Part 6

“Oh, no, that, was not what I referred to,” Mrs Albert set me right. “Of course, I was aware of her names. I had seen them in the ‘Peerage’ for years. It was what she did after her entrance that covers her with infamy. But I will narrate the events in their order. First, we collected £1100. Of course, our own contribution was not large, but Ermyntrude and I hunted the various church registers--we don’t speak of it, but even the Nonconformist ones we went through--and we got a tremendous number of Christian names more or less what was desired, and our circulars were sent to _every one_, far and near. As I said, we raised quite £1100. Then there came the question of the gift.”

Mrs Albert uttered this last sentence with such deliberate solemnity that I bowed to show my consciousness of its importance.

“Yes,” she went on, “the selection of the gift. Now I had in mind a most appropriate and useful present. Have you heard of the Oboid Oil Engine? No? Well, it is an American invention, and has been brought over here by an American, who has bought the European rights from the inventor. He is in the next building to Albert, in the City, and they meet almost every day at luncheon, and have struck up quite a friendship. He has connections which might be of the _utmost_ importance to Albert, and if Albert could only have been of service to him in introducing this engine, there is literally _no telling_ what might not have come of it. Albert does not _say_ that a partnership would have resulted, but I can read it in his face.”

“But would an oil engine have been--under the circumstances--you know what I mean----” I began.

“Oh, _most_ suitable!” responded Mrs Albert with conviction. “It is really, it seems, a very surprising piece of machinery. After it’s once bought, the cheapness of running it is simply _absurd_. It does all sorts of things at no expense worth mentioning--anything you want it to do. It appears that if it had been invented at that time, the pyramids in Egypt could have been built by it for something like 130 per cent, less than their cost is estimated to have been--or something like that. Oh, it is quite extraordinary, I assure you. Albert says he could stand and watch it working for hours--especially if he had an interest in the company.”

“But I hadn’t heard that there were any new pyramid plans on just now--although, when I think of it, Shaw-Lefevre did have some Westminster Abbey project which----”

“No, no!” interrupted Mrs Albert. “One of the engine’s greatest uses is in agriculture. It does _everything_--threshes, garners, mows, milks--or no, not that, but almost _everything_. No self-respecting farmer, they say, dreams of being without one--that is, of course, if he knows about it. You can see what it would have meant, if one had been thus publicly introduced on the princely farm at Sandringham. All England would have rung with demands for the Oboid--and Albert feels sure that the American man would have been grateful--and--and--then perhaps we need never have left Fernbank at all.”

My poor friend shook her head mournfully at the thought

“And the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn?” I asked.

The fire came back into Mrs Albert’s eye. “That woman,” she said, with bitter calmness, “was positively not ashamed to intrude her own mercenary and self-seeking designs upon this loyal and purely patriotic association. Why, she did it almost openly. She intrigued behind my back with whole streetsful of people that one would hardly know on ordinary occasions, paid them calls in a carriage got up for the occasion with a bright new coat of arms, made friends with them, promised them heaven only knows what, and actually secured nineteen votes to my three for the purchase of a mouldy old piece of tapestry--something about Richard III and Oliver Cromwell meeting on the battlefield, I think the subject is--which belonged to her husband’s family. Of course, my lips are sealed, but I have been _told_ that at Christie’s it would hardly have fetched £100. I say nothing myself, but I can’t prevent people drawing certain deductions, can I? And when I reflect also that her two most active supporters in this nefarious business were Lady Thames-Ditton--whose financial difficulties are notorious--and the Countess of Wimps---- whose tradespeople--well, we won’t go into _that_--it does force one to ask whether the fabric of British society is not being undermined at its very top. In this very day’s paper I read that the Hon. Mrs Coon-Alwyn has hired a yacht, and will spend the summer in Norwegian waters--while we--we----”

The door opened, and we made out through the half-light the comfortable figure of Uncle Dudley. He was mopping his brow, and breathed heavily from his long walk as he advanced.

“Well?” Mrs Albert asked, in a saddened and subdued tone, “Did you see the place?”

“There are five bedrooms on the two upper floors,” he made answer, “but there’s no bath-room, and the bus doesn’t come within four streets of the house.”

_Introducing Scenes from a Foreign Country, and also conveying Welcome Intelligence, together with some Instruction_

It was at a little village perched well up on one of the carriage-roads ascending the Brocken, a fortnight or so ago, that I received a wire from Uncle Dudley. It was kind of him to think of it--all the more as he had good news to tell. “Family lighted square on their feet,” was what the message said, and I was glad to gather from this that the Grundys had weathered their misfortunes, and that Mrs Albert was herself again.

The thought was full of charm. It seemed as if I had never realised before how fond I was of these good people. In sober fact; I dare say that I had not dwelt much upon their woes during my holiday. But now, with this affectionately thoughtful telegram addressing me as their oldest friend, the one whom they wished to be the first to share the joy of their rescued state, it was easy enough to make myself believe that my whole vacation had been darkened with brooding over their unhappiness.

