refuge. For it was a refuge—the alternative being to march along blindly till the next morning, which was, of course, equivalent to not being an alternative at all—but how bleak a one! Gray shadows were descending on it, cold winds were whirling round it, the grass was, naturally, dripping, and scattered in and out among the furze bushes were the empty sardine and other tins of happier sojourners. These last objects were explained by the presence of a hop-field skirting one side of the common, a hop-field luckily not yet in that state which attracts hop-pickers, or the common would hardly have been a place to which gentlemen care to take their wives. On the opposite side to the hop-field the ground fell away, and the tips of two hop-kilns peered at us over the edge. In front of us, concealed by the furze and other bushes of a prickly, clinging nature, lay the road, along which people going home to houses, as Edelgard put it, were constantly hurrying. All round, except on the hop-field side, we could see much farther than we wanted to across a cheerless stretch of country. The three caravans were drawn up in a row facing the watery sunset, because the wind chiefly came from the east (though it also came from all round) and the backs of the vans offered more resistance to its fury than any other side of them, there being only one small wooden window in that portion of them which, being kept carefully shut by us during the whole tour, would have been infinitely better away.
I hope my hearers see the caravans: if not it seems to me I read in vain. Square—or almost square—brown boxes on wheels, the door in front, with a big aperture at the side of it shut at night by a wooden shutter and affording a pleasant prospect (when there was one) by day, a much too good-sized window on each side, the bald back with no relief of any sort unless the larders can be regarded as such, for the little shutter window I have mentioned became invisible when shut, and inside an impression (I never use a word other than deliberately), an impression, then, I say, of snugness, produced by the green carpet, the green arras lining to the walls, the green eider-down quilts on the beds, the green portière dividing the main room from the small portion in front which we used as a dressing room, the flowered curtains, the row of gaily bound books on a shelf, and the polish of the brass candle brackets that seemed to hit me every time I moved. What became of this impression in the case of one reasonable man, too steady to be blown hither and thither by passing gusts of enthusiasm, perhaps the narrative will disclose.
Meanwhile the confusion on the common was indescribable. I can even now on calling it to mind only lift up hands of amazement. To get the three horses out was in itself no easy task for persons unaccustomed to such work, but to get the three tables out and try to unfold them and make them stand straight on the uneven turf was much worse. All things in a caravan have hinges and flaps, the idea being that they shall take up little room; but if they take up little room they take up a great deal of time, and that first night when there was not much of it these patent arrangements which made each chair and table a separate problem added considerably to the prevailing chaos. Having at length set them out on wet grass, table-cloths had to be extracted from the depths of the yellow boxes in each caravan and spread upon them, and immediately they blew away on to the furze bushes. Recaptured and respread they immediately did it again. Mrs. Menzies-Legh, when I ventured to say that I would not go and fetch them next time they did it, told me to weigh them down with the knives and forks, but nobody knew where they were, and their discovery having defied our united intelligences for an immense amount of precious time was at last the result of the merest chance, for who could have dreamed they were concealed among the bedding? As for Edelgard, I completely lost control over her. She seemed to slip through my fingers like water. She was everywhere, and yet nowhere. I do not know what she did, but I know that she left me quite unaided, and I found myself performing the most menial tasks, utterly unfit for an officer, such as fetching cups and saucers and arranging spoons in rows. Nor, if I had not witnessed it, would I ever have believed that the preparation of eggs and coffee was so difficult. What could be more frugal than such a supper? Yet it took the united efforts for nearly two hours of seven highly civilized and intelligent beings to produce it. Edelgard said that that was why it did, but I at once told her that to reason that the crude and the few are more capable than the clever and the many was childish.
When, with immense labour and infinite conversation, this meagre fare was at last placed upon the tables it was so late that we had to light our lanterns in order to be able to see it; and my hearers who have never been outside the sheltered homes of Storchwerder and know nothing about what can happen to them when they do will have difficulty in picturing us gathered round the tables in that gusty place, vainly endeavouring to hold our wraps about us, our feet in wet grass and our heads in a stormy darkness. The fitful flicker of the lanterns played over rapidly cooling eggs and grave faces. It was indeed a bad beginning, enough to discourage the stoutest holiday-maker. This was not a holiday: this was privation combined with exposure. Frau von Eckthum was wholly silent. Even Mrs. Menzies-Legh, although she tried to laugh, produced nothing but hollow sounds. Edelgard only spoke once, and that was to say that the coffee was very bad and might she make it unaided another time, a remark and a question received with a gloomy assent. Menzies-Legh was by this time extremely anxious about the girls, and though his wife still said they were naughty and would be scolded it was with an ever-fainter conviction. The two young men sat with their shoulders hunched up to their ears in total silence. No one, however, was half so much deserving of sympathy as myself and Edelgard, who had been travelling since the previous morning and more than anybody needed good food and complete rest. But there were hardly enough scrambled eggs to go round, most of them having been broken in the jolting up the lane on to the common, and after the meal, instead of smoking a cigar in the comparative quiet and actual dryness of one’s caravan, I found that everybody had to turn to and—will it be believed?—wash up.
“No servants, you know—so free, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, pressing a cloth into one of my hands and a fork into the other, and indicating a saucepan of hot water with a meaning motion of her forefinger.
Well, I had to. My hearers must not judge me harshly. I am aware that it was conduct unbecoming in an officer, but the circumstances were unusual. Menzies-Legh and the young men were doing it too, and I was taken by surprise. Edelgard, when she saw me thus employed, first started in astonishment and then said she would do it for me.
“No, no, let him do it,” quickly interposed Mrs. Menzies-Legh, almost as though she liked me to wash up in the same saucepan as herself.
But I will not dwell on the forks. We were still engaged in the amazingly difficult and distasteful work of cleaning them when the rain suddenly descended with renewed fury. This was too much. I slipped away from Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s side into the darkness, whispered to Edelgard to follow, and having found my caravan bade her climb in after me and bolt the door. What became of the remaining forks I do not know—there are limits to that which a man will do in order to have a clean one. Stealthily we undressed in the dark so that our lighted windows might not betray us—“Let them each,” I said to myself with grim humour, “suppose that we are engaged helping one of the others”—and then, Edelgard having ascended into the upper berth and I having crawled into the lower, we lay listening to the loud patter of the rain on the roof so near our faces (especially Edelgard’s), and marvelled that it should make a noise that could drown not only every sound outside but also our voices when we, by shouting, endeavoured to speak.