The caravaners

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

From this thought I somehow got back to my previous ones, and the longer I lay wakeful the more pronouncedly stern did they become. I am as loyal and loving a son of the Fatherland as it will ever in all human probability beget, but what son after a proper period of probation does not like the ring on the finger, the finer raiment, the paternal embrace, and the invitation to dinner? In other words (and quitting parable), what son after having served his time among such husks as majors does not like promotion to the fatted calves of colonels? For some time past I have been expecting it every day, and if it is not soon granted it is possible that my patience may be so changed to anger that I shall refuse to remain at my post and shall send in my resignation; though I must say I should like a hit at the English first.

Once embarked on these reflections I could not again close my eyes, and lay awake for the remaining hours of the night with as great a din going on as ever I heard in my life. I have described this—the effect of heavy rain when you are in a caravan—in that portion of the narrative dealing with the night on Grip’s Common, so need only repeat that it resembles nothing so much as a sharp pelting with unusually hard stones. Edelgard, if she did indeed sleep, must be of an almost terrifying toughness, for the roof on which this pelting was going on was but a few inches from her head.

As the cold dawn crept in between the folds of our window-curtains and the noise had in no way abated, I began very seriously to wonder how I could possibly get up and go out and eat breakfast under such conditions. There was my mackintosh, and I also had galoshes, but I could not appear before Frau von Eckthum in the sponge bag, and yet that was the only sensible covering for my head. But what after all could galoshes avail in such a flood? The stubble field, I felt, could be nothing by then but a lake; no fire could live in it; no stove but would be swamped. Were it not better, if such was to be the weather, to return to London, take rooms in some water-tight boarding-house, and frequent the dryness of museums? Of course it would be better. Better? Must not anything in the world be better than that which is the worst?

But, alas, I had been made to pay beforehand for the Elsa, and had taken the entire responsibility for her and her horse’s safe return and even if I could bring myself to throw away such a sum as I had disbursed one cannot leave a caravan lying about as though it were what our neighbours across the Vosges call a mere bagatelle. It is not a bagatelle. On the contrary, it is a huge and complicated mechanism that must go with you like the shell on the poor snail’s back wherever you go. There is no escape from it, once you have started, day or night. Where was Panthers by now, Panthers with its kind and helpful little lady? Heaven alone knew, after all our zigzagging. Find it by myself I certainly could not, for not only had we zigzagged in obedience to the caprices of Mrs. Menzies-Legh, but I had walked most of the time as a man in a dream, heeding nothing particularly except my growing desire to sit down.

I wondered grimly as six o’clock drew near, the hour at which the rest of the company usually burst into activity, whether there would be many exclamations of healthy and jolly that day. There is a point, I should say, at which a thing or a condition becomes so excessively healthy and jolly that it ceases to be either. I drew the curtain of my bunk together—for a great upheaval over my head warned me that my wife was going to descend and dress—and feigned slumber. Sleep seemed to me such a safe thing. You cannot make a man rise and do what you consider his duty if he will not wake up. The only free man, I reflected with my eyes tightly shut, is the man who is asleep. Pushing my reflection a little further I saw with a slight start that real freedom and independence are only, then, to be found in the unconscious—a race (or sect; call it what you will) of persons untouched by and above the law. And one step further and I saw with another slight start that perfect freedom, perfect liberty, perfect deliverance from trammels, are only to be found in a person who is not merely unconscious but also dead.

These, of course, as I need not tell my hearers, are metaphysics. I do not often embark on their upsetting billows for I am, principally, a practical man. But on this occasion they were not as fruitless as usual, for the thought of a person dead suggested at once the thought of a person engaged in going through the sickness preliminary to being dead, and a sick man is also to a certain extent free—nobody, that is, can make him get up and go out into the rain and hold his umbrella over Jellaby’s back while he concocts his terrible porridge. I decided that I would slightly exaggerate the feelings of discomfort which I undoubtedly felt, and take a day off in the haven of my bed. Let them see to it that the horse was led; a man in bed cannot lead a horse. Nor would it even be an exaggeration, for one who has been wakeful half the night cannot be said to be in normal health. Besides, if you come to that, who is in normal health? I should say no one. Certainly hardly any one. And if you appeal to youth as an instance, what could be younger and yet more convulsed with apparent torment than the newly born infant? Hardly any one, I maintain, is well without stopping during a single whole day. One forgets, by means of the anodynes of work or society or other excitement; but cut off a person’s means of doing anything or seeing any one and he will soon find out that at least his head is aching.

When, therefore, Edelgard had reached the stage of tidying the caravan, arranging my clothes, and emptying the water out of the window preparatory to my dressing, I put the curtains aside and beckoned to her and made her understand by dint of much shouting (for the rain still pelted on the roof) that I was feeling very weak and could not get up.

She looked at me anxiously, and pushing up the sponge bag—at which she stared rather stupidly—laid her hand on my forehead. I thought her hand seemed hot, and hoped we were not both going to be ill at the same time. Then she felt my pulse. Then she looked down at me with a worried expression and said—I could not hear it, but knew the protesting shape her mouth assumed: “But Otto——”

I just shook my head and closed my eyes. You cannot make a man open his eyes. Shut them, and you shut out the whole worrying, hurrying world, and enter into a calm cave of peace from which, so long as you keep them shut no one can possibly pull you. I felt she stood there awhile longer looking down at me before putting on her cloak and preparing to face the elements; then the door was unbolted, a gust of wet air came in, the caravan gave a lurch, and Edelgard had jumped into the stubble.

Only for a short time was I able to reflect on her growing agility, and how four days back she could no more jump into stubble or anything else than can other German ladies of good family, and how the costume she had bought in Berlin and which had not fitted her not only without a wrinkle but also with difficulty, seemed gradually to be turning into a misfit, to be widening, to be loosening, and those parts of it which had before been smooth were changing every day into a greater bagginess—I was unable, I say, to think about these things because, worn out, I at last fell asleep.