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WILDLING
MIDNIGHT SUN 2
LYNN BURKE
Copyright © 2020 by Lynn Burke
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product
of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of
brief quotations in a review or article, without written permission from the author.
Pa crosses a line, and the wildling inside me rises like a bear on its
hind legs, instinctively needing to show dominance.
This time, I won’t fail to protect the one I love, no matter the cost—
even if it means breaking my promise and shedding blood.
CONTENTS
1. Saige
2. Saige
3. Flynn
4. Saige
5. Flynn
6. Saige
7. Flynn
8. Saige
9. Flynn
10. Saige
11. Flynn
12. Saige
13. Flynn
14. Saige
15. Flynn
16. Saige
17. Flynn
18. Saige
19. Flynn
20. Saige
21. Flynn
22. Saige
23. Flynn
24. Saige
25. Flynn
26. Saige
27. Flynn
28. Saige
29. Flynn
30. Saige
31. Flynn
32. Saige
33. Flynn
34. Saige
35. Flynn
36. Saige
37. Flynn
38. Saige
Bonus Material
About the Author
Also By Lynn Burke
1
SAIGE
M y sneaker I wore for work didn’t get kicked under my bed where
it pushed against the wall. Sitting back on my haunches from having
looked, I eyed the rest of my room with its single bookshelf, old
bureau, and bed stand. Everything sat in its usual place.
Nothing littered the old carpet covering the floor.
Rummaging my parents’ house beyond my bedroom door,
keeping their mess away from my personal space wasn’t an option.
Hoarders, the both of them, and Mom’s yappy dog loved shoes. The
chances of me finding that sneaker?
Absolutely zero.
Asking either of them for help would prove just as futile. Since I
could remember, Mom hadn’t seemed to give two shits about me.
Same with Dad.
“Damnitalltohell.” Still grumbling, I stood, hands on hips, chewing
the inside of my lip, and wracking my brain.
Spring had hit our area of Alaska, but sandal and flip-flop
weather lay weeks away, and my lone pair of heeled boots would kill
my feet long before my five-hour shift ended at the farm supply
store I’d been working at for six years.
The bank envelope I kept taped to the back of my bed stand held
enough cash to purchase a new pair, but I hoarded my dollar bills
like Dad did pizza boxes and plastic beer pack rings. Not that I saved
for anything specific. Since neither of my parents could get jobs with
their so-called disabilities, and also couldn’t get approved for
government assistance, I paid the bills. I kept a roof over our heads.
I brought home the staple groceries to see us through.
Where the hell they got cash for takeout, beer, and the pills they
popped, I had no clue.
I never got a word of thanks, either.
They’d made their beds long before Mom had brought me into
the world—not that they could find said bed beneath the clothing
and rubbish filling the other bedroom in our small house.
Dad slept on the couch, Mom in her recliner.
Both claimed I’d been nothing but a burden since being born.
Somehow, they overlooked the fact I went above and beyond to
support them—all in hopes of a word of affirmation, an affectionate
pat on the head.
It’s as though they floated through their drugged-out days,
siphoning off me rather than the government who acknowledged
them as much as my parents did me—not at all.
Wasted energy, wasted hopes, on my part. My constant failures
had weakened my resolve to make them see me. Appreciate me.
Depression had made me her bitch over the winter, no matter
how hard I tried to keep my chin up.
Both still snored as I quietly made my way into the kitchen with a
heavy heart. I traversed the path I cleared every night once they
passed out, scanning the disastrous mess for my missing sneaker.
The winding route would be cluttered again once I returned from
work, same as always. And same as always, anytime something of
mine went missing, it didn’t magically reappear.
Not that I took time to dig through the piles of trash close to my
five-foot and a couple inches height. When I’d become old enough
to realize we didn’t live like normal people, I’d attempted to keep the
house clean. I got my ass handed to me time and again for throwing
out their precious things—stinking, filthy trash.
Sick. Absolute filth. And the stench?
I shook my head, lips pursed.
The little yapper blinked sleepily from atop Mom’s lap and
jumped down, the tiny bell on her collar twinkling as she pranced
after me. At least the little bitch kept quiet in the morning. I let her
out the kitchen’s door into the back yard. Not that she’d find a nice
bit of grass to relieve herself around Dad’s shit littering our acre of
land.
Coffee pot warming to life, I returned to my room, shoved my
feet into my winter boots, and grabbed my cash envelope. My old
sneakers’ soles had worn out over the previous two years.
