The Caravaners
Copyright© 2024 by Elizabeth Von Arnim
Chapter 17
THIS was a singular conversation.
I passed round the back of the house and along a footpath I found there, turning it over in my mind. Less than ever did I like Menzies-Legh. In spite of the compliments about my physique I liked him less than ever. And how very annoying it is when a person you do not like is right; bad enough if you do like him, but intolerable if you do not. As I proceeded along the footpath with my eyes on the ground I saw at every step those four glasses of tea, particularly my one, the one that sparkled so brilliantly at first and was afterward so easily ruined. Absorbed in this contemplation I did not notice whither my steps were tending till I was pulled up suddenly by a church door. The path had led me to that, and then, as I saw, skirted along a fringe of tombstones to a gate in a wall beyond which appeared the chimneys of what was no doubt the parsonage.
The church door was open, and I went in—for I was tired, and here were pews; ruffled, and here was peace. The droning of a voice led me to conclude (rightly) that a service was in progress, for I had learned by this time that in England the churches constantly burst out into services, regardless of the sort of day it is—whether, I mean, it is a Sunday or not. I entered, and selecting a pew with a red cushion along its seat and a comfortable footstool sat down.
The pastor was reading the Scriptures out of a Bible supported, according to the unaccountable British custom, on the back of a Prussian eagle. This prophetic bird—the first swallow, as it were, of that summer which I trust will not long be delayed, when Luther’s translation will rest on its back and be read aloud by a German pastor to a congregation forced to understand by the simple methods we bring to bear on our Polish (also acquired) subjects—eyed me with a human intelligence. We eyed each other, in fact, as old friends might who meet after troublous experiences in an alien land.
Except for this bird, who seemed to me quite human in his expression of alert sympathy, the pastor and I were alone in the building; and I sat there marvelling at the wasteful folly that pays a man to read and pray daily to a set of empty pews. Ought he not rather to stay at home and keep an eye on his wife? To do, indeed, anything sooner than conduct a service which nobody evidently wants? I call it heathenism; I call it idolatry; and so would any other plain man who heard and saw empty pews, things of wood and cushions, being addressed as brethren, and dearly beloved ones into the bargain.
When he had done at the eagle he crossed over to another place and began reciting something else; but very soon, after only a few words, he stopped dead and looked at me.
I wondered why, for I had not done anything. Even, however, with that innocence of conscience in the background, it does make a man uncomfortable when a pastor will not go on but fixes his eyes on you sitting harmless in your pew, and I found myself unable to return his gaze. The eagle was staring at me with a startling expression of comprehension, almost as if he too were thinking that a pastor officiating has such an undoubted advantage over the persons in the pews that it is cowardice to use it. My discomfort increased considerably when I saw the pastor descend from his place and bear down on me, his eyes still fixing me, his white clothing fluttering out behind him. What, I asked myself greatly perturbed, could the creature possibly want? I soon found out, for thrusting an open Prayer-book toward me he pointed to a verse of what appeared to be a poem, and whispered:
“Will you kindly stand up and take your part in the service?”
Even had I known how, surely I had no part nor lot in such a form of worship.
“Sir,” I said, not heeding the outstretched book, but feeling about in my breast-pocket, “permit me to present you with my card. You will then see——”
He, however, in his turn refused to heed the outstretched card. He did not so much as look at it.
“I cannot oblige you to,” he whispered, as though our conversation were unfit for the eagle’s ears; and leaving the open book on the little shelf in the front of the pew he strode back again to his place and resumed his reading, doing what he called my part as well as his own with a severity of voice and manner ill-suited to one presumably addressing the liebe Gott.
Well, being there and very comfortable I did not see why I should go. I was behaving quite inoffensively, sitting still and holding my tongue, and the comfort of being in a building with no fresh air in it was greater than you, my friends, who only know fresh air at intervals and in properly limited quantities, will be able to understand. So I stayed till the end, till he, after a profusion of prayers, got up from his knees and walked away into some obscure portion of the church where I could no longer observe his movements, and then, not desiring to meet him, I sought the path that had led me thither and hurriedly descended the hill to our melancholy camp. Once I thought I heard footsteps behind me and I hastened mine, getting as quickly round a bend that would conceal me from any one following me as a tired man could manage, and it was not till I had reached and climbed into the Elsa that I felt really safe.
