So began those nine years of uninterrupted tranquillity. They were
characterized by an extraordinary want of any communicativeness
on the part of the Ashburnhams to which we, on our part, replied
by leaving out quite as extraordinarily, and nearly as completely,
the personal note. Indeed, you may take it that what characterized
our relationship was an atmosphere of taking everything for
granted. The given proposition was, that we were all "good
people." We took for granted that we all liked beef underdone but
not too underdone; that both men preferred a good liqueur brandy
after lunch; that both women drank a very light Rhine wine
qualified with Fachingen water--that sort of thing. It was also
taken for granted that we were both sufficiently well off to afford
anything that we could reasonably want in the way of amusements
fitting to our station--that we could take motor cars and carriages
by the day; that we could give each other dinners and dine our
friends and we could indulge if we liked in economy. Thus,
Florence was in the habit of having the Daily Telegraph sent to
her every day from London. She was always an Anglo-maniac,
was Florence; the Paris edition of the New York Herald was
always good enough for me. But when we discovered that the
Ashburnhams' copy of the London paper followed them from
England, Leonora and Florence decided between them to suppress
one subscription one year and the other the next. Similarly it was
the habit of the Grand Duke of Nassau Schwerin, who came
yearly to the baths, to dine once with about eighteen families of
regular Kur guests. In return he would give a dinner of all the
eighteen at once. And, since these dinners were rather expensive
(you had to take the Grand Duke and a good many of his suite and
any members of the diplomatic bodies that might be
there)--Florence and Leonora, putting their heads together, didn't
see why we shouldn't give the Grand Duke his dinner together.
And so we did. I don't suppose the Serenity minded that economy,
or even noticed it. At any rate, our joint dinner to the Royal
Personage gradually assumed the aspect of a yearly function.
Indeed, it grew larger and larger, until it became a sort of closing
function for the season, at any rate as far as we were concerned. I
don't in the least mean to say that we were the sort of persons who
aspired to mix "with royalty." We didn't; we hadn't any claims; we
were just "good people." But the Grand Duke was a pleasant,
affable sort of royalty, like the late King Edward VII, and it was
pleasant to hear him talk about the races and, very occasionally, as
a bonne bouche, about his nephew, the Emperor; or to have him
pause for a moment in his walk to ask after the progress of our
cures or to be benignantly interested in the amount of money we
had put on Lelöffel's hunter for the Frankfurt Welter Stakes.
But upon my word, I don't know how we put in our time. How
does one put in one's time? How is it possible to have achieved
nine years and to have nothing whatever to show for it? Nothing
whatever, you understand. Not so much as a bone penholder,
carved to resemble a chessman and with a hole in the top through
which you could see four views of Nauheim. And, as for
experience, as for knowledge of one's fellow beings--nothing
either. Upon my word, I couldn't tell you offhand whether the lady
who sold the so expensive violets at the bottom of the road that
leads to the station, was cheating me or no; I can't say whether the
porter who carried our traps across the station at Leghorn was a
thief or no when he said that the regular tariff was a lira a parcel.
The instances of honesty that one comes across in this world are
just as amazing as the instances of dishonesty. After forty-five
years of mixing with one's kind, one ought to have acquired the
habit of being able to know something about one's fellow beings.
But one doesn't.
I think the modern civilized habit--the modern English habit of
taking every one for granted--is a good deal to blame for this. I
have observed this matter long enough to know the queer, subtle
thing that it is; to know how the faculty, for what it is worth, never
lets you down.
Mind, I am not saying that this is not the most desirable type of life
in the world; that it is not an almost unreasonably high standard.
For it is really nauseating, when you detest it, to have to eat every
day several slices of thin, tepid, pink india rubber, and it is
disagreeable to have to drink brandy when you would prefer to be
cheered up by warm, sweet Kümmel. And it is nasty to have to
take a cold bath in the morning when what you want is really a hot
one at night. And it stirs a little of the faith of your fathers that is
deep down within you to have to have it taken for granted that you
are an Episcopalian when really you are an old-fashioned
Philadelphia Quaker.
But these things have to be done; it is the cock that the whole of
this society owes to Æsculapius.
And the odd, queer thing is that the whole collection of rules
applies to anybody--to the anybodies that you meet in hotels, in
railway trains, to a less degree, perhaps, in steamers, but even, in
the end, upon steamers. You meet a man or a woman and, from
tiny and intimate sounds, from the slightest of movements, you
know at once whether you are concerned with good people or with
those who won't do. You know, this is to say, whether they will go
rigidly through with the whole programme from the underdone
beef to the Anglicanism. It won't matter whether they be short or
tall; whether the voice squeak like a marionette or rumble like a
town bull's; it won't matter whether they are Germans, Austrians,
French, Spanish, or even Brazilians-- they will be the Germans or
Brazilians who take a cold bath every morning and who move,
roughly speaking, in diplomatic circles.
But the inconvenient--well, hang it all, I will say it--the damnable
nuisance of the whole thing is, that with all the taking for granted,
you never really get an inch deeper than the things I have
catalogued.
I can give you a rather extraordinary instance of this. I can't
remember whether it was in our first year--the first year of us four
at Nauheim, because, of course, it would have been the fourth
year of Florence and myself--but it must have been in the first or
second year. And that gives the measure at once of the
extraordinariness of our discussion and of the swiftness with
which intimacy had grown up between us. On the one hand we
seemed to start out on the expedition so naturally and with so little
preparation, , that it was as if we must have made many such
excursions before; and our intimacy seemed so deep. . . .
Yet the place to which we went was obviously one to which
Florence at least would have wanted to take us quite early, so that
you would almost think we should have gone there together at the
beginning of our intimacy. Florence was singularly expert as a
guide to archaeological expeditions and there was nothing she
liked so much as taking people round ruins and showing you the
window from which some one looked down upon the murder of
some one else. She only did it once; but she did it quite
magnificently. She could find her way, with the sole help of
Baedeker, as easily about any old monument as she could about
any American city where the blocks are all square and the streets
all numbered, so that you can go perfectly easily from
Twenty-fourth to Thirtieth.
Now it happens that fifty minutes away from Nauheim, by a good
train, is the ancient city of M----, upon a great pinnacle of basalt,
girt with a triple road running sideways up its shoulder like a
scarf. And at the top there is a castle--not a square castle like
Windsor, but a castle all slate gables and high peaks with gilt
weathercocks flashing bravely--the castle of St Elizabeth of
Hungary. It has the disadvantage of being in Prussia; and it is
always disagreeable to go into that country; but it is very old and
there are many double-spired churches and it stands up like a
pyramid out of the green valley of the Lahn. I don't suppose the
Ashburnhams wanted especially to go there and I didn't especially
want to go there myself. But, you understand, there was no
objection. It was part of the cure to make an excursion three or
four times a week. So that we were all quite unanimous in being
grateful to Florence for providing the motive power. Florence, of
course, had a motive of her own. She was at that time engaged in
educating Captain Ashburnham--oh, of course, quite pour le bon
motif! She used to say to Leonora: "I simply can't understand how
you can let him live by your side and be so ignorant!" Leonora
herself always struck me as being remarkably well educated. At
any rate, she knew beforehand all that Florence had to tell her.
Perhaps she got it up out of Baedeker before Florence was up in
the morning. I don't mean to say that you would ever have known
that Leonora knew anything, but if Florence started to tell us how
Ludwig the Courageous wanted to have three wives at once--in
which he differed from Henry VIII, who wanted them one after
the other, and this caused a good deal of trouble--if Florence
started to tell us this, Leonora would just nod her head in a way
that quite pleasantly rattled my poor wife.
She used to exclaim: "Well, if you knew it, why haven't you told it
all already to Captain Ashburnham? I'm sure he finds it
interesting!" And Leonora would look reflectively at her husband
and say: "I have an idea that it might injure his hand--the hand,
you know, used in connection with horses' mouths. . . ." And poor
Ashburnham would blush and mutter and would say: "That's all
right. Don't you bother about me."
I fancy his wife's irony did quite alarm poor Teddy; because one
evening he asked me seriously in the smoking-room if I thought
that having too much in one's head would really interfere with
one's quickness in polo. It struck him, he said, that brainy
Johnnies generally were rather muffs when they got on to four
legs. I reassured him as best I could. I told him that he wasn't
likely to take in enough to upset his balance. At that time the
Captain was quite evidently enjoying being educated by Florence.
She used to do it about three or four times a week under the
approving eyes of Leonora and myself. It wasn't, you understand,
systematic. It came in bursts. It was Florence clearing up one of
the dark places of the earth, leaving the world a little lighter than
she had found it. She would tell him the story of Hamlet; explain
the form of a symphony, humming the first and second subjects to
him, and so on; she would explain to him the difference between
Arminians and Erastians; or she would give him a short lecture on
the early history of the United States. And it was done in a way
well calculated to arrest a young attention. Did you ever read Mrs
Markham? Well, it was like that. . . .
But our excursion to M---- was a much larger, a much more full
dress affair. You see, in the archives of the Schloss in that city
there was a document which Florence thought would finally give
her the chance to educate the whole lot of us together. It really
worried poor Florence that she couldn't, in matters of culture, ever
get the better of Leonora. I don't know what Leonora knew or
what she didn't know, but certainly she was always there
whenever Florence brought out any information. And she gave,
somehow, the impression of really knowing what poor Florence
gave the impression of having only picked up. I can't exactly
define it. It was almost something physical. Have you ever seen a
retriever dashing in play after a greyhound? You see the two
running over a green field, almost side by side, and suddenly the
retriever makes a friendly snap at the other. And the greyhound
simply isn't there. You haven't observed it quicken its speed or
strain a limb; but there it is, just two yards in front of the
retriever's outstretched muzzle. So it was with Florence and
Leonora in matters of culture.
But on this occasion I knew that something was up. I found
Florence some days before, reading books like Ranke's History of
the Popes, Symonds' Renaissance, Motley's Rise of the Dutch
Republic and Luther's Table Talk.
I must say that, until the astonishment came, I got nothing but
pleasure out of the little expedition. I like catching the two-forty; I
like the slow, smooth roll of the great big trains--and they are the
best trains in the world! I like being drawn through the green
country and looking at it through the clear glass of the great
windows. Though, of course, the country isn't really green. The
sun shines, the earth is blood red and purple and red and green
and red. And the oxen in the ploughlands are bright varnished
brown and black and blackish purple; and the peasants are dressed
in the black and white of magpies; and there are great Rocks of
magpies too. Or the peasants' dresses in another field where there
are little mounds of hay that will be grey-green on the sunny side
and purple in the shadows--the peasants' dresses are vermilion
with emerald green ribbons and purple skirts and white shirts and
black velvet stomachers. Still, the impression is that you are
drawn through brilliant green meadows that run away on each side
to the dark purple fir-woods; the basalt pinnacles; the immense
forests. And there is meadowsweet at the edge of the streams, and
cattle. Why, I remember on that afternoon I saw a brown cow
hitch its horns under the stomach of a black and white animal and
the black and white one was thrown right into the middle of a
narrow stream. I burst out laughing. But Florence was imparting
information so hard and Leonora was listening so intently that no
one noticed me. As for me, I was pleased to be off duty; I was
pleased to think that Florence for the moment was indubitably out
of mischief--because she was talking about Ludwig the
Courageous (I think it was Ludwig the Courageous but I am not an
historian) about Ludwig the Courageous of Hessen who wanted to
have three wives at once and patronized Luther--something like
that!--I was so relieved to be off duty, because she couldn't
possibly be doing anything to excite herself or set her poor heart
a-fluttering--that the incident of the cow was a real joy to me. I
chuckled over it from time to time for the whole rest of the day.
Because it does look very funny, you know, to see a black and
white cow land on its back in the middle of a stream. It is so just
exactly what one doesn't expect of a cow.
I suppose I ought to have pitied the poor animal; but I just didn't. I
was out for enjoyment. And I just enjoyed myself. It is so pleasant
to be drawn along in front of the spectacular towns with the
peaked castles and the many double spires. In the sunlight gleams
come from the city--gleams from the glass of windows; from the
gilt signs of apothecaries; from the ensigns of the student corps
high up in the mountains; from the helmets of the funny little
soldiers moving their stiff little legs in white linen trousers. And it
was pleasant to get out in the great big spectacular Prussian station
with the hammered bronze ornaments and the paintings of
peasants and flowers and cows; and to hear Florence bargain
energetically with the driver of an ancient droschka drawn by two
lean horses. Of course, I spoke German much more correctly than
Florence, though I never could rid myself quite of the accent of
the Pennsylvania Duitsch of my childhood. Anyhow, we were
drawn in a sort of triumph, for five marks without any trinkgeld,
right up to the castle. And we were taken through the museum and
saw the fire-backs, the old glass, the old swords and the antique
contraptions. And we went up winding corkscrew staircases and
through the Rittersaal, the great painted hall where the Reformer
and his friends met for the first time under the protection of the
gentleman that had three wives at once and formed an alliance
with the gentleman that had six wives, one after the other (I'm not
really interested in these facts but they have a bearing on my
story). And we went through chapels, and music rooms, right up
immensely high in the air to a large old chamber, full of presses,
with heavily-shuttered windows all round. And Florence became
positively electric. She told the tired, bored custodian what
shutters to open; so that the bright sunlight streamed in palpable
shafts into the dim old chamber. She explained that this was
Luther's bedroom and that just where the sunlight fell had stood his
bed. As a matter of fact, I believe that she was wrong and that
Luther only stopped, as it were, for lunch, in order to evade
pursuit. But, no doubt, it would have been his bedroom if he could
have been persuaded to stop the night. And then, in spite of the
protest of the custodian, she threw open another shutter and came
tripping back to a large glass case.
"And there," she exclaimed with an accent of gaiety, of triumph,
and of audacity. She was pointing at a piece of paper, like the
half-sheet of a letter with some faint pencil scrawls that might
have been a jotting of the amounts we were spending during the
day. And I was extremely happy at her gaiety, in her triumph, in
her audacity. Captain Ashburnham had his hands upon the glass
case. "There it is--the Protest." And then, as we all properly
stage-managed our bewilderment, she continued: "Don't you know
that is why we were all called Protestants? That is the pencil draft
of the Protest they drew up. You can see the signatures of Martin
Luther, and Martin Bucer, and Zwingli, and Ludwig the
Courageous. . . ."
I may have got some of the names wrong, but I know that Luther
and Bucer were there. And her animation continued and I was
glad. She was better and she was out of mischief. She continued,
looking up into Captain Ashburnham's eyes: "It's because of that
piece of paper that you're honest, sober, industrious, provident,
and clean-lived. If it weren't for that piece of paper you'd be like
the Irish or the Italians or the Poles, but particularly the Irish. . . ."
And she laid one finger upon Captain Ashburnham' s wrist.
I was aware of something treacherous, something frightful,
something evil in the day. I can't define it and can't find a simile
for it. It wasn't as if a snake had looked out of a hole. No, it was as
if my heart had missed a beat. It was as if we were going to run
and cry out; all four of us in separate directions, averting our
heads. In Ashburnham's face I know that there was absolute panic.
I was horribly frightened and then I discovered that the pain in my
left wrist was caused by Leonora's clutching it:
"I can't stand this," she said with a most extraordinary passion; "I
must get out of this." I was horribly frightened. It came to me for
a moment, though I hadn't time to think it, that she must be a
madly jealous woman--jealous of Florence and Captain
Ashburnham, of all people in the world! And it was a panic in
which we fled! We went right down the winding stairs, across the
immense Rittersaal to a little terrace that overlooks the Lahn, the
broad valley and the immense plain into which it opens out.
"Don't you see?" she said, "don't you see what's going on?" The
panic again stopped my heart. I muttered, I stuttered--I don't know
how I got the words out:
"No! What's the matter? Whatever's the matter?"
She looked me straight in the eyes; and for a moment I had the
feeling that those two blue discs were immense, were
overwhelming, were like a wall of blue that shut me off from the
rest of the world. I know it sounds absurd; but that is what it did
feel like.
"Don't you see," she said, with a really horrible bitterness, with a
really horrible lamentation in her voice, "Don't you see that that's
the cause of the whole miserable affair; of the whole sorrow of the
world? And of the eternal damnation of you and me and them. . .
."
I don't remember how she went on; I was too frightened; I was too
amazed. I think I was thinking of running to fetch assistance--a
doctor, perhaps, or Captain Ashburnham. Or possibly she needed
Florence's tender care, though, of course, it would have been very
bad for Florence's heart. But I know that when I came out of it she
was saying: "Oh, where are all the bright, happy, innocent beings
in the world? Where's happiness? One reads of it in books!"
She ran her hand with a singular clawing motion upwards over her
forehead. Her eyes were enormously distended; her face was
exactly that of a person looking into the pit of hell and seeing
horrors there. And then suddenly she stopped. She was, most
amazingly, just Mrs Ashburnham again. Her face was perfectly
clear, sharp and defined; her hair was glorious in its golden coils.
Her nostrils twitched with a sort of contempt. She appeared to look
with interest at a gypsy caravan that was coming over a little
bridge far below us.
"Don't you know," she said, in her clear hard voice, "don't you
know that I'm an Irish Catholic?"
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