The Pastor's Wife
Copyright© 2024 by Elizabeth Von Arnim
Chapter 16
They did not get away till nine o’clock.
There was supper at seven, an elaborate meal, and they sat over it an hour and a half. Then came more coffee, served on the terrace by servants in white cotton gloves, and half an hour later, just before they left, tea and sandwiches and cakes and fruit and beer.
Ingeborg was now quite clear about the reason for her mother-in-law’s tears. She saw very vividly how dreadful her behaviour must have seemed. That groaning supper-table, that piling up as the end of the visit drew near of more food and more and more, and the refreshment of bed in the middle...
“I shall invite her all over again,” she said suddenly, determined to make amends.
When she said this the carriage had finally detached them from sight and sound of the now quite cordial Glambecks, and was heaving through the sand of the dark wooded road beyond their gate.
“Whom will the Little One invite?” asked Herr Dremmel, bending down. He had got his arm round her, and at the bigger joltings tightened his hold and lifted her a little. His voice was tender, and when he bent down there was an enveloping smell of cigars and wine, mixed with the india-rubber of his mackintosh.
Ingeborg knew that for some reason she could not discover she had made herself popular. There was the distinct consciousness of having suddenly, half way through the visit, become a success. And she was still going on being a success, she felt. But why? Robert was extraordinarily attentive. Too attentive, really, for oh, what a wonderful night of stars and warm scents it was, once they were in the open—what a night, what a marvel of a night! And when he bent over her it was blotted out. Dear Robert. She did love him. But away there on that low meadow, far away over there where a white mist lay on the swampy places and the leaves of the flags that grew along the ditch stood up like silver spears in the moonlight, one could imagine the damp cool fragrance rising up as one’s feet stirred the grass, the perfect solitariness and the perfect silence. Except for the bittern. There was a bittern, she had discovered, in those swamps. If she were over there now, lying quite quiet on the higher ground by the ditch, quite quiet and alone, she would hear him presently, solemnly booming.
“Whom will the Little One invite?” asked Herr Dremmel, bending down across the whole of the Milky Way and every single one of all the multitude of scents the night was softly throwing against her face.
He kissed her very kindly and at unusual length. It lasted so long that she missed the smell of an entire clover field.
“Your mother,” said Ingeborg, when she again emerged.
“Heavens and earth!” said Herr Dremmel.
“I know now what I did—or rather didn’t do. I know now why she kept on saying Bratkartoffel. Oh, Robert, she must have been hurt. She must have thought I didn’t care a bit. And I did so want her to be happy. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what, little sheep?”
“About there having to be supper, and about her having to go to bed.”
“To bed?”
“Did the Baron put you?”
“Put me?”
“To bed?”
Herr Dremmel bent down again and looked a little anxiously at as much of her face as he could see in the moonlight. It seemed normal; not in the least flushed or feverish. He touched her cheek with his finger. It was cool.
“Little One,” he said, “what is this talk of beds?”
“Only that it would save rather a lot of awful things happening if you would just give me an idea beforehand of what is expected. It wouldn’t take a minute. I wouldn’t disturb you at your work for anything, but at some odd time—breakfast, for instance, or while you’re shaving—if you’d say about beds and things like that. One couldn’t guess it, you know. In Redchester one didn’t do it, you see. And it’s such a really beautiful arrangement. Oh”—she suddenly flung her arms round him and held him tight—”I am glad I married one of you!”
“One of me?”
Herr Dremmel again peered anxiously at her face.
“One of you wonderful people—you magnificent, spacious people. In Redchester we got rid of difficulties by running away. You face them and overcome them. There isn’t much doubt, is there, which is the finer?”
He transferred his cigar to the hand that was round her shoulder and spread his right one largely over her forehead. It was quite cool.
“Who,” went on Ingeborg enthusiastically, jerking her head away from his hand, “would have a custom that makes calls last five hours without rebelling? You are too splendidly disciplined to rebel. You don’t. You just set about finding some way of making the calls endurable, and you hit on the nicest way. I loved that hour in bed. If only I’d known that the other day when your mother came! The relief of it...”
“But my mother—” began Herr Dremmel in a puzzled voice. Then he added with a touch of severity, “Your remarks, my treasure, are not in your usual taste. You forget my mother is a widow.”
“Oh? Don’t widows?”
“Do not widows what?”
“Go to bed?”
“Now kindly tell me,” he said, with an impatience he concealed beneath calm, for he had heard that a husband who wishes to become successfully a father has to accommodate himself to many moods, “what it is you are really talking about.”
“Why, about your not explaining things to me in time.”
“What things?”
“About your mother having to go to bed.”
“Why should my mother have to go to bed?”
“Oh, Robert—because it’s the custom.”
“It is not. Why do you suppose it is the custom?”
“What? When I’ve just been put there? And you saw me go?”
“Ingeborg—”
“Oh, don’t call me Ingeborg—”
“Ingeborg, this is levity. I am prepared for much accommodating of myself to whims in regard to food and kindred matters, but am I to endure levity for nine months?”
She stared at him.
“You went to bed because you were ill,” he said.
“I wasn’t,” she said indignantly. Did he, too, think she did not know how to control herself in the presence of cake?
“What? You were not?”
There was a note of such sharp disappointment in his voice that in her turn she peered at his face.
“Now kindly tell me, Robert,” she said, giving his sleeve a slight pull, “what it is you are really talking about.”
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