He pushed the coffee-pot toward me: I received it with a cold bow. He talked of the rain in the night and his fears that my wife had been disturbed by it: I replied with an evasive shrug. He spoke cheerily of the brightness of the morning, and the promise it held of a pleasant day: I responded with nothing more convivial than Perhaps or Indeed—at this moment I cannot recall which. He suggested that I should partake of a thick repulsive substance he was eating which he described as porridge and as the work of Jellaby, and which was, he said, extraordinarily good stuff to march on: I sternly repressed a very witty retort that occurred to me and declined by means of a monosyllable. In a word, I was stiff.
Judge then of my vexation and dismay when I discovered not ten minutes later by the merest accident while being taken by Mrs. Menzies-Legh to a farm in order that I might carry back the vegetables she proposed to buy at it, that the young gentleman not only has a title but is the son of one of the greatest of English families. He is a younger son of the Duke of Hereford, that wealthy and well-known nobleman whose sister was not considered (on the whole) unworthy to marry our Prince of Grossburg-Niederhausen, and far from being mere Browne in the way in which Jellaby was and remained mere Jellaby, the young gentleman I had been deliberately discouraging was Browne indeed, but with the transfiguring addition of Sigismund and Lord.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh, with the same careless indifference I had observed in her husband, spoke of him briefly as Sidge. He was, it appeared, a distant cousin of her husband’s. I had to question her closely and perseveringly before I could extract these details from her, she being apparently far more interested in the question as to whether the woman at the farm would not only sell us vegetables but also a large iron vessel in which to stew them. Yet it is clearly of great importance first, that one should be in good company, and secondly, that one should be told one is in it, because if one is not told how in the world is one to know? And my hearers will, I am sure, sympathize with me in the disagreeable situation in which I found myself, for never was there, I trust and believe, a more polite man than myself, a man more aware of what he owes to his own birth and breeding and those of others, a man more careful to discharge punctiliously all the little (but so important) nameless acts of courtesy where and whenever they are due, and it greatly distressed me to think I had unwittingly rejected the advances of the nephew of an aunt whom the entire German nation agrees to address on her envelopes as Serene.
While I bore back the iron vessel called a stew-pot which Mrs. Menzies-Legh had unfortunately persuaded the farmer’s wife to sell her, and also a basket (in my other hand) full of big, unruly vegetables such as cabbages, and smooth, green objects, unknown to me but resembling shortened and widened cucumbers, that would not keep still and continually rolled into the road, I wished that at least I had eaten the porridge. It could not have killed me, and it was churlish to refuse. The manner of my refusal had made the original churlishness still more churlish. I made up my mind to seek out Lord Sigismund without delay and endeavour by a tactful word to set matters right between us, for one of my principles is never to be ashamed of acknowledging when I have been in the wrong; and so much preoccupied was I deciding on the exact form the tactful word was to take that I had hardly time to object to the nature and size of my burdens. Besides, I was beginning to realize that burdens were going to be my fate. There was little hope of escaping them, since the other members of the party bore similar ones and seemed to think it natural. Mrs. Menzies-Legh at that moment was herself carrying a bundle of little sticks for lighting fires, tied up in a big red handkerchief the farmer’s wife had sold her, and also a parcel of butter, and she walked along perfectly indifferent to the odd figure she would cut and the wrong impression she would give should we by any chance meet any of the gentlefolk of the district. And one should always remember, I consider, when one wishes to let one’s self go, that the world is very small, and that it is at least possible that the last person one would choose as a witness may be watching one through an apparently deserted hedge with his eyeglasses up. Besides, there is no pleasure in behaving as though you were a servant, and old James certainly ought to have accompanied us and carried our purchases back. Of what use is a man servant, however untidy, who is nowhere to be seen when washing up begins or shopping takes place? Being forced to pause a moment and put the stew-pot down in order to rest my hand (which ached) I inquired somewhat pointedly of my companion what she supposed the inhabitants of Storchwerder would say if they could see us at that moment.
“They wouldn’t say anything,” she replied—but her smile is not equal to her sister’s because she has only one dimple—“they’d faint.”
“Exactly,” said I meaningly; adding, after a pause sufficient to point my words, “and very properly.”
“Dear Baron,” said she, pretending to look all innocent surprise and curling up her eyelashes, “do you think it is wrong to carry stew-pots? You mustn’t carry them, then. Nobody must ever do what they think wrong. That’s what is called perjuring one’s soul—a dreadfully wicked thing to do. Do you suppose I would have you perjure yours for the sake of a miserable stew-pot? Put it down. Don’t touch the accursed thing. Leave it in the ditch. Hang it on the hedge. I’ll send Sidge for it.”
Send Sidge? At once I snatched it up again, remarking that what Lord Sigismund could fetch I hoped Baron von Ottringel could carry; to which she made no answer, but a faint little sound as we resumed our journey came from behind her motor veil, whether of approval and acquiescence or disapproval and contradiction I cannot say, for there was nothing, on looking at her as she
“Dear Baron,” said she, “do you think it is wrong to carry stew-pots?”