LITMIR.BIZ

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not come. How bored he would be if he did. He would find us full of those excellences Pater calls the more obvious parochial virtues, jealous to madness of the sensitive and bloodthirsty appendage known as our honour, exact in the observance of minor conventionalities, correct in our apparel, rigid in our views, and in our effect uninterruptedly soporific. The man who had succeeded in pushing his thoughts farther into the region of the hitherto unthought than any of his contemporaries would not, I think, if he came once, come again. But it is supposing the impossible, after all, to suppose him invited, for all the great ones of whom the unknown youth talked are Liberals, and all the Junkers are Conservatives; and how shall a German Conservative be the friend of a German Liberal? The thing is unthinkable. Like the young man's own definition of the Absolute, it is a negation of the conceivable.

      By the time we had reached the chestnut grove in front of the inn I had said so little that my companion was sure I was one of the most intelligent women he had ever met. I know he thought so, for he turned suddenly to me as we were walking past the Frau Förster's wash-house and rose-garden up to the chestnuts, and said, 'How is it that German women are so infinitely more intellectual than English women?'

      Intellectual! How nice. And all the result of keeping quiet in the right places.

      'I did not know they were,' I said modestly; which was true.

      'Oh but they are,' he assured me with great positiveness; and added, 'Perhaps you have noticed that I am English?'

      Noticed that he was English? From the moment I first saw his collar I suspected it; from the moment he opened his mouth and spoke I knew it; and so did everybody else under the chestnuts who heard him speaking as he passed. But why not please this artless young man? So I looked at him with the raised eyebrows of intense surprise and said, 'Oh, are you English?'

      'I have been a good deal in Germany,' he said, looking happy.

      'But it is extraordinary,' I said.

      'It is not so very difficult,' he said, looking more and more happy.

      'But really not German? Fabelhaft.'

      The young man's belief in my intelligence was now unshakeable. The Frau Förster, who had seen me disembark and set out for my walk alone, and who saw me now returning with a companion of the other sex, greeted me coldly. Her coldness, I felt, was not unjustifiable. It is not my practice to set out by myself and come back telling youths I have never seen before that their accomplishments are fabelhaft. I began to feel coldly towards myself, and turning to the young man said good-bye with some abruptness.

      'Are you going in?' he asked.

      'I am not staying here.'

      'But the launch does not start for an hour. I go across too, then.'

      'I am not crossing in the launch. I came over in a fishing-smack.'

      'Oh really?' He seemed to meditate. 'How delightfully independent,' he added.

      'Have you not observed that the German Fräulein is as independent as she is intellectual?'

      'No, I have not. That is just where I think the Germans are so far behind us. Their women have nothing like the freedom ours have.'

      'What, not when they sail about all alone in fishing-smacks?'

      'That certainly is unusually enterprising. May I see you safely into it?'

      The Frau Förster came towards us and told him that the food he had ordered for eight o'clock was ready.

      'No, thank you,' I said, 'don't bother. There is a fisherman and a boy to help me in. It is quite easy.'

      'Oh but it is no bother–'

      'I will not take you away from your supper.'

      'Are you not going to have supper here?'

      'I lunched here to-day. So I will not sup.'

      'Is the reason a good one?'

      'You will see. Good-bye.'

      I went away down the path to the beach. The path is steep, and the corn on either side stands thick and high, and a few steps took me out of sight of the house, the chestnuts, and the young man. The smack was lying some distance out, and the dinghy was tied to her stern. The fisherman's son's head was visible in a peaceful position on a heap of ropes. It is difficult as well as embarrassing to shout, as I well knew, but somebody would have to, and as nobody was there but myself I was plainly the one to do it, I put my hands to my mouth, and not knowing the fisherman's name called out Sie. It sounded not only feeble but rude. When I remembered the appearance of the golden-bearded Viking, his majestic presence and dreamy dignity, I was ashamed to find myself standing on a rock and calling him as loud as I could Sie.

      The head on the ropes did not stir. I waved my handkerchief. The boy's eyes were shut. Again I called out Sie, and thought it the most offensive of pronouns. The boy was asleep, and my plaintive cry went past him over the golden ripples towards Lauterbach.

      Then the Englishman appeared against the sky, up on the ridge of the cornfield. He saw my dilemma, and taking his hands out of his pockets ran down. 'Gnädiges Fräulein is in a fix,' he observed in his admirably correct and yet so painful German.

      'She is,' I said.

      'Shall I shout?'

      'Please.'

      He shouted. The boy started up in alarm. The fisherman's huge body reared up from the depths of the boat. In two minutes the dinghy was at the little plank jetty, and I was in it.

      'It was a very good idea to charter one of those romantic smacks to come over in,' said the young man on the jetty wistfully.

      'They're rather fishy,' I replied, smiling, as we pushed off.

      'But so very romantic.'

      'Have you not observed that the German Fräulein is a romantic creature,'—the dinghy began to move—'a beautiful mixture of intelligence, independence, and romance?'

      'Are you staying at Putbus?'

      'No. Good-bye. Thanks for coming down and shouting. You know your food will be quite cold and uneatable.'

      'I gathered from what you said before that it will be uneatable anyhow.'

      The dinghy was moving fast. There was a rapidly-widening strip of golden water between myself and the young man on the jetty.

      'Not all of it,' I said, raising my voice. 'Try the compote. It is lovely compote. It is what you would call in England glorified gooseberry jam.'

      'Glorified gooseberry jam?' echoed the young man, apparently much struck by these three English words. 'Why,' he added, speaking louder, for the golden strip had grown very wide, 'you said that without the ghost of a foreign accent!'

      'Did I?'

      The dinghy shot into the shadow of the fishing-smack. The Viking and the boy shipped their oars, helped me in, tied the dinghy to the stern, hoisted the sail, and we dropped away into the sunset.

      The young man on the distant jetty raised his cap. He might have been a young archangel, standing there the centre of so much glory. Certainly a very personable young man.

      THE THIRD DAY

      FROM LAUTERBACH TO GÖHREN

      The official on the steamer at the Lauterbach jetty had offered to take me to Baabe when I said I wanted to go to Vilm, and I had naturally refused the offer. Afterwards, on looking at the map, I found that Baabe is a place I would have to pass anyhow, if I carried out my plan of driving right round Rügen. The guide-book is enthusiastic about Baabe, and says—after explaining its rather odd name as meaning Die Einsame, the Lonely One—that it has a pine forest, a pure sea air with ozone in it, a climate both mild and salubrious, and that it works wonders on people who have anything the matter with their chests. Then it says that to lie at Baabe embedded in soft dry sand, allowing one's glance to rove about the broad sea with its foam-crested waves, and the rest of one to rejoice in the strong air, is an enviable thing to do. Then it bursts into poetry that goes on for a page about the feelings of him who is embedded, written by one who has been it. And then comes

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