And I took it from him, and looked down at Frau von Eckthum and laughed, for I knew she would be amused at Jellaby’s being treated as he ought to be.
She, of my own nation and class, must often have been, I think, scandalized at the way the English members of the party behaved to him, absolutely as though he were one of themselves. Her fastidiousness must often and often have been wounded by Jellaby’s appearance and manner of speech, by his flannel collar, his untidy clothes, the wisp of hair forever being brushed aside from his forehead only forever to fall across it again, his slender, almost feminine frame, his round face, and the ridiculous whiteness of his skin. Really, the only way to treat this person was as a kind of joke; not to take him seriously, not to allow oneself to be, as one so often was on the verge of being, angry with him. So I gave the hand resting on my arm a slight pressure expressive of mutual understanding, and looked down at her and laughed.
The dear lady was not, however, invariably quick of comprehension. As a rule, yes; but once or twice she gave the last touch to her femininity by being divinely stupid, and on this occasion, whether it was because her little feet were wet and therefore cold, or she was not attending to the conversation, or she had had such a dose of Jellaby that her brain refused any new impression, she responded neither to my look nor to my laugh. Her eyes were fixed on the ground, and the delicate and serious outline of her nose was all that I was permitted to see.
Respecting her mood, as a tactful man naturally would, I did not again directly appeal to her, but laid myself out to amuse her on the way up the hill by talking to Jellaby in a strain of mock solemnity and endeavouring to draw him out for her entertainment. Unfortunately he resisted my well-meant efforts, and was more taciturn than I had yet seen him. He hardly spoke, and she, I fear, was very tired, for only once did she say Oh. So that the conversation ended by being a disquisition on Socialism held solely by myself, listened to by Frau von Eckthum with absorbed and silent interest, and by Jellaby with, I am sure, the greatest rage. Anyhow, I made some very good points, and he did not venture a single protest. Probably his fallacious theories had never had such a thorough pulling to pieces before, for there were two miles to go up hill and I made the pace as slow as possible. My hearers must also bear in mind that I exclusively employed that most deadly weapon for withering purposes, the double-barrelled syringe of irony and wit. Nothing can stand against the poison pumped out of these two, and I could afford to bid Jellaby the cheeriest good night as I helped the tender lady up the steps of her caravan.
He, it is amusing to relate, barely answered. But the moment he had gone Frau von Eckthum found her tongue again, for on my telling her as she was about to disappear through her doorway how greatly I had enjoyed being able to be of some slight service to her, she paused with her hand on the curtain and looking down at me, said: “What service?”
“Rescuing you from Jellaby,” said I.
“Oh,” said she; and drew back the curtain and went in.
CHAPTER XVI
THERE is a place about six hours’ march from Bodiam called Frogs’ Hole Farm, a deserted house lying low among hop-fields, a dank spot in a hollow with the ground rising abruptly round it on every side, a place of perpetual shade and astonishing solitude.
To this, led by the wayward Fate that had guided our vague movements from the beginning, we steadily journeyed during the whole of the next day. We were not, of course, aware of it—one never is, as no doubt my hearers have noticed too—but that that was the ultimate object of every one of our painful steps during an exceptionally long march, and that our little arguments at crossroads and hesitations as to which we would take were only the triflings of Fate, contemptuously willing to let us think we were choosing, dawned upon us at four o’clock exactly, when we lumbered in single file along a cart track at the edge of a hop-field and emerged one by one into the back yard of Frogs’ Hole Farm.