It had not occurred to me before, but that was undoubtedly why I had not liked the Harz so much this year as usual. Now that I thought of it, walking down the birch-lined footpath towards the hamlet and the telegraph office, the place seemed to have gone off a good deal. In other seasons, before the spectre of cholera flooded its sylvan retreats with an invading horde of Hamburgers, the Harzwald had been my favourite resort. I had grown to love its fir-clad slopes, its shadowed glens, its atmosphere of prehistoric myth and legend, as if I were part and product of them all. Its people, too, had come much nearer to my breast than any other Germans ever could. I had enjoyed being with them just because they were what the local schoolmaster disdainfully declared them to be--_Erdzertrümmerungsprozeszuribekanntevolk_--that is to say, people entirely ignorant of the scientific theories about geological upheavals and volcanic formations, and so able cheerfully to put their trust in the goblins who reared these strange boulders in fantastic piles on every hill top, and to hear with good faith the shouts of the witches as they bounded over the Hexentanzplatz. Last year it had seemed even worth the added discomfort of the swarming Hamburgers to be again in this wholesome, sweet-aired primitive place. But this year--I saw now clearly as I looked over Uncle Dudley’s message once more--it had not been so pleasant. The hotel boy, Fritzchen, whom I had watched year after year with the warmth of a fatherly well-wisher--smiling with satisfaction at his jovial countenance, his bustling and competent ways, and his comical attempts at English--had this season swollen up into a burly and consequential lout, with a straw-coloured sprouting on his upper-lip, and a military manner. They called him Fritz now, and he gave me beer out of the old keg after I had heard the new one tapped.

The evening gatherings of the villagers in the hotel, too, were not amusing as they once had been. The huge lion-maned and grossly over-bearded _Kantor_, or music-master, who came regularly at nightfall to thump on the table with his bludgeon-like walking stick, to roar forth impassioned monologues on religion and politics, and to bellow ceaselessly at Fritzchen for more beer, had formerly delighted me. This time he seemed only a noisy nuisance, and the half-circle of grave old retired foresters and middle-aged _Jàger_ officers who sat watching him over their pipes, striving vainly now and again to get in a word edgewise about the auctions of felled trees in the woods, or the mutinous tendencies of the charcoal-burners, presented themselves in the light of tiresome prigs. If they had been worth their salt, I felt, they would long ago have brained the Kantor with their stoneware mugs. Even as I walked I began to be conscious that a three weeks’ stay in the Harz was a good deal of time, and that the remaining third would certainly hang on my hands.

By the time I reached the telegraph station I had my answer to Uncle Dudley ready in my mind. He liked the forcible imagery of Australia and the Far West; and I would speak to him at this joyful juncture after his own heart. It seemed that I could best do this by giving him to understand that I was celebrating his news--that I was, in one of his own phrases, “painting the town red.” It required some ingenuity to work this idea out right, but I finally wrote what appeared to answer the purpose:--“_Brocken und Umgebung sind roth gemalen_”--and handed it in to the man at the window.

He was a young man with close-cropped yellow hair and spectacles, holding his chin and neck very stiff in the high collar of his uniform. He glanced over my despatch, at first with careless dignity. Then he read it again attentively. Then he laid it on the table, and bent his tight-buttoned form over it as well as might be in a severe and prolonged scrutiny. At last he raised himself, turned a petrifying gaze on through his glasses at me, and shook his head.

“It is not true,” he said. “Some one has you deceived.”

“But,” I tried to explain to him, with the little German that I knew scattering itself in all directions in the face of this crisis, “it is a figure of speech, a joke, a----”

The telegraph man stared coldly at my luckless despatch, and then at me. “You would wish to state to your friend, perhaps,” he suggested, “that they seem as if they had been coloured with red, owing to the change in the leaves.”

“No, no,” I put in. “It must be that they _have_ been painted, _are_ painted, or he will not me understand.”

“But, my good sir,” retorted the operator with emphasis, “they are _not_ painted! From the door gaze you forth! What make you with this nonsense, that Brocken and vicinity are red painted?”

“Well, then,” I said wearily, oppressed by the magnitude of the task, “I don’t know how to word it myself, but you can fix it for me. Just say that I am _going_ to paint them red--that will do just as well.

“But you shall not! It is forbidden!” exclaimed the official, holding himself like a poker, and glaring vehemence through his glasses. “It is strongly forbidden! When you one brush-mark shall make, quick to the prison go you. In Germany have we for natural beauty respect--also laws.”

Reluctantly, but of necessity, I abandoned metaphor, and in a humble spirit telegraphed in English to Uncle Dudley at his club that I was very glad. Even as my pen clung in irresolution on the paper over this word “glad,” the impulse rose in me to add: “_Tired of Harz. Am returning immediately_.”

