Chapter 19

ESSENTIALLY, as I have already pointed out, bon enfant, I seldom let a bad yesterday spoil a promising to-day; and when on peeping through my curtains next morning I saw the sun had turned our forbidding camp of the night before into a bland warm place across which birds darted singing, a cheery whistle formed itself on my lips and I became aware of that inward satisfaction our neighbours (to whom we owe, I frankly acknowledge, much besides Alsace and Lorraine) have aptly named the joie de vivre.

Left to myself this joie would undoubtedly always continue uninterruptedly throughout the day. The greater then, say I, the responsibility of those who damp it. Indeed, the responsibility resting on the shoulders of the people who cross one’s path during the day is far more tremendous than they in the thickness of their skins imagine. I will not, however, at present go into that, having gradually in the course of writing this become aware that what I shall probably do next will be to collect and embody all my more metaphysical side into a volume to itself with plenty of room in it, and will here, then, merely ask my hearers to behold me whistling in my caravan on that bright August morning, whistling, and ready, as every sound man should be, to leave the annoyances of yesterday beneath their own dust and begin the new day in the spirit of “Who knows but before nightfall I shall have conquered the world?”

My mother (a remarkable woman) used to tell me it was a good plan to start like that, and indeed I believe the results by nightfall would be surprisingly encouraging if only other people would leave one alone. For, as they meet you, each one by his behaviour takes away a further portion of that which in the morning was so undimmed. Why, sometimes just Edelgard at breakfast has by herself torn off the whole stock of it at once; and generally by dinner there is but little left. It is true that occasionally after dinner a fresh wave of it sets in, but sleep absorbs that before it has had time, as the colloquialists would say, so much as to turn round.

My hearers, then, without my going further into this, must conceive me whistling and full of French joie in the subdued sunlight of the Elsa’s curtained interior on that bright summer morning at Frogs’ Hole Farm.

The floor sloped, for during the night the Elsa’s left hind wheel had sunk into an uncobbled portion of the yard where the soft mud offered no resistance, but even the prospect of having to dig this out before we could start did not depress me. I thought I had noticed my head sinking lower and lower during my dreams, and after having, half asleep, endeavoured to correct this impression by means of rolling up my day clothes and putting them beneath my pillow and finding that it made no difference, I decided it must be a nightmare and let well alone. In the morning, on waking after Edelgard’s departure, I realized what had happened, and if any of you ever caravan you had better see when you go to bed that all four of your wheels are on that which I called at Queenboro’ terra cotta (you will remember I explained why it was my wife was unable to be amused) or you will have some pretty work cut out for you next morning.

Even this prospect, however, did not, as I say, depress me. Dumb objects like caravans have no such power, and as nobody not dumb had yet crossed my path I was still, so to speak, untarnished. I had even made up my mind to forget the half-hour with Edelgard the previous night after the ball, and since a willingness to forget is the same thing as a willingness to forgive I think you will all agree that I began that day very well.

Descending to breakfast, I experienced a slight shock (the first breath of tarnish) on finding no one but Mrs. Menzies-Legh and the nondescripts there. Mrs. Menzies-Legh, however, though no doubt feeling privately awkward managed to behave as though nothing had happened, hoped I had slept well, and brought my coffee. She did not talk as much as usual, but attended to my wants with an assiduousness that pointed to her being, after all, ashamed.

I inquired of her with the dignity that means determined distance where the others were, and she said gone for a walk.

She remarked on the beauty of the day, and I replied, “It is indeed.”

She then said, slightly sighing, that if only the weather had been like that from the first the tour would have been so much more enjoyable.

On which I observed, with reserved yet easy conversation, that the greater part still lay before us, and who knew but that from then on it was not going to be fine?

At this she looked at me in silence, her head poised slightly on one side, seriously and pensively, as she had done among the Bodiam ruins; then opened her mouth as though to speak, but thinking better of it got up instead and fetched me more food.

At last, thought I, she was learning the right way to set about pleasing; and I could not prevent a feeling of gratification at the success of my method with her. There was an unusually good breakfast too, which increased this feeling—eggs and bacon, a combined luxury not before seen on our table. The fledglings hung over the stove with heated cheeks preparing relays of it under Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s directions, who, while she directed, held the coffee-pot in her arms to keep it warm. She explained she did so for my second cup. I might and indeed I would have suspected that she did so not to keep the coffee but her arms warm, if it had not been such a grilling day. Heat quivered in a blue haze over the hop-poles of the adjacent field. The sunless farmhouse looked invitingly cool and shady now that the surrounding hill-tops were one glare of light. To hold warm coffee in one’s arms on such a morning could not possibly show anything but a meritorious desire to make amends; and as I am not a man to do what the scriptural call quench the smoking flax, and yet not a man to forgive too quickly recently audacious ladies, I dexterously mingled extreme politeness with an unshakable reserve.

But I did not care to prolong what was practically a tête-à-tête one moment more than necessary, and could not but at last perceive in her persistent replenishings of my cup and plate the exactly contrary desire in the lady. So I got up with a courteously declining, “No, no—a reasonable man knows when to leave off,” murmured something about seeing to things, bowed, and withdrew.

Where I withdrew to was the hop-field and a cigar.

I lay down in the shade of these green promises of beer in a corner secure from observation, and reflected that if the others could waste time taking supererogatory exercise I might surely be allowed an interval of calm; and as there are no mosquitoes in England, at least none that I ever saw, it really was not unpleasant for once to contemplate nature from the ground. But I must confess I was slightly nettled by the way the rest of the party had gone off without waiting to see whether I would not like to go too. At first, busied by breakfast, I had not thought of this. Presently, in the hop-field, it entered my mind, and though I would not have walked far with them it would have been pleasant to let the rest go on ahead and remain myself in some cool corner talking to my gentle but lately so elusive friend.

I must say also that I felt no little surprise that Edelgard should gad away in such a manner before our caravan had been tidied up and after what I had said to her the last thing the night before. Did she then think, in her exuberant defiance, that I would turn to and make our beds for her?