The three caravans were as usual drawn up in a parallel line with mine in the middle, and their door ends facing the farm. To be in the middle is a most awkward situation, for you cannot speak the least word of caution (or forgiveness, as the case may be) to your wife without running grave risk of being overheard. Often I used carefully to shut all the windows and draw the door curtain, hoping thus to obtain a greater freedom of speech, though this was of little use with the Ilsa and the Ailsa on either side, their windows open, and perhaps a group of caravaners sitting on the ground immediately beneath.
My wife was mending, and did not look up when I came in. How differently she behaved at home. She not only used to look up when I came in, she got up, and got up quickly too, hastening at the first sound of my return to meet me in the passage, and greeting me with the smiles of a dutiful and accordingly contented wife.
Shutting the Elsa’s windows I drew her attention to this.
“But there isn’t a passage,” said she, still with her head bent over a sock.
Really Edelgard should take care to be specially feminine, for she certainly will never shine on the strength of her brains.
“Dear wife,” I began—and then the complete futility of trying to thresh any single subject out in that airy, sound-carrying dwelling stopped me. I sat down on the yellow box instead, and remarked that I was extremely fatigued.
“So am I,” said she.
“My feet ache so,” I said, “that I fear there may be something serious the matter with them.”
“So do mine,” said she.
This, I may observe, was a new and irritating habit she had got into: whatever I complained of in the way of unaccountable symptoms in divers portions of my frame, instead of sympathizing and suggesting remedies she said hers (whatever it was) did it too.
“Your feet cannot possibly,” said I, “be in the terrible condition mine are in. In the first place mine are bigger, and accordingly afford more scope for disorders. I have shooting pains in them resembling neuralgia, and no doubt traceable to some nervous source.”
“So have I,” said she.
“I think bathing might do them good,” I said, determined not to become angry. “Will you get me some hot water, please?”
“Why?” said she.
She had never said such a thing to me before. I could only gaze at her in a profound surprise.
“Why?” I repeated at length, keeping studiously calm. “What an extraordinary question. I could give you a thousand reasons if I chose, such as that I desire to bathe them; that hot water—rather luckily for itself—has no feet, and therefore has to be fetched; and that a wife has to do as she is told. But I will, my dear Edelgard, confine myself to the counter inquiry, and ask why not?”
“I, too, my dear Otto,” said she—and she spoke with great composure, her head bent over her mending, “could give you a thousand answers to that if I chose, such as that I desire to get this sock finished—yours, by the way; that I have walked exactly as far as you have; that I see no reason why you should not, as there are no servants here, fetch your own hot water; and that your wishing or not wishing to bathe your feet has really, if you come to think of it, nothing to do with me. But I will confine myself just to saying that I prefer not to go.”
It can be imagined with what feelings—not mixed but unmitigated—I listened to this. And after five years! Five years of patience and guidance.
“Is this my Edelgard?” I managed to say, recovering speech enough for those four words but otherwise struck dumb.
“Your Edelgard?” she repeated musingly as she continued to mend, and not even looking at me. “Your boots, your handkerchief, your gloves, your socks—yes——”
I confess I could not follow, and could only listen amazed.
“But not your Edelgard. At least, not more than you are my Otto.”
“But—my boots?” I repeated, really dazed.
“Yes,” she said, folding up the finished sock, “they really are yours. Your property. But you should not suppose that I am a kind of living boot, made to be trodden on. I, my dear Otto, am a human being, and no human being is another human being’s property.”
A flash of light illuminated my brain. “Jellaby!” I cried.
“Hullo?” was the immediate answer from outside. “Want me, Baron?”
“No, no! No, no! No, NO!” I cried leaping up and dragging the door curtain to, as though that could possibly deaden our conversation. “He has been infecting you,” I continued, in a whisper so much charged with indignation that it hissed, “with his poisonous——”
Then I recollected that he could probably hear every word, and muttering an imprecation on caravans I relapsed on to the yellow box and said with forced calm as I scrutinized her face:
“Dear wife, you have no idea how exactly you resemble your Aunt Bockhügel when you put on that expression.”
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