“It’s time for something new anyway,” I muttered to myself,
weaving me way back toward the kitchen as both parents continued
to snore.
Usually, spring and its warmer weather and rain brought a sense
of refreshment and life. I’d yet to experience the vitality that helped
keep my spirits from dipping to the point I wondered if medication
might be the only way to dig me out of the winter months’
depression.
My travel mug I’d cleaned and left on a clean paper towel for my
morning’s coffee had disappeared, too, I noted once I let the yapper
back in.
More curses muttered in my head as I pulled out the milk from
the fridge, and not for the first time, the desire to get out on my
own, escape the shit hole I’d been raised in, swelled inside me,
stinging my eyes with the need to spill tears down my cheeks.
But tears would wash away the cheap mascara I’d worn that
morning.
Spring meant those living off-grid made their way to town for
supplies after the long winter. Spring meant Callan Kelly might come
calling again—thus the bit of makeup and need to feel somewhat
cute. As cute as a waif-thin upper body with thick thighs redhead
could be.
While no thrill of attraction spirited my heart away whenever I
thought of Callan, warmth of the friendly sort came in to ease the
missing sneaker and mug issue ruling my morning.
I’d first met Callan the spring before when he’d flown into town
by way of Midnight Sun Charter. A client of Jessie Blacke’s, Callan
had been all smiles and flirting words. The fact gray hairs peeked
through his darker strands above his temples didn’t bother me. The
age lines around his eyes and mouth were merely evidence of hard
years in the wilderness. Hard working years. Something neither of
my parents could possibly fathom, something I thoroughly
appreciated in a man.
He hadn’t brought butterflies to flight in my belly or warmth
between my thighs, but his character I’d come to know over a
summer of sporadic visits had intrigued me to the point I hoped to
see him again.
If I were to ever marry a man, he would be the type I would tie
myself to. Solid and steady. A worker who didn’t shirk from dangers
or the challenges of living a flight away from civilization.
In the fall, before disappearing for the long winter, he promised
to see me in spring.
Once the snow had started to melt, I’d pulled out that old
mascara wand and kept it in my purse. Just in case.
It’d been two weeks since I’d started to see a few of the off-grid
families coming in for society and supplies, and while I should have
been thrilled to have something to look forward to, I couldn’t rouse
my emotions past flat.
Bland.
Bored.
Downright depressed.
My eyes stung again as I slipped outside, keys to Dad’s old truck
in one hand, chipped mug of coffee in the other.
Peeks of sun hinted through the clouds, and I filled my lungs,
reminding myself I lived. My heart beat inside my chest. I had my
health, even if Mom and Dad didn’t have theirs. But those truths
didn’t lighten the heaviness in my chest, either.
Something new…
Something more than mere sneakers, too.
2
SAIGE
T he cashier in the line beside mine did nothing but talk. Chatter,
chatter, chatter, complain, complain, complain. She also filled the air
with cloying, cheap perfume.
“Ellie had me up three times last night,” she grumbled. “Three.
And the second time, she woke up Eli. He screamed for an hour
straight.”
I listened because I didn’t have much choice, considering our
proximity.
“Billy couldn’t be bothered, so it fell to me to take care of them.
Big surprise. Some days, I kinda wish I never had the twins, you
know?” She huffed and crossed her arms under her large breasts,
angled my way while waiting for our first customers of the day.
She’d said similar things before, irking me to no end.
I knew what it felt like to be an unwanted child. I also knew what
it felt like to wish for a husband and children like she had. A family
of my own. People to call my own. A man and children to love like I
craved to be loved.
My timidity kept me from both.
“Then Ellie was up at five,” she continued when I didn’t
comment. “What two-year-old wakes up for the day at five in the
freaking morning? Like, seriously?”
A hungry one? A thirsty one? I wanted to ask if Ellie had a wet
diaper.
I shrugged, leaning down to rearrange items beneath my
counter.
“And Billy is goddamn useless.”
Fighting against the need to roll my eyes, I bit my tongue and let
her spew out all sorts of shit about her husband, complaining about
his getting home at night and sitting in front of the TV while she
made dinner, fed the kids, bathed, and put them to bed by herself.
She could always ask for help, I wanted to tell her. Tell him she
was exhausted rather than her co-workers. Or maybe she didn’t
communicate, and he just didn’t give a shit. Dad was that sort of
husband and father.