“When the same here is,” remarked the operator, moodily studying the unknown words, “in Brunswick stopped it will be.”

I translated it for him, and added, “I go from here home, to be where officials their own business mind.”

He nodded, not unamiably, and replied as he handed me out my change: “Yes, I know: England. So well their own business there officials mind, that Balfour to Argentina easily comes.”

Walking up the hillside again, already quite captive to the fascination of the morrow’s homeward flight, I met at the turn of the path a family party--father, mother, and two girls in the younger teens--seated along the rocky siding, and gazing with a common air of dejection upon a portentous row of bags and portmanteaus at their feet. The notion that they were Hamburgers died still-born. Nothing more obviously un-German than these wayfarers was ever seen.

“I hope, sir,” the man spoke up as I approached, “that I am right in presuming that you speak English!”

I bowed assent, and even as I did so, recognised him. “I hope _I_ am right,” I answered, “in thinking that I have met you before--at Mr Albert Grundy’s in London--you are the American gentleman with the Oboid Oil Engine, are you not?”

“Well, by George!” he cried, rising and offering his hand with frank delight, and introducing me in a single comprehensive wave to his wife and daughters. “Yes, sir,” he went on, “and I wish I had an Oboid here right now--up in the basement of that stone boarding-house on the knoll there--just for the sake of heating up, and shutting down the valves, and blowing the whole damned thing sky-high. That would suit me, sir, right down to the ground.”

“Were strangers here, sir,” he explained in answer to my question: “we’d seen a good deal of the Dutch at home--I mean _our_ home--and we thought we’d like to take a look at ‘em in the place they come from. Well, sir, we’ve had our look, and we’re satisfied. We don’t want any more on our plate, thank you. One helping is an elegant sufficiency. Do you know the trick they played on us? Why, I took a team of horses yesterday from a place they called Ibsenburg or Ilsenburg, or some such name, and had it explained to my driver that he was to take us up to the top of the Brocken, there, and stop all night, and fetch us back this morning. When we got up as far as Shierke, there, it was getting pretty dark, and the women-folks were nervous, and so we laid up for the night. There didn’t seem anything for the driver to do but set around in the kitchen and drink beer, and he needed money for that, and so I gave him some loose silver, and told him to make himself at home. We got the words out of a dictionary for that--_machen sie selbst zu Heim_ we figured ‘em out to be--and I spoke them at him slowly and distinctly, so that he had no earthly excuse for not understanding. But, would you believe it, sir, the miserable cuss just up and skipped out, horses, rig and all, while we were getting supper! And here we were this morning, landed high and dry. No conveyance, nobody to comprehend a word of English, no nothing. We haven’t seen the top of their darned mountain even.”

“What I’m more concerned about, I tell Wilbur,” put in the lady, “is seeing the bottom of it. If they had only sense enough to make valises and bonnet-boxes ball-shaped, we could have rolled ‘em down hill.”

“There’ll be no trouble about all that,” I assured them, and we talked for a little about the simple enough process of getting their luggage carried down to the village, and of finding a vehicle there. I, indeed, agreed to make one of their party on quitting the Harz, that very afternoon.

“And now tell me about the Grundys,” I urged, when these more pressing matters were out of the way. “I got a wire to-day saying--hinting that they are in luck’s way again.”

“Is that so?” exclaimed the American, at once surprised and pleased. “I’m glad to hear it. I can’t guess what it might be in. Grundy’s got so many irons in the fire--some white hot, some lukewarm, some frosted straight through--you never can tell. The funny thing is--he can’t tell himself. Why, sir, those men of yours in the City of London, they don’t know any more about business than a babe unborn. If they were in New York they’d have their eyeteeth skinned out of their heads in the shake of a lamb’s tail. Why, we’ve been milking them dry for a dozen years back. And yet, you know, somehow----”

“Somehow--?” I echoed, encouragingly.

“Well, sir, somehow--that’s the odd thing about it--they don’t stay milked.”

_Disclosing the Educational Influence exerted by the Essex Coast, and other Matters, including Reasons for Joy_

Sit down here by the fire--no, in the easy chair,” said Ermyntrude, with a note of solicitude in her kindly voice. “Mamma won’t be home for half an hour yet, and I want a nice, quiet, serious talk with you. Oh, it’s going to be extremely serious, and you must begin by playing that you are at least one hundred and fifty years old.”

“That won’t be so difficult,” I replied, not without the implication of injury. “It will only be adding a few decades to the venerableness that I seem always to possess in your eyes.”

“Oh!” said Ermie, and looked at me inquiringly for a moment. Then she seated herself, and gazed with much steadiness into the fire. I waited for the nice, serious talk to begin--and waited a long time.

