The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen Part 21

'Delightful originality,' murmured Mrs. Harvey-Browne.

'Madam, you flatter me,' said the Professor, whose ears were quick.

'Oh no. Professor, indeed, it is not flattery.'

'Madam, I am the more obliged.'

'We have so long wished we could meet you. My son spent the whole of last summer in Bonn trying to do so----'

'Waste of time, waste of time, madam.'

'--and all in vain. And this year we were both there before coming up here and did all we could, but also unfortunately in vain. It really seems as if Providence had expressly led us to this place to-day.'

'Providence, madam, is continually leading people to places, and then leading them away again. I, for instance, am to be led away again from this one with great rapidity, for I am on foot and must reach a bed by nightfall. Here there is nothing to be had.'

'Oh you must come back to Binz with us,' cried Mrs. Harvey-Browne. 'The steamer leaves in an hour, and I am sure room could be found for you in our hotel. My son would gladly give you his, if necessary; he would feel only too proud if you would take it, would you not, Brosy?'

'Madam, I am overwhelmed by your amiability. You will, however, understand that I cannot leave my wife. Where I go she comes too--is it not so, little treasure? I am only waiting to hear her plans to arrange mine accordingly. I have no luggage. I am very movable. My night attire is on my person, beneath the attire appropriate to the day. In one pocket of my mantle I carry an extra pair of socks. In another my handkerchiefs, of which there are two. And my sponge, damp and cool, is embedded in the crown of my hat. Thus, madam, I am of a remarkable independence. Its one restriction is the necessity of finding a shelter daily before dark. Tell me, little Lot, is there no room for the old husband here with thee?' And there was something so sweet in his smile as he turned to her that I think if she had seen it she must have followed him wherever he went.

But she did not raise her eyes. 'I go to Berlin this evening,' she said.

'I have important engagements, and must leave at once.'

'My dear Frau Nieberlein,' exclaimed the bishop's wife, 'is not this very sudden?'

Brosy, who had been looking uncomfortable for some minutes quite apart from not having got his mouse, pulled out his watch and stood up. 'If we are to catch that steamer, mother, I think it would be wise to start,'

he said.

'Nonsense, Brosy, it doesn't go for an hour,' said Mrs. Harvey-Browne, revolted at the notion of being torn from her celebrity in the very moment of finding him.

'I am afraid we must,' insisted Brosy. 'It takes much longer to get down the cliff than one would suppose. And it is slippery--I want to take you down an easier and rather longer way.'

And he carried her off, ruthlessly cutting short her parting entreaties that the Professor would come too, come to-morrow, then, come without fail the next day, then, to Binz; and he took her, as I observed, straight in the direction of the Hertha See as a beginning of the easy descent, and the Hertha See, as everybody knows, is in the exactly contrary direction to the one he ought to have gone; but no doubt he filled up the hour instructively with stories of the ancient heathen rites performed on those mystic sh.o.r.es, and so left Charlotte free to behave to her husband as she chose.

How she did behave I can easily guess, for hurrying off into the pavilion, desirous of nothing except to get out of the way, I had hardly had time to marvel that she should be able to dislike such an old dear, when she burst in. 'Quick, quick--help me to get my things!' she cried, flying up and down the slit of a room and pouncing on the bags stowed away by Gertrud in corners. 'I can just catch the night train at Sa.s.snitz--I'm off to Berlin--I'll write to you from there. Why, if that fool Gertrud hasn't emptied everything out! What a terrible fate yours is, always at the mercy of an overfed underling--a person who empties bags without being asked. Give me those brushes--and the papers. Well, you've seen me dragged down into the depths to-day, haven't you?' And she straightened herself from bending over the bag, a brush in each hand, and looking at me with a most bitter and defiant smile incontinently began to cry.

'Don't cry, Charlotte,' I said, who had been dumbly staring, 'don't cry, my dear. I didn't see any depths. I only saw nice things. Don't go to Berlin--stay here and let us be happy together.'