Finally, a customer came through her line, shutting her up.
Fake smile, chatty and happy—at least she made the customers’
experience a pleasant one.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d smiled, let alone sang like a
canary before I knew the truth of my life. While hostility never
crossed my mind, I did my job with efficiency. Unhurried, yet
thorough. Packing bags properly, making sure they weren’t too
heavy for the elderly or frail.
I’d also given up singing even though sad ballads often ran
through my head while I lie in bed wishing for…more.
The new girl continued to gab as I rang up my first customer,
taking care as usual. Initiating conversation didn’t come easy for me,
so I kept my silence, simply doing my job.
“Have a good day,” I quietly stated once handing off the
customer’s bag, keeping my gaze averted.
“You, too, young lady,” the old man said before shuffling away.
Dozens of such transactions a day. Impersonal, but not cold.
Hardly fulfilling, but I got an occasional, “Good job today” from
our boss.
The window beyond my co-worker drew my focus in between
customers, and an ache spread through my chest as a flock of birds
flitted between trees. A breeze rustled the new leaves, and I closed
my eyes, imagining it on my face. Fresh air. Quietness. Peace.
“Hello, Saige.”
My eyelids popped open at the voice I remembered from the
summer before, and my lips actually twitched.
“Callan.” No butterflies lit in my stomach, but I didn’t mind. I held
his gaze all of two seconds before my timidity flitted my attention to
the cart he pushed.
“How was your winter, beautiful?”
Heat flushed my cheeks. I started scanning items the second he
set them on the belt. “Long. Yours?”
“Longer.”
I believed it, living out in the bush like he did. “Survived it,
though,” I murmured.
“Would it make you smile if I said looking forward to seeing you
this spring made it easier?”
Sure that my cheeks blazed enough to cover my freckles, I
gulped. No smile, but funny flutters finally woke in my belly.
“I’m in town for the next two weeks,” Callan said, setting the last
item on the belt. “I’d like to pick up where we left off in the fall—if
you’re interested.”
Pick up…
I glanced up to find his blue eyes serious. Nice eyes, but guarded
and bland, not filled with the heat of passion like the heroes in the
tattered paperbacks I got from the library’s free stack.
Callan had talked me into getting coffee with him the few times
he’d been in town the summer before. My first real dates, but he
hadn’t tried to kiss me. Hadn’t held my hand. Hadn’t seemed
interested other than telling me about his homestead and trying to
get me to talk more about my almost non-existent life.
“What do you say?” He smiled, and even though it didn’t reach
his eyes or warm me between my thighs like my romance novels did,
I considered my morning. My depression. My desire for something
new. My need for such a thing.
Hope pushed to life inside my chest for the second time that day.
A change.
“Same place?” I asked, my voice sounding rusty even though I’d
wished good mornings to dozens of people in the previous two
hours.
“I was thinking instead of coffee we could get some dinner.”
A dinner date. My very first one.
“I-I’d like that,” I sputtered, heat once more flooding my face.
“Want to meet over at Dilly’s Diner? Say, six?”
My head jerked in a nod as I glanced at the register for his total.
“Okay.”
Two minutes later, he walked out with his loaded carts, and I
caught my attention staying on him far longer than it had the fall
before. Broad shoulders beneath his flannel. A bit shy of six feet,
dark hair, and beard neatly trimmed.
“You fuck him last fall?”
I jerked my focus across the aisle, my jaw dropping as my co-
worker laughed. “N-no!” I sputtered.
“God, you’re a virgin?”
That damn heat returned to my face, and I clamped my lips shut,
grabbing a bottle of cleaner to wipe down the belt that didn’t need
it.
“You are, aren’t you?” She snorted with laughter. “Girl, you need
to get out of your shell and live a little! You’re what—eighteen?
Nineteen?”
“Twenty-four,” I mumbled.
“Shit.” She huffed. “I lost mine at thirteen. Hurt like a bitch.”
Not a conversation for work… I glanced around to find us alone—
for the most part—but that didn’t ease my feet shifting in the new
sneakers I’d bought myself from aisle thirteen before we’d opened
for the day.
“He was hung like a horse and didn’t take it easy on me. Your
man, there, didn’t look the gentle sort, either,” she continued
running her inappropriate commentary. “Bet he’s aching to fuck
something other than his fist after a winter out in the wilderness.”