“Well, my dear child,” I broke in upon the silence at last, “I hoped to have been the very first to come and tell your mother how deeply glad I was to see you all back again in Fernbank. But that wretched rheumatism of mine--_at my age_, you know------”

I was watching narrowly for even the faintest sign of deprecation. She did not stir an eyelash.

“Yes,” she suddenly began, still intently gazing into the fire; “papa has got his money all back, and more. That is, it isn’t the same money, but somebody else’s--I’m sure I don’t know whose. Sometimes I feel sorry for those other people, whoever they are, who have had to give it up to us. Then, other times, I am so glad simply to be in again where it’s warm that I don’t care.”

“The firelight suits your face, Ermie,” I said, noting with the pleasure appropriate to my position as the oldest friend of the family, how sweetly the soft radiance played upward upon the fair young rounded throat and chin, and tipped the little nostrils with rosy light.

“Fortunately,” she went on, as if I had not spoken, “some Americans took the house furnished in September for three months--I think, poor souls, that they believed it was the London season--and so we never had to break up, and we were able to get back again in time for Uncle Dudley to plant all his bulbs. They seem to have been very quiet people. Mamma had a kind of notion that they would practise with bucking horses on the tennis-lawn, and shoot at bottles and clay pigeons here in the drawing-room. The only thing we could find that they did was to paste thick paper over the ventilator in the dining-room. And yet a policeman told our man that they slept with their bedroom windows open all night. Curious, isn’t it?”

“I like to have one of these ‘nice, quiet, serious talks’ with you, Ermie,” I said.

Even at this she did not lift her eyes from the grate. “Oh, don’t be impatient--it will be serious enough,” she warned me. “They say, you know, that drowning people see, in a single instant of time, whole years of events, whole books full of things. Well, I’ve been under water for six months, and--and--I’ve noticed a good deal.”

“Ah! is there a submarine observation station at Clacton-on-Sea? Now you speak of it, I _have_ heard of queer fish being studied there.”

“None queerer than we, my dear friend, you may be sure. Mamma was right in choosing the place. We never once saw a soul we knew. Of course, it is the dullest and commonest thing on earth--but it exactly fitted us during that awful period. We were going at first to Cromer, but mamma learned that that was the chosen resort of dissolute theatrical people--it seems there has been a poem written in which it is called ‘Poppy land,’ which mamma saw at once must be a cover for opium-eating and all sorts of dissipation. So we went to Clacton instead. But what I was going to say is this--I did a great deal of thinking all through those six months. I don’t say that I am any wiser than I was, because, for that matter, I am very much less sure about things than I was before. But I was simply a blank contented fool then. Now it’s different to the extent that I’ve stirred up all sorts of questions and problems buzzing and barking about me, and I don’t know the answers to them, and I can’t get clear of them, and they’re driving me out of my head--and there you are. That’s what I wanted to talk with you about.”

I shifted my feet on the fender, and nodded with as sensible an expression as I could muster.

“That’s why I said you must pretend to yourself that you are very old--quite a fatherly person, capable of giving a girl advice--sympathetic advice. In the first place--of course you know that the engagement with that Hon. Knobbeleigh Jones has been off for ages. Don’t interrupt me! It isn’t worth speaking of except for one point. His father, Lord Skillyduff, was the principal rogue in the combination which plundered papa of his money. Having got the Grundy money they had no use for the Grundy girl. Now, he justified his rascality by pleading that he had to make provision for _his_ daughters, and everybody said he was a good father. Papa goes in again through some other opening, and after a long fight brings out a fresh fortune, which he has taken away from somebody else--and I heard him tell mamma that he was doing it for the sake of _his_ daughters. People will say _he_ is a good father--I know _I_ do.”

“None better in this world,” I assented cordially.

“Well, don’t you see,” Ermyntrude went on, “that puts daughters in the light of a doubtful blessing. Papa’s whole worry and struggle was for us--for _me_. I was the load on his back. I don’t like to be a load. While we were prosperous, there was only one way for me to get down--that is by marriage. When we became poor, there was another way--that I should earn my own living. But this papa wouldn’t listen to. He quite swore about it--vowed he would rather work his fingers to the bone; rather do anything, no matter what it was, or what people thought of him for doing it, than that a daughter of his should take care of herself. He would look upon himself as disgraced, he said. Those lodgings of ours at Clacton weren’t specially conducive to good temper, I’m afraid; for I told him that the real disgrace would be to keep me in idleness to sell to some other Knobbeleigh Jones, or to palm me off on some better sort of young man who would bind himself to work for me all his life, and then find that I would have been dear at the price of a fortnight’s labour--and then mamma cried.--and papa, he swore more--and--and--”

I stirred the fire here, and then blushed to rediscover that it was asbestos I was knocking about. “How stupid of me!” I exclaimed, and murmured something about having been a stranger to Fernbank so long.