little myself; I was vexed with both of them; but I was glad tonotice George evidently growing cross with Harris. It was absurd ofHarris to fancy he could find the way by the sun.

  "I wish I knew," said Harris, thoughtfully, "for certain whether thatbisecting line points to the north or to the south."

  "I should make up my mind about it," said George; "it's an importantpoint."

  "It's impossible it can be the north," said Harris, "and I'll tell youwhy."

  "You needn't trouble," said George; "I am quite prepared to believe itisn't."

  "You said just now it was," said Harris, reproachfully.

  "I said nothing of the sort," retorted George. "I said you said it was--avery different thing. If you think it isn't, let's go the other way.It'll be a change, at all events."

  So Harris worked things out according to the contrary calculation, andagain we plunged into the wood; and again after half an hour's stiffclimbing we came in view of that same village. True, we were a littlehigher, and this time it lay between us and the sun.

  "I think," said George, as he stood looking down at it, "this is the bestview we've had of it, as yet. There is only one other point from whichwe can see it. After that, I propose we go down into it and get somerest."

  "I don't believe it's the same village," said Harris; "it can't be."

  "There's no mistaking that church," said George. "But maybe it is a caseon all fours with that Prague statue. Possibly, the authoritieshereabout have had made some life-sized models of that village, and havestuck them about the Forest to see where the thing would look best.Anyhow, which way do we go now?"

  "I don't know," said Harris, "and I don't care. I have done my best;you've done nothing but grumble, and confuse me."

  "I may have been critical," admitted George "but look at the thing frommy point of view. One of you says he's got an instinct, and leads me toa wasps' nest in the middle of a wood."

  "I can't help wasps building in a wood," I replied.

  "I don't say you can," answered George. "I am not arguing; I am merelystating incontrovertible facts. The other one, who leads me up and downhill for hours on scientific principles, doesn't know the north from thesouth, and is never quite sure whether he's turned round or whether hehasn't. Personally, I profess to no instincts beyond the ordinary, noram I a scientist. But two fields off I can see a man. I am going tooffer him the worth of the hay he is cutting, which I estimate at onemark fifty pfennig, to leave his work, and lead me to within sight ofTodtmoos. If you two fellows like to follow, you can. If not, you canstart another system and work it out by yourselves."

  George's plan lacked both originality and aplomb, but at the moment itappealed to us. Fortunately, we had worked round to a very shortdistance away from the spot where we had originally gone wrong; with theresult that, aided by the gentleman of the scythe, we recovered the road,and reached Todtmoos four hours later than we had calculated to reach it,with an appetite that took forty-five minutes' steady work in silence toabate.

  From Todtmoos we had intended to walk down to the Rhine; but havingregard to our extra exertions of the morning, we decided to promenade ina carriage, as the French would say: and for this purpose hired apicturesque-looking vehicle, drawn by a horse that I should have calledbarrel-bodied but for contrast with his driver, in comparison with whom
he was angular. In Germany every vehicle is arranged for a pair ofhorses, but drawn generally by one. This gives to the equipage a lop-sided appearance, according to our notions, but it is held here toindicate style. The idea to be conveyed is that you usually drive a pairof horses, but that for the moment you have mislaid the other one. TheGerman driver is not what we should call a first-class whip. He is athis best when he is asleep. Then, at all events, he is harmless; and thehorse being, generally speaking, intelligent and experienced, progressunder these conditions is comparatively safe. If in Germany they couldonly train the horse to collect the money at the end of the journey,there would be no need for a coachman at all. This would be a distinctrelief to the passenger, for when the German coachman is awake and notcracking his whip he is generally occupied in getting himself intotrouble or out of it. He is better at the former. Once I recollectdriving down a steep Black Forest hill with a couple of ladies. It wasone of those roads winding corkscrew-wise down the slope. The hill roseat an angle of seventy-five on the off-side, and fell away at an angle ofseventy-five on the near-side. We were proceeding very comfortably, thedriver, we were happy to notice, with his eyes shut, when suddenlysomething, a bad dream or indigestion, awoke him. He seized the reins,and, by an adroit movement, pulled the near-side horse over the edge,where it clung, half supported by the traces. Our driver did not appearin the least annoyed or surprised; both horses, I also, noticed, seemedequally used to the situation. We got out, and he got down. He tookfrom under the seat a huge clasp-knife, evidently kept there for thepurpose, and deftly cut the traces. The horse, thus released, rolledover and over until he struck the road again some fifty feet below. Therehe regained his feet and stood waiting for us. We re-entered thecarriage and descended with the single horse until we came to him. There,with the help of some bits of string, our driver harnessed him again, andwe continued on our way. What impressed me was the evidentaccustomedness of both driver and horses to this method of working down ahill.

  Evidently to them it appeared a short and convenient cut. I should nothave been surprised had the man suggested our strapping ourselves in, andthen rolling over and over, carriage and all, to the bottom.