Another snort. “You aren’t much for conversation, but I’ll bet after
spending that longer winter in the middle of nowhere, he’ll be more
interested in getting his dick wet. Perfect opportunity to give it up if
you ask me, Saige. Just sayin’. You’re kinda shy, I’m thinking, to lose
it on your own merit.” At least her voice lowered as a customer
approached. “Find everything okay today?” she called to them, all
bubbly.
Thoughts swarmed my brain.
A dinner date with a man I wasn’t even sexually attracted to.
Something new.
The perfect opportunity.
Was she right about Callan hoping to get between my thighs? Did
I want him there?
I hadn’t been saving my first time on purpose—I’d just never had
the chance to give up the V-card. No boy had shown interest in me
during high school, but I hadn’t looked up from the floor long
enough to see if anyone even glanced my way, either.
Those funny flutters twisted my insides, and I glanced out the
window again.
Callan had already gone from the parking lot.
He’d been widowed eight years earlier, he’d told me. Hardly
spent any time in town, choosing the wilderness and quiet, instead.
He’d spoken of his land, his cabin, as though she’d become his
mistress. He trapped and panned a bit for gold to make a living.
No electricity. No running water.
A simplistic way of life that honed a man into something a
woman could be proud of. Callan wouldn’t get home from trapping
and sit on the couch all night watching TV. He wouldn’t have pills
and beer readily available. From how he’d spoken of his homestead,
I knew he treated both with care.
His cabin wouldn’t be filled with trash.
He’d become something of a friend the year before—even if I
hadn’t been the one to fill the silence that sometimes rose between
us while sitting down to coffee.
Callan appreciated my quietness, my meekness, he’d claimed.
Women, he’d said, oftentimes spoke too much.
I glanced at my co-worker who had her back to me while ringing
up Mrs. Dembrook, her chatter a buzz in my ears.
My agreement went with Callan about chatty women—and I
looked forward to dinner with more excitement than I’d ever
experienced in my life.
3
FLYNN
Iwaterfall.
caught sight of myself in the still blue of the pool above the
My bruises had healed in the weeks I’d been in the
wilderness, but the pain he’d inflicted inside didn’t fade as easily as
the outside.
All because I’d fallen back to sleep after he’d gotten me up for
the day.
Not like I did it often, but I felt my birthday allowed for a bit of
laziness, something I didn’t truly understand the meaning of.
Growing up off grid from day one out of Ma’s womb, I knew the
meaning of hard work. Having to take care of the house and Pa
when she’d passed, I also knew how to keep one’s head above
water living off the land.
Pa didn’t notice. Didn’t fuckin’ care how hard his son worked,
strived, to earn his appreciation and respect.
Finally eighteen, taller and wider in shoulders than Pa, and he
still knocked me around. And I stuck around because I’d promised
Ma I would. Ten years old, and I’d sworn an oath as she lay there
dying that I would look after the bastard who’d hurt her more than
loved her.
I’d cursed myself to the equator and back since making that
promise, but couldn’t bring myself to break it.
Pa was a bastard of the worst sort. Always poking fun, tearing
me down, and calling me a pussy if he felt I didn’t man-up like I
ought to.
Eighteen.
“Time to get the hell out of there,” I told my reflection while
smoothing down my beard that had begun to fill in. Wasn’t the first
time I’d said it—wouldn’t be the last.
But I had no money. No means of making it on my own.
Everything I called mine belonged to Pa, even though I’d helped
with the trapping and panning for gold since I could walk alongside
him. I knew what those critters felt like ensnared in wire or metal
claws—fuckin’ trapped. Unable to escape. Freedom a long-gone
wish. The chance to live ripped from their center like still-warm guts
dropping to the snowy ground.
Jaw clenched, I pushed up from sucking down the icy mountain
water, swiping my forearm across my mouth.
Eighteen.
Bearded like a man. Seasoned like a man. Officially in the eyes of
the law—a man. But I’d never gone to a school. Never drove a
vehicle. Never had myself a woman. Never owned a goddamn thing,
not even the clothes on my back.
Yes, I wanted to get the hell off Pa’s homestead, but where the
fuck would I go even if I hadn’t promised Ma to stick around? What
the fuck could I do? Sure as hell couldn’t afford the plane ride into
Fairbanks.
Tired of game cooked over an open fire, I trudged down the
mountain, feeling as though I had no other choice, my footsteps
slow while I forced myself to focus on bathing with real soap in the
river. Changing into clean clothes since the ones on my body had
crusted over days ago.
