"Well," he said, "now I'll explain. I'm not ignorant, like they are. I've been in Egypt and Malta and Gibraltar. I've met hundreds of English ladies travelling as you are, and I know how funny this must appear to you. I'll tell you how it is for them. They have sixty or seventy pounds a year, and not one of them has been paid for six months. They play cards with the trades-people in hopes of winning enough to buy tobacco. I do wish you would point out to me the one that spoke to you last night; I think it is perhaps the one I lent ten francs to yesterday. The innkeeper is very pleased to see you, because he knows you will pay. When these poor boys get their pay, it will all be taken from them at once for their debts. That is the situation. Then you come, as it were from the heavens! They hear you are English. It is seen at once you have no ring on your finger. It is evident, then, that you hate all Englishmen. On the other hand, you like Servia, or why should you have come? My God! they think, what a chance! Not twice in a hundred years! But one of them was undoubtedly too hasty." He went on to inform me that a very nice one could be had for about forty pounds a year.
I gazed upon the enemy's entrenchment, decided that I was hopelessly outnumbered and that flight was the only way, mobilised my force of one man and two horses, and retired in good order while yet there was time, slightly humiliated by the feeling that Britain was flying from a foreign army, but bowing graciously to such of its representatives as were kind enough to salute as I passed.
And as I left and passed through the rich valleys and grassy uplands, and thought of the many kind friends who had helped me on my way, I was grieved that a land with so many possibilities and so much that is good and beautiful in it should be brought, by bad government, to such a pass that the officers are reduced to hawking themselves upon the streets. But all this I was to learn later. At Valjevo I merely looked at the officers and admired.
My journey to Obrenovatz, the next town on my route, was amusing, as I shared a carriage with a "commercial," a Jew who among other things was agent for a life-insurance company. He was on his return journey, and we halted from time to time at various houses, that he might, if possible, reap the results of the seeds he had sown on his outward march. Everywhere he preached the benefits of life insurance. He suggested at last that I should insure for the sake of my fiancé! When I said I hadn't one, he saw a fresh opening for business. He had, he said, married his own daughter extremely well. He enlarged upon the highly successful nature of his own marriage, and told me about Someone-avich who had married an English wife who is exceedingly happy. Finally, worn out by his fruitless exertions, he fell asleep.
At eleven we put up at Ub, and I had plenty of time to amuse myself. Sitting on the bench by the inn door, I made folded paper toys for the children, and soon had a semicircle of tiny boys round me. A little gipsy girl looked on at them with superb contempt. As soon as they had cleared off, she sailed up and seated herself by my side with the air of one conferring a favour. She was a slip of a thing, nine years old, but with the self-possession of fifty. "I am ciganka" (gipsy), she said. "Where do you come from?" I told her, but she had never heard of my native land. She was brown as a berry, and had on nothing but a dirty old scarlet frock which had shed its fastenings. She dangled her skinny brown legs and fixed me with her sparkling black eyes; her hair, she told me, was far superior to my own; in proof of her words, she took off the yellow handkerchief in which her head was swathed and offered for inspection a small and most filthy plait of coal-black hair in which were fastened three or four coins, which she pointed out with glee. It was, in fact, the savings bank in which she had just opened an account. I at once produced a nickel 2d., which she accepted with much satisfaction. A man on the next bench threw down a cigarette end, and she pounced on it like a cat on a mouse. When she returned with it, she looked cautiously round to be sure that no one else could see, and then, sheltered by my skirts, she extracted from inside her frock a handkerchief tied up in a bundle, and displayed with great pride a mass of cigarette ends and other valuables. I duly admired; the new one was added to the collection, and it was all stowed away again with great precaution. Then she tried to look unconscious. Muttering something I didn't understand, she peeped in at the inn door. The floor was richly strewn with cigarette ends. She slipped in and crept round the room swiftly and silently. The lady of the inn and most of the other people saw her quite well; I don't think they had the least objection to her clearing the floor of rubbish. She preferred, however, to consider it as a dangerous raiding expedition, dashed from cover to cover quite scientifically, collecting as she went, and sneaked out again with her spoils, the spirit of all her horse-stealing ancestors twinkling in her eyes. She displayed her loot to me, for she took it for granted that I was a sympathetic soul; and as there is reason to believe that one of my forefathers sold horses in Queen Elizabeth's reign, it is possible that we may have had ideas in common.
By the time the carriage and my travelling companions were ready, I had interviewed several other people, and felt quite at home in Ub. It was hot on the road. Both the "commercial" and the driver felt it very much, and stopped at all the wells and drank quantities of cold water, and as a natural consequence perspired a great deal. When they had had seven or eight drinks to my one, they began to get anxious about me, and when they found I had been playing about the streets of Ub instead of going to sleep as they had both done, they were still more astonished, and foretold that by the time I reached Obrenovatz I should be exhausted. We arrived there safely, however, at about 2.30 without my expected collapse.
Obrenovatz was fearfully excited by my arrival, and produced a commercial (a Hungarian) who spoke English, in order to extract a full and particular account of me. My fame had flown before me, for he had seen me a few days ago in Shabatz, had gleaned a few facts about me, and Obrenovatz had already learned that there was an Engleskinja loose in the land, though it had not hoped to see me. When I went out for a walk, all Obrenovatz stood at the door to see. Such notoriety was embarrassing. However, I succeeded in concealing my feelings so effectually that in the evening the conversation turned mainly on the cold-bloodedness of the English nation. Nothing surprised them! nothing upset their equanimity! "Fish blood," they said, "fish blood and steel!" And the insurance agent recounted how I had only had one drink on the road and had remained quite cool all the day, though he and the driver felt the heat badly; here he gave an unnecessarily realistic description of the state of his shirt.
Obrenovatz is remarkable for nothing but its hot sulphur springs and its well-arranged bath house, where it hopes to work up a rheumatism cure. I returned to Belgrade by boat, nor, save the floating watermills and the timber rafts that drift from the forests of Bosnia and Servia down the Drina to the Save and thence to the Danube, is there much to see upon the river.