  Another peculiarity of the German coachman is that he never attempts topull in or to pull up. He regulates his rate of speed, not by the paceof the horse, but by manipulation of the brake. For eight miles an hourhe puts it on slightly, so that it only scrapes the wheel, producing acontinuous sound as of the sharpening of a saw; for four miles an hour hescrews it down harder, and you travel to an accompaniment of groans andshrieks, suggestive of a symphony of dying pigs. When he desires to cometo a full stop, he puts it on to its full. If his brake be a good one,he calculates he can stop his carriage, unless the horse be an extrapowerful animal, in less than twice its own length. Neither the Germandriver nor the German horse knows, apparently, that you can stop acarriage by any other method. The German horse continues to pull withhis full strength until he finds it impossible to move the vehicleanother inch; then he rests. Horses of other countries are quite willingto stop when the idea is suggested to them. I have known horses contentto go even quite slowly. But your German horse, seemingly, is built forone particular speed, and is unable to depart from it. I am statingnothing but the literal, unadorned truth, when I say I have seen a Germancoachman, with the reins lying loose over the splash-board, working hisbrake with both hands, in terror lest he would not be in time to avoid acollision.

  At Waldshut, one of those little sixteenth-century towns through whichthe Rhine flows during its earlier course, we came across thatexceedingly common object of the Continent: the travelling Briton grievedand surprised at the unacquaintance of the foreigner with the subtletiesof the English language. When we entered the station he was, in veryfair English, though with a slight Somersetshire accent, explaining to aporter for the tenth time, as he informed us, the simple fact that thoughhe himself had a ticket for Donaueschingen, and wanted to go toDonaueschingen, to see the source of the Danube, which is not there,though they tell you it is, he wished his bicycle to be sent on to Engenand his bag to Constance, there to await his arrival. He was hot andangry with the effort of the thing. The porter was a young man in years,but at the moment looked old and miserable. I offered my services. Iwish now I had not--though not so fervently, I expect, as he, thespeechless one, came subsequently to wish this. All three routes, so theporter explained to us, were complicated, necessitating changing and re-changing. There was not much time for calm elucidation, as our own trainwas starting in a few minutes. The man himself was voluble--always amistake when anything entangled has to be made clear; while the porterwas only too eager to get the job done with and so breathe again. Itdawned upon me ten minutes later, when thinking the matter over in thetrain, that though I had agreed with the porter that it would be best forthe bicycle to go by way of Immendingen, and had agreed to his booking itto Immendingen, I had neglected to give instructions for its departurefrom Immendingen. Were I of a despondent temperament I should beworrying myself at the present moment with the reflection that in allprobability that bicycle is still at Immendingen to this day. But Iregard it as good philosophy to endeavour always to see the brighter sideof things. Possibly the porter corrected my omission on his own account,or some simple miracle may have happened to restore that bicycle to itsowner some time before the end of his tour. The bag we sent toRadolfzell: but here I console myself with the recollection that it waslabelled Constance; and no doubt after a while the railway authorities,finding it unclaimed at Radolfzell, forwarded it on to Constance.

  But all this is apart from the moral I wished to draw from the incident.The true inwardness of the situation lay in the indignation of thisBritisher at finding a German railway porter unable to comprehendEnglish. The moment we spoke to him he expressed this indignation in nomeasured terms.

  "Thank you very much indeed," he said; "it's simple enough. I want to goto Donaueschingen myself by train; from Donaueschingen I am going to walkto Geisengen; from Geisengen I am going to take the train to Engen, andfrom Engen I am going to bicycle to Constance. But I don't want to takemy bag with me; I want to find it at Constance when I get there. I havebeen trying to explain the thing to this fool for the last ten minutes;but I can't get it into him."

  "It is very disgraceful," I agreed. "Some of these German workmen knowhardly any other language than their own."

  "I have gone over it with him," continued the man, "on the time table,and explained it by pantomime. Even then I could not knock it into him."

  "I can hardly believe you," I again remarked; "you would think the thingexplained itself."

  Harris was angry with the man; he wished to reprove him for his folly injourneying through the outlying portions of a foreign clime, and seekingin such to accomplish complicated railway tricks without knowing a wordof the language of the country. But I checked the impulsiveness ofHarris, and pointed out to him the great and good work at which the manwas unconsciously assisting.

  Shakespeare and Milton may have done their little best to spreadacquaintance with the English tongue among the less favoured inhabitantsof Europe. Newton and Darwin may have rendered their language anecessity among educated and thoughtful foreigners. Dickens and Ouida(for your folk who imagine that the literary world is bounded by theprejudices of New Grub Street, would be surprised and grieved at theposition occupied abroad by this at-home-sneered-at lady) may have helpedstill further to popularise it. But the man who has spread the knowledgeof English from Cape St. Vincent to the Ural Mountains is the Englishmanwho, unable or unwilling to learn a single word of any language but hisown, travels purse in hand into every corner of the Continent. One maybe shocked at his ignorance, annoyed at his stupidity, angry at hispresumption. But the practical fact remains; he it is that isanglicising Europe. For him the Swiss peasant tramps through the snow onwinter evenings to attend the English class open in every village. Forhim the coachman and the guard, the chambe
rmaid and the laundress, poreover their English grammars and colloquial phrase books. For him theforeign shopkeeper and merchant send their sons and daughters in theirthousands to study in every English town. For him it is that everyforeign hotel- and restaurant-keeper adds to his advertisement: "Onlythose with fair knowledge of English need apply."

  Did the English-speaking races make it their rule to speak anything elsethan English, the marvellous progress of the English tongue throughoutthe world would stop. The English-speaking man stands amid the strangersand jingles his gold.

  "Here," cries, "is payment for all such as can speak English."

  He it is who is the great educator. Theoretically we may scold him;practically we should take our hats off to him. He is the missionary ofthe English tongue.

 

‹ Prev