Fuckin’ filthy animal.
Wildling, Ma had called me when I’d been a kid and she’d been
around to show me the meaning of kindness. Always running around
half-naked in the summer, my hair long and knotted, scratches and
scrapes on my arms and legs. Half-feral, Pa had always grumbled
before cursing at me. Made for the wilderness, at one with the
woods, wildlife, and Mother Nature.
I’d known nothing but the wilds of Alaska, and I had no wish to
know anything beyond. I didn’t need to remind myself while
standing on a bluff overlooking the greening land stretching
alongside the river below.
No smoke rose from the cabin’s chimney that I could see from
my height. No one moved, either.
He’d be around somewhere, though. Always was—even when I
felt sure he didn’t watch, catching me doing shit I shouldn’t; like
skipping rocks across the river rather than tending my fishing pole.
Tossing sticks to my dog rather than splitting wood like he’d
instructed me to do.
My dog…
The old beagle Pa had brought home from Fairbanks when I’d
been eight or so. A dog to hunt with him, man’s best friend. Turned
out Dog liked Pa about as much as I did, and he’d taken to my side
like a summer shadow, tight against my side—ignoring Pa altogether.
He’d tried to protect me against Pa on my birthday, but Pa’s fist
clobbered him alongside the head, leaving him dazed as me
whenever fist or palm met flesh.
But no more.
I straightened and filled my lungs with the mountain’s clean air,
sucking it in deep until my lungs thought to burst.
“I’m a man,” I told Dog, leaning down to scratch beneath his
chin. He closed his eyes, his tongue lolling like he was smiling. “Not
gonna let Pa hurt either one of us ever again. I’m gonna stand up to
him. Won’t hurt him because of my promise to Ma, but I’m not going
to let him use me like dough Ma used to beat down before making
bread.”
I stood, my mind set, my feet ready to take me home to begin a
new kind of life.
Dog sniffed the air and took off down the path but didn’t make
so much as a hint of noise from his flapping jaw. Pa had throat-
punched him hard enough after his first week of braying pretty much
non-stop, that the poor animal couldn’t make a sound.
Useless animal in Pa’s eyes. A necessity in mine.
Man’s best friend—man, I reminded myself. I’d tended to Dog
ever since. Provided his food, and he kept me warm at night.
Dog continued down the path, flitting glances back at me now
and then, making sure I followed his lead, that I would stay true to
the promise I’d just made to myself about standing up like the man
I’d become.
No sign of Pa around the yard. The cabin sat shut up and quiet,
cool, with no evidence of a morning fire—or any recent fire, for that
matter.
Hands on hips, I surveyed the two-room cabin, hoping for
evidence he’d disappeared in the middle of the day and hadn’t been
able to return. Dead. Fuckin’ gone, leaving me the man of the
house.
His neatly made bed sat in view through the opened door into
the one bedroom, and the lack of dirty dishes he rarely bothered
with, fireplace cleaned out…
He’d gone to town, which meant he’d be back.
“Fuck.”
Every part of me wished he wouldn’t. If it weren’t for Jessie and
her bush plane being my lifeline to the outside world, I’d hope his
flight nose-dived. Jessie had been lucky enough to survive a plane
crash a couple years earlier—and I wouldn’t wish it on her again no
matter how much my bastard of a father deserved to rot in a shallow
grave, feeding worms and bugs in the circle of life.
Jessie had heard Pa give me shit more than once. Seemingly a
smart woman, I expected she knew his character. Her kind eyes
never failed to catch my gaze, offering me friendship even if we
didn’t share words privately.
Pa never left us alone.
Maybe he tried to protect Jessie from his wild son, the man
who’d never felt the softness of a woman grasping at his dick.
I remembered hearing Pa and Ma in their bed. Kinda hard to not
hear as a kid when your parents lay beyond a doorway without a
door, rutting away like all animals did. With Ma gone, it’d fallen to Pa
to tell me once I’d hit puberty what they’d been doing. He told me
all I’d be missing as a teenager and a young man out in the wilds of
Alaska.
Teased the shit out of me. Fuckin’ relentless in his vivid
descriptions of a warm, wet pussy, created just for man’s pleasure.
What soft breasts felt like in a man’s hands. What it felt like to have
a woman’s ass in your face, slick and ready to suck your dick into
her body. Sick bastard wouldn’t stop. Laughing after me whenever I
walked away to escape the teasing that made me hard as wood.
