CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH THE REV. JOHN RECEIVES A SHOCK
A few days after his arrival, Miles wrote home in the following terms:
"MY DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER,
"I have landed safely, as you know by my telegram, and I expect you are wondering why I have not written before. As a matter of fact, I wanted to have a look round me to see how things were before I broke the news to you. I tell you honestly, if it were not for Nora's sake, and because, of course, I want to pick up some of the lingo, I should have packed up my trunks and come home by the next train. You know how Nora described things to us. You might have imagined them living in palatial apartments with a footman and I don't know what to wait on them.
"Well, my palatial apartment measured eight by eight, and when I get out of bed I have to take care that I don't fall out of the window or into the water-jug. As to the footman, he is a scrubby-looking orderly, who drops bits of potato down your collar whilst he is serving and can't understand a word you say to him. So much for my share of the grandeur. There are four other rooms and they have all about the same dimensions, and have evidently been furnished out of some second-hand place by some one who suffered from colour-blindness. As to the atmosphere! Imagine a kitchen-range with the fat in the fire and you have an idea. Of course, Nora, being English, keeps the windows open, but that's not much good, because we look out on to houses in the front and dirty yards at the back; in fact, I shouldn't think there was a breath of fresh air for miles round. Well, I was fairly thunderstruck, I can tell you, and I have been in varying stages of that condition ever since.
"My first dinner—I had an appetite like a wolf—would have made any ordinary wolf turn tail. Nora said she had had to leave it to the cook, and so everything had gone wrong. It had, and the only wonder is that I didn't go wrong afterwards. The soup was a miniature salt-lake, the meat so tough I couldn't get my knife through it, and the pudding—I never got to the bottom of that pudding, and I hope I never shall. It was a ghastly meal; Wolff was as glum as an undertaker, and Nora as near crying as she could be without coming to the real thing, and I wasn't particularly sprightly, as you can imagine.
"However, at last I got to bed—or the thing which they call a bed—an iron affair with no springs that I could find, and a rotten, puffed-out air-cushion for a covering, which fell off five times in the night and had to be fished up from the floor. At seven o'clock—seven o'clock if you please!—I was thumped awake by the orderly, who had planted a five-inch pot of lukewarm water in my basin. He jabbered a lot which I didn't understand, and then of course I went to sleep again. At about nine I yelled for my bath, and in came Nora, looking awfully tired and worried. It seems she had been up ever since seven slaving at the house—I mean loft—trying to get it shipshape before lunch. After a lot of fuss I got hold of Wolff's hip-bath and had some sort of a wash, getting down to breakfast at ten. Breakfast! Coffee and rolls! Coffee and rolls! I wonder if I shall ever get a square meal again! Wolff had already gone off and didn't get back till lunch, when we had a new edition of supper (which, it appears, had been extra grand on my account). He doesn't seem to mind what he eats, and is always talking shop, which, I am sure, bores Nora as much as it does me.
"What a beastly lot these German fellows think of themselves and their beastly army! He talks about it as though it were a sort of holy institution compared to which nothing else mattered, and goes clattering about the house with his spurs like a god on wheels. Thank Heaven he is not at home much, or we should be having rows in no time. Yesterday, for instance, I came down at ten for breakfast, and in the afternoon he spoke to me about it as though I were a sort of raw recruit—said it gave Nora a lot of extra work, and that he must ask me to be more punctual. I held my tongue for Nora's sake, but I longed to give him a bit of my mind in good English. I longed to ask him why, if he is so keen on Nora being spared, he doesn't see that she has a proper cook and housemaid, why he lets her work like a servant herself whilst he goes off and amuses himself—as I know he does. He can't be badly off. His uniforms are spotless, and he has a ripping horse, which he rides every day. A lot of riding Nora gets—except now and again on borrowed regimental hacks! As to the theatre, she has only been twice since they were married—it's too expensive in Berlin forsooth! and I know for a fact that she has not had a new dress. I suppose all Germans treat their wives like that; but it makes my blood boil to think that Nora should have to put up with it.
"As to their grand friends, I don't think much of them. They all seem to live in the same poky style, and the dinner we were invited to the other day fairly did for me. We sat something like two hours over three courses, each one worse than the other, and the people shouted and jabbered as though they were in a monkey-house. What with the food and the bad wine and the row, I hardly knew whether I was on my head or my heels. Wolff and I had a bit of a jar about it afterwards. He said it was gemütlich, or whatever the word is, and I said it was beastly and that wild horses wouldn't drag me into such a show again, whereupon he had the cheek to inform me that I probably wouldn't be asked and that he thought it was bad form to criticise one's host because he didn't happen to be rich. Nora was nearly in tears, so I held my tongue; but you can guess what I felt like. Imagine that foreigner trying to teach me good form! Of course, I know, mother, that you had a weakness for Wolff, but you should see him in his own home—a selfish, bullying martinet, whose head I should be heartily delighted to punch. Perhaps I shall one day. Don't worry about me, though. I shall be able to look after myself.