“But surely not here,” murmured Frau von Eckthum
thought her capable Frau von Eckthum refused to spend a night in the donkey field; and Mrs. Menzies-Legh, who was absorbed in snap-shotting the ever-swelling crowd of children and loafers who were surrounding us, suddenly stamped her foot and said she would not either.
“The horses can’t go another yard,” remonstrated Menzies-Legh.
“I won’t sleep with the donkeys,” said his wife, taking another snap.
Her sister said nothing, but held her handkerchief as before.
Then Jellaby, descrying a hedge with willows beyond it at the far-away end of the field, and no doubt conscious of a parliamentary practice in persuasion, said he would get permission to go in there for the night, and disappeared. Lord Sigismund expressed doubts as to his success, for the man, he said, was apparently own brother to the female at the farm, or at any rate of the closest spiritual affinity; but Jellaby did come back after a while, during which the piano-organ’s waltzes had gone on accentuating the blank dreariness of the spot, and said it was all right.
Later on I discovered that what he called all right was paying exactly twice as much per caravan for the superior exclusiveness of the willow field as what was demanded for the donkey field. Well, he did not have to pay, being Menzies-Legh’s guest, so no doubt he did think it all right; but I call it monstrous that I should be asked to pay that which would have secured me a perfectly dry bedroom with no grass in it in a first-rate Berlin hotel for the use for a few hours of a gnat-haunted, nettle-infested, low-lying, swampy meadow.
The monstrosity struck me more afterward when I looked back. That evening I was too tired to be struck, and would, I truly believe, have paid five shillings just for being allowed to sink down into a sitting position, it mattered not where, and remain in it; but there was still much, I feared to do and to suffer before I could so sink down—for instance, there was the gate leading into the donkey field to be got through, the whole population watching, and the pleasant prospect before me of having to reimburse any damage done to a caravan that could only, under the luckiest circumstances, just fit in. Then there was Edelgard to be brought to reason, and suppose she refused to be brought? That is, quickly; for I had no fears as to her ultimate bringing.