My focus caught on a pencil drawing that hung forgotten beside
his bedroom doorway, pulling my focus off him. I’d fashioned a
frame for the image Ma had drawn of me sitting down by the river,
fishing pole in my hands, Dog seated next to me. Both of us peered
out over the water. The details of our faces made plain what we’d
been thinking about…freedom.
At the time, I hadn’t realized what I’d longed for. With the
wilderness stretching around me, I had more freedom than most.
The trap ensnaring me lay in circumstances, and the knowledge no
escape was possible kept me down more often than not.
Dog’s wet nose touched my hand, and I scratched under his chin
again. “You’re a good boy,” I told him, my throat tightening over the
fact I hadn’t heard similar words for too damn long.
And I didn’t expect to hear them anytime in the near future. Pa
would return, and life would go back to shit, until he took another
trip into town.
4
SAIGE
thought her capable Frau von Eckthum refused to spend a night in the
donkey field; and Mrs. Menzies-Legh, who was absorbed in snap-shotting
the ever-swelling crowd of children and loafers who were surrounding us,
suddenly stamped her foot and said she would not either.
“The horses can’t go another yard,” remonstrated Menzies-Legh.
“I won’t sleep with the donkeys,” said his wife, taking another snap.
Her sister said nothing, but held her handkerchief as before.
Then Jellaby, descrying a hedge with willows beyond it at the far-away
end of the field, and no doubt conscious of a parliamentary practice in
persuasion, said he would get permission to go in there for the night, and
disappeared. Lord Sigismund expressed doubts as to his success, for the
man, he said, was apparently own brother to the female at the farm, or at any
rate of the closest spiritual affinity; but Jellaby did come back after a while,
during which the piano-organ’s waltzes had gone on accentuating the blank
dreariness of the spot, and said it was all right.
Later on I discovered that what he called all right was paying exactly
twice as much per caravan for the superior exclusiveness of the willow field
as what was demanded for the donkey field. Well, he did not have to pay,
being Menzies-Legh’s guest, so no doubt he did think it all right; but I call it
monstrous that I should be asked to pay that which would have secured me a
perfectly dry bedroom with no grass in it in a first-rate Berlin hotel for the
use for a few hours of a gnat-haunted, nettle-infested, low-lying, swampy
meadow.
The monstrosity struck me more afterward when I looked back. That
evening I was too tired to be struck, and would, I truly believe, have paid
five shillings just for being allowed to sink down into a sitting position, it
mattered not where, and remain in it; but there was still much, I feared to do
and to suffer before I could so sink down—for instance, there was the gate
leading into the donkey field to be got through, the whole population
watching, and the pleasant prospect before me of having to reimburse any
damage done to a caravan that could only, under the luckiest circumstances,
just fit in. Then there was Edelgard to be brought to reason, and suppose she
refused to be brought? That is, quickly; for I had no fears as to her ultimate
bringing.
Well, the gate came first, and as it would require my concentrated
attention I put the other away from me till I should be more at leisure. Old
James, assisted by Menzies-Legh, got the Ailsa safely through, and away she
heaved, while the onlookers cheered, over the mole heaps toward the
willows on the horizon. Then Menzies-Legh, calling Jellaby, came to help
me pull the Elsa through, Lord Sigismund waiting with the third horse, who
had been his special charge throughout the day. It seemed all very well to
help me, but any scratches to the varnish caused by the two gentlemen in
their zeal would be put in my bill, not in theirs, and under my breath I called
down a well-known Pomeranian curse of immense body and scope on all
those fools who had helped in the making of the narrow British gates.
As I feared, there was too much of that zèle that somebody (I think he
was French) advised somebody else (I expect he must have been English)
not to have, and amid a hubbub of whoas—which is the island equivalent for
our so much more lucid brrr—shouts from the onlookers, and a scream or
two from Edelgard who could not listen unmoved to the crashings of our
crockery, Menzies-Legh and Jellaby between them drew the brute so much
to one side that it was only owing to my violent efforts that a terrible
accident was averted. If they had had their way the whole thing would have
charged into the right-hand gate post—with what a crashing and a parting
from its wheels may be imagined—but thanks to me it was saved, although
the left-hand gate post did scrape a considerable portion of varnish off the
Elsa’s left (so to speak) flank.
“I say,” said the Socialist when it was all over, brushing his bit of hair
aside, “you shouldn’t have pulled that rein like that.”