'Stay here? Never!' And she feverishly crammed things into her bag, and the bag must have been at least as full of tears as of other things, for she cried bitterly the whole time.

Well, women have always been a source of wonderment to me, myself included, who am for ever hurled in the direction of foolishness, for ever unable to stop; and never are they so mysterious, so wholly unaccountable, as in their relations to their husbands. But who shall judge them? The paths of fate are all so narrow that two people bound together, forced to walk abreast, cannot, except they keep perfect step, but push each other against the rocks on either side. So that it behoves the weaker and the lighter, if he would remain unbruised, to be very attentive, very adaptable, very deft.

I saw Charlotte off in one of the waiting waggonettes that was to take her to Sa.s.snitz where the railway begins. 'I'll let you know where I am,' she called out as she was rattled away down the hill; and with a wave of the hand she turned the corner and vanished from my sight, gone once more into those frozen regions where n.o.ble and forlorn persons pursue ideals.

Walking back slowly through the trees towards the cliffs I met the Professor looking everywhere for his wife. 'What time does Lot leave?'

he cried when he saw me. 'Must she really go?'

'She is gone.'

'No! How long since?'

'About ten minutes.'

'Then I too take that train.'

And he hurried off, clambering with the nimbleness that was all his own into a second waggonette, and disappeared in his turn down the hill.

'Dearest little cousin,' he shouted just before being whisked round the corner, 'permit me to bid thee farewell and wish thee good luck. I shall seriously endeavour to remember thee this time.'

'Do,' I called back, smiling; but he could not have heard.

Once again I slowly walked through the trees to the cliffs. The highest of these cliffs, the Konigsstuhl, jutting out into the sea forms a plateau where a few trees that have weathered the winter storms of many years stand in little groups. For a long while I sat on the knotted roots of one of them, listening to the slow wash of the waves on the shingle far below. I saw the ribbon of smoke left by the Harvey-Browne's steamer get thinner and disappear. I watched the sunset-red fade out of the sky and sea, and all the world grow grey and full of secrets. Once, after I had sat there a very long time, I thought I heard the faint departing whistle of a far-distant train, and my heart leapt up with exultation. Oh the gloriousness of freedom and silence, of being alone with my own soul once more! I drew a long, long breath, and stood up and stretched myself in the supreme comfort of complete relaxation.

'You look very happy,' said a rather grudging voice close to me.

It belonged to a Fraulein of uncertain age, come up to the plateau in galoshes to commune in her turn with night and Nature; and I suppose I must have been smiling foolishly all over my face, after the manner of those whose thoughts are pleasant.

A Harvey-Browne impulse seized me to stare at her and turn my back, but I strangled it. 'Do you know why I look happy?' I inquired instead; and my voice was as the voice of turtle-doves.

'No--why?' was the eagerly inquisitive answer.

'Because I am.'

And nodding sweetly I walked away.

THE EIGHTH DAY

FROM STUBBENKAMMER TO GLOWE

When Reason lecturing us on certain actions explains that they are best avoided, and Experience with her sledge-hammers drives the lesson home, why do we, convinced and battered, repeat the actions every time we get the chance? I have known from my youth the opinion of Solomon that he that pa.s.seth by and meddleth with strife belonging not to him, is like one that taketh a dog by the ears; and I have a wise relative--not a blood-relation, but still very wise--who at suitable intervals addresses me in the following manner:--'Don't meddle.' Yet now I have to relate how, on the eighth day of my journey round Rugen, in defiance of Reason, Experience, Solomon, and the wise relative, I began to meddle.

The first desire came upon me in the night, when I could not sleep because of the mosquitoes and the constant coming into the pavilion of late and jovial tourists. The tourists came in in jolly batches till well on towards morning, singing about things like the Rhine and the Fatherland's frontiers, glorious songs and very gory, as they pa.s.sed my hastily-shut window on their way round to the door. After each batch had gone I got out and cautiously opened the window again, and then waited for the next ones, slaying mosquitoes while I waited; and it was while I lay there sleepless and tormented that the longing to help reunite Charlotte and her husband first entered my head.

It is true that I was bothered for some time trying to arrive at a clear comprehension of what const.i.tutes selfishness, but I gave that up for it only made my head ache. Surely Charlotte, for instance, was intensely selfish to leave her home and, heedless of her husband's unhappiness, live the life she preferred? But was not he equally selfish in wanting to have her back again? For whose happiness would that be? He could not suppose for hers. If she, determined to be unselfish, went home, she would only be pandering to his selfishness. The more she destroyed her individuality and laid its broken remains at his feet, the more she would be developing evil qualities in the acceptor of such a gift. We are taught that our duty is to make each other good and happy, not bad and happy; Charlotte, therefore, would be doing wrong if, making the Professor happy, she also made him bad. Because he had a sweet way with him and she had not, he got all the sympathy, including mine; and of course the whole of that windy ma.s.s of bia.s.sed superficiality called Public Opinion was on his side. But how can one, if one truly loves a woman, wish her to live a life that must make her wretched? Such love can only be selfish; accordingly the Professor was selfish. They were both selfish; and if one were not so the other would be more so. And if to be unselfish meant making those about you the opposite, then it must be wrong; and were it conceivable that a whole family should determine to be unselfish and actually carry out the dreadful plan, life in that doomed house would become a perpetual _combat de generosite_, not in any way to be borne. Here it was that my head began to ache. 'What stuff is this?' I thought, veering round suddenly to the easeful simplicity of the old conventions. 'Just to think of it gives me a headache. The only thing I know of that does not give a woman a headache is to live the life for which she was intended--the comfortable life with a brain at rest and a body wholly occupied with benevolences; and if her meekness makes her husband bad, what does that matter in the end to any one but him? Charlotte ought to be very happy with that kind old man. Any woman would be. Her leaving him must have been owing to some trifling misunderstanding. I am sure it would be for her happiness to go back to him. She would grow quite round and mellow. Could I not do something, say something, to get her to give him another trial? I wish--oh, I wish I could!'

Now from time to time the wise relative quoted above amplifies his advice in the following manner:--'Of all forms of meddling that which deals with man and wife is, to the meddler, the most immediately fatal.'

But where are the persons who take advice? I never yet met them. When the first shaft of sunshine slanted through my window it fell on me in my dressing-gown feverishly writing to Charlotte. The eloquence of that letter! I really think it had all the words in it I know, except those about growing round and mellow. Something told me that they would not appeal to her. I put it in an envelope and locked it in my dressing-case till, unconscious of what was in store for her, she should send me her address; and then, full of the glow that warms the doer of good actions equally with the officious, I put on my bathing things, a decent skirt and cloak over them, got out of the window, and went down the cliff to the beach to bathe.

The water was icily cold in the shadow of the cliffs, but it was a wonderful feeling getting all the closeness of the night dashed off me in that vast and splendid morning solitude. Dripping I hurried up again, my skirt and cloak over the soaked bathing dress, my wet feet thrust into shoes I could never afterwards wear, a trickle of salt water marking the way I took. It was just five o'clock as I got in at the window. In another quarter of an hour I was dry and dressed and out of the window a second time--getting in and out of that window had a singular fascination for me--and on my way for an early exploring of the woods.

But those Stubbenkammer woods were destined never to be explored by me; for I had hardly walked ten minutes along their beechen ways listening to the birds and stopping every few steps to look up at the blue of the sky between the branches, before I came to the Hertha See, a mysterious silent pond of black water with reeds round it and solemn forest paths, and on the moss by the sh.o.r.e of the Hertha See, his eyes fixed on its sullen waters, deep in thought, sat the Professor.

'Don't tell me you have forgotten me again,' I exclaimed anxiously; for his eyes turned from the lake to me as I came over the moss to him in an unchanged abstraction. What was he doing there? He looked exceedingly untidy, and his boots were white with dust.

'Good morning,' I said cheerfully, as he continued to gaze straight through me.