Minora and Irais arrived yesterday together; or rather, when the carriage drove up, Irais got out of it alone, and informed me that there was a strange girl on a bicycle a little way behind. I sent back the carriage to pick her up, for it was dusk and the roads are terrible.
“But why do you have strange girls here at all?” asked Irais rather peevishly, taking off her hat in the library before the fire, and otherwise making herself very much at home; “I don’t like them. I’m not sure that they’re not worse than husbands who are out of order. Who is she? She would bicycle from the station, and is, I am sure, the first woman who has done it. The little boys threw stones at her.”
“Oh, my dear, that only shows the ignorance of the little boys. Never mind her. Let us have tea in peace before she comes.”
“But we should be much happier without her,” she grumbled. “Weren’t we happy enough in the summer, Elizabeth—just you and I?”
“Yes, indeed we were,” I answered heartily, putting my arms round her. The flame of my affection for Irais burns very brightly on the day of her arrival; besides, this time I have prudently provided against her sinning with the saltcellars by ordering them to be handed round like vegetable dishes. We had finished tea and she had gone up to her room to dress before Minora and her bicycle were got here. I hurried out to meet her, feeling sorry for her, plunged into a circle of strangers at such a very personal season as Christmas. But she was not very shy; indeed, she was less shy than I was, and lingered in the hall, giving the servants directions to wipe the snow off the tyres of her machine before she lent an attentive ear to my welcoming remarks.
“I couldn’t make your man understand me at the station,” she said at last, when her mind was at rest about her bicycle; “I asked him how far it was, and what the roads were like, and he only smiled. Is he German? But of course he is—how odd that he didn’t understand. You speak English very well—very well indeed, do you know.” By this time we were in the library, and she stood on the hearthrug warming her back while I poured her out some tea.
“What a quaint room,” she remarked, looking round, “and the hall is so curious too. Very old, isn’t it? There’s a lot of copy here.”
The Man of Wrath, who had been in the hall on her arrival and had come in with us, began to look about on the carpet. “Copy?” he inquired, “Where’s copy?”
“Oh—material, you know, for a book. I’m just jotting down what strikes me in your country, and when I have time shall throw it into book form.” She spoke very loud, as English people always do to foreigners.
“My dear,” I said breathlessly to Irais, when I had got into her room and shut the door and Minora was safely in hers, “what do you think—she writes books!”
“What—the bicycling girl?”
“Yes—Minora—imagine it!”
We stood and looked at each other with awestruck faces.
“How dreadful!” murmured Irais. “I never met a young girl who did that before.”
“She says this place is full of copy.”
“Full of what?”
“That’s what you make books with.”
“Oh, my dear, this is worse than I expected! A strange girl is always a bore among good friends, but one can generally manage her. But a girl who writes books—why, it isn’t respectable! And you can’t snub that sort of people; they’re unsnubbable.”
“Oh, but we’ll try!” I cried, with such heartiness that we both laughed.
The hall and the library struck Minora most; indeed, she lingered so long after dinner in the hall, which is cold, that the Man of Wrath put on his fur coat by way of a gentle hint. His hints are always gentle.
She wanted to hear the whole story about the chapel and the nuns and Gustavus Adolphus, and pulling out a fat notebook began to take down what I said. I at once relapsed into silence.
“Well?” she said.
“That’s all.”
“Oh, but you’ve only just begun.”
“It doesn’t go any further. Won’t you come into the library?”
In the library she again took up her stand before the fire and warmed herself, and we sat in a row and were cold. She has a wonderfully good profile, which is irritating. The wind, however, is tempered to the shorn lamb by her eyes being set too closely together.
Irais lit a cigarette, and leaning back in her chair, contemplated her critically beneath her long eyelashes. “You are writing a book?” she asked presently.
“Well—yes, I suppose I may say that I am. Just my impressions, you know, of your country. Anything that strikes me as curious or amusing—I jot it down, and when I have time shall work it up into something, I daresay.”
“Are you not studying painting?”
“Yes, but I can’t study that forever. We have an English proverb: ‘Life is short and Art is long’—too long, I sometimes think—and writing is a great relaxation when I am tired.”
“What shall you call it?”
“Oh, I thought of calling it Journeyings in Germany. It sounds well, and would be correct. Or Jottings from German Journeyings—I haven’t quite decided yet which.”
“By the author of Prowls in Pomerania, you might add,” suggested Irais.
“And Drivel from Dresden,” said I.
“And Bosh from Berlin,” added Irais.
Minora stared. “I don’t think those two last ones would do,” she said, “because it is not to be a facetious book. But your first one is rather a good title,” she added, looking at Irais and drawing out her notebook. “I think I’ll just jot that down.”
“If you jot down all we say and then publish it, will it still be your book?” asked Irais.
But Minora was so busy scribbling that