The barefaced audacity of putting the blame on to me left me speechless.
“No,” said Menzies-Legh, “you shouldn’t have pulled anything.”
He too! Again I was left speechless—left, indeed, altogether, for they
immediately dropped behind to help (save the mark) Lord Sigismund bring
the Ilsa through.
So the Elsa in her turn heaved away, guided anxiously by me over the
mole heaps, every mole heap being greeted by our pantry as we passed over
it with a thunderous clapping together of its contents, as though the very
cups, being English, were clapping their hands, or rather handles, in an
ecstasy of spiteful pleasure at getting broken and on to my bill.
Little do you who only know cups in their public capacity, filled with
liquids and standing quietly in rows, realize what they can do once they are
let loose in a caravan. Sometimes I have thought—but no doubt fancifully—
that so-called inanimate objects are not as inanimate as one might think, but
are possessed of a character like other people, only one of an unadulterated
pettiness and perversity rarely found in the human. I believe most people
who had been in my place that evening last August guiding the Elsa across
all the irregularities that lay between us and the willow-field in the distance,
and had listened to what the cups were doing, would have been sure of it. As
for me, I can only say that every time I touch a cup or other piece of
crockery it seems to upset it, and frequently has such an effect on it that it
breaks; and it is useless for Edelgard to tell me to be careful, and to hint (as
she does when she is out of spirits) that I am clumsy, because I am careful;
and as for being clumsy, everybody knows that I have the straightest eye and
am the best shot in our regiment. But it is not only cups. If, while I am
dressing (or undressing) I throw any portion of my clothes or other article I
may be using on to a table or a chair, however carefully I aim it invariably
either falls at once, or after a brief hesitation slips off on to the floor from
which place, in its very helplessness, it seems to jeer at me. And the more
important it is I should not be delayed the more certainly is this conduct
indulged in. Fanciful? Perhaps. But let me remind you of what the English
poet Shakespeare says through the mouth of Hamlet into the ears of Horatio,
and express the wish that you too could have listened to the really exultant
clapping of the cups in our pantry as I crossed the mole heaps.
Edelgard, feeling guilty, remained behind, so was not there as she
otherwise certainly would have been making anxious sums, according to her
custom, in what these noises were going to cost us. A man who has been
persuaded to take a holiday because it is cheap may be pardoned for being
preoccupied when he finds it is likely to be dear. Among other things I
thought some very sharp ones about the owner of the field, who permitted
his ground, in defiance I am sure (though not being an agriculturist I cannot
give chapter and verse for my belief) of all laws of health and
wholesomeness, to be so much ravaged by moles. If he had done his duty my
cups would not have been smashed. The heaps of soil thrown up by these
animals were so frequent that during the entire crossing at least one of the
Elsa’s wheels was constantly on the top of a heap, and sometimes two of her
wheels simultaneously on the top of two.
It is a pity people do not know what other people think of them.
Unfortunately it is rude to tell them, but if only means could be devised—
perhaps by some Marconi of the mind—for letting them know without
telling them, how nice and modest they would all become. That farmer was
probably eating his supper in his snug parlour in bestial complacency and
ignorance at the very moment that I was labouring across his field pouring
on him, if he had only known it, a series of as scalding criticisms as ever
made a man, if he were aware of them, shrivel and turn over a new leaf.
I found Mrs. Menzies-Legh at the farther gate, holding it open. Old James
had already got his horse out, and when he saw me approaching came and
laid hold of the bridle of mine and led him through. He then drew him up
parallel with the Ailsa, the doors of both caravans being toward the river,
and proceeded with the skill and expedition natural in an old person who had
done nothing else all his life to unharness my horse and turn him loose.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh lit a cigarette and handed me her case. She then
dropped down on to the long and very damp-looking grass and motioned to
me to sit beside her; so we sat together, I much too weary either to refuse or
to converse, while the muddy river slid sullenly along within a yard of us
between fringes of willows, and myriads of gnats gyrated in the slanting
sunbeams.
“Tired?” said she, after a silence that no doubt surprised her by its length.
“Too tired,” said I, very shortly.
“Not really?” said she, turning her head to look at me, and affecting much
surprise about the eyebrows.
This goaded me. The woman was inhuman. For beneath the affected
surprise of the eyebrows I saw well enough the laughter in the eyes, and it
has always been held since the introduction of Christianity that