Chapter 6

IT was twelve o’clock before we left Grib’s (or Grip’s) Common, lurching off it by another grassy lane down into the road in the direction of Mereworth, and leaving, as we afterward discovered, several portions of our equipment behind us.

“What a lovely, sparkling world!” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, coming and walking beside me.

I was struggling with the tempers of my very obstinate horse, so could only gasp a brief assent.

The road was narrow, and wound along hard and smooth between hedges she seemed to find attractive, for every few yards she stopped to pull something green out of them and take it along with her. The heavy rain in the night had naturally left things wet, and there being a bright sun the drops on the blades of grass and on the tips of the leaves could not help sparkling, but there was nothing remarkable in that, and I would not have noticed it if she had not looked round with such apparent extreme delight and sniffed in the air as if she were in a first-class perfumery shop Unter den Linden where there really are things worth sniffing. Also she appeared to think there was something very wonderful about the sky, which was just the ordinary blue one has a right to expect in summer sprinkled over with the usual number of white fine-weather clouds, for she gazed up at that too, and evidently with the greatest pleasure.

“Schwärmerisch,” said I to myself; and was internally slightly amused.

My hearers will agree with me that such raptures are well enough in a young girl in a white gown, with blue eyes and the washed-out virginal appearance one does not dislike at eighteen before Love the Artist has pounced on it and painted it pink, and they will also, I think, agree that the older and married women must take care to be at all times quiet. Ejaculations of a poetic or ecstatic nature should not, as a rule, pass their lips. They may ejaculate perhaps over a young baby (if it is their own) but that is the one exception; and there is a good reason for this one, the possession of a young baby implying as a general rule a corresponding youth in its mother. I do not think, however, that it is nice when a woman ejaculates over, say, her tenth young baby. The baby, of course, will still be sufficiently young for it is a fresh one, but it is not a fresh mother, and by that time she should have stiffened into stolidity, and apart from the hours devoted to instructing her servant, silence. Indeed, the perfect woman does not talk at all. Who wants to hear her? All that we ask of her is that she shall listen intelligently when we wish, for a change, to tell her about our own thoughts, and that she should be at hand when we want anything. Surely this is not much to ask. Matches, ash-trays, and one’s wife should be, so to speak, on every table; and I maintain that the perfect wife copies the conduct of the matches and the ash-trays, and combines being useful with being dumb.

These are my views, and as I drove my caravan along the gravelly road I ruminated on them. The great brute of a horse, overfed and under-worked, was constantly endeavouring to pass the Ailsa which was in front of us, and as that meant in that narrow lane taking the Elsa up the bank as a preliminary, I was as constantly endeavouring to thwart him. And the sun being hot and I (if I may so put it) a very meltable man, I soon grew tired of this constant tugging and looked round for Edelgard to come and take her turn.

She was nowhere to be seen.

“Have you dropped anything?” asked Frau von Eckthum, who was walking a little way behind.

“No,” said I; adding, with much readiness, “but my wife has dropped me.”

“Oh!” said she.

I kept the horse back till she caught me up, while her leaner sister, who did not slacken her pace, went on ahead. Then I explained my theory about wives and matches. She listened attentively, in just the way the really clever woman knows best how to impress us favourably does, busying herself as she listened in tying some flowers she had gathered into a bunch, and not doing anything so foolish as to interrupt.

Every now and then as I warmed and drove my different points home, she just looked at me with thoughtful interest. It was delightful. I forgot the annoying horse, the heat of the sun, the chill of the wind, the bad breakfast, and all the other inconveniences, and saw how charming a caravan tour can be. “Given,” I thought, “the right people and fine weather, such a holiday is bound to be agreeable.”

The day was undoubtedly fine, and as for the right people they were amply represented by the lady at my side. Never had I found so good a listener. She listened to everything. She took no mean advantage of one’s breath-pauses to hurry in observations of her own as so many women do. And the way she looked at me when anything struck her particularly was sufficient to show how keenly appreciative she was. After all there is nothing so enjoyable as a conversation with a thoroughly competent listener. The first five miles flew. It seemed to me that we had hardly left Grip’s Common before we were pulling up at a wayside inn and sinking on to the bench in front of it and calling for drink.