'I dislike beer,' said Brosy.
'That man this morning, for instance—did you ever hear anything like it? He was just the type of man, quite apart from his insolence, that most grieves the bishop.'
'Really?' I said; and wondered respectfully at the amount of grieving the bishop got through.
'An educated man, I suppose—did he not say he was a schoolmaster? A teacher of the young, without a vestige himself of the simple faith he ought to inculcate. For if he had had a vestige, would it not have prevented his launching into an irreverent conversation with a lady who was not only a stranger, but the wife of a prelate of the Church of England?'
'He couldn't know that, mother,' said Brosy; 'and from what you told me it wasn't a conversation he launched into but a monologue. And I must beg your pardon,' he added, turning to me with a smile, 'for the absurd mistake we made. It was the guide's fault.'
'Oh yes, my dear Frau X., you must forgive me—it was really too silly of me—I might have known—I was completely taken aback, I assure you, but the guide was so very positive——' And there followed such a number of apologies that again I was bewildered, only retaining the one clear impression that the bishop's wife desired exceedingly to be agreeable.
Well, a woman bent on being agreeable is better than a woman bent on being disagreeable, though, being the soul of caution in my statements, I must add, Not always; for I suppose few of us have walked any distance along the path of life without having had to go at least some part of the way in the company of persons who, filled with the praiseworthy wish to be very pleasant, succeeded only in drenching our spirits with the depressing torrents of effusion. And effusiveness applied to myself has precisely the effect of a finger applied to the horns of a snail who shall be innocently airing himself in the sun: he gets back without more ado into his shell, and so do I.
That is what happened on this occasion. For some reason, which I could only faintly guess, the bishop's wife after disapproving of me in the morning was petting me in the afternoon. She had been lunching, she told me, with Charlotte, and they had had a nice talk, she said, about me. About me? Instantly I scrambled back into my shell. There is surely nothing in the world so tiresome as being questioned, as I now was, on one's household arrangements and personal habits. I will talk about anything but that. I will talk with the courage of ignorance about all high matters, of which I know nothing. I am ready to discourse on all or any of the great Abstractions with the glibness of the shallow mind. I will listen sympathetically to descriptions of diseases suffered and operations survived, of the brilliance of sons and the beauty of daughters. I will lend an attentive ear to an enumeration of social successes and family difficulties, of woes and triumphs of every sort, including those connected with kitchens; but I will not answer questions about myself. And indeed, what is there to talk about? No one is interested in my soul, and as for my body I long ago got tired of that.
One cannot, however, eat a person's rusks without assuming a certain amount of subsequent blandness; so I did my best to behave nicely. Brosy smoked cigarettes. Whatever it was that had sent me up in his mother's estimation had apparently sent me down in his. He no longer, it seemed, looked upon me as a good specimen of the intelligent German female. I might be as eloquently silent as I liked, and it did not impress him in the least. The few remarks he made showed me that. This was grievous, for Brosy was, in person, a very charming young man, and the good opinion of charming young men is quite a nice thing to possess. Now I began to regret, now that he was merely interjectional, those earnest paragraphs in which he had talked the night before at supper and during the sunset walk on the island of Vilm. Observing him sideways and cautiously I saw that the pretty speeches his mother was making me apropos of everything and nothing were objectionable to him; and I silently agreed with him that pretty speeches are unpleasant things, especially when made by one woman to another. You can forgive a man perhaps, because in your heart in spite of all experience lurks the comfortable belief that he means what he says; but how shall you forgive a woman for mistaking you for a fool?
They persuaded me to drive with them to the place in the woods they were bound for called Kieköwer, where the view over the bay was said to be very beautiful; and when I got on to my feet I found I was so stiff that driving seemed the only thing possible. Ambrose was very kind and careful of my bodily comfort, but did not bother about me spiritually. Whenever there was a hill, and there kept on being hills, he got out and walked, leaving me wholly to his mother. But it did not matter any more, for the forest was so exquisite that way, the afternoon so serene, so mellow with lovely light, that I could not look round me without being happy. Oh blessed state, when mere quiet weather, trees and grass, sea and clouds, can make you forget that life has anything in it but rapture, can make you drink in heaven with every breath! How long will it last, this joy of living, this splendid ecstasy of the soul? I am more afraid of losing this, of losing even a little of this, of having so much as the edge of its radiance dimmed, than of parting with any other earthly possession. And I think of Wordsworth, its divine singer, who yet lost it so soon and could no longer see the splendour in the grass, the glory in the flower, and I ask myself with a sinking heart if it faded so quickly for him who saw it and sang it by God's grace to such perfection, how long, oh how long does the common soul, half blind, half dead, half dumb, keep its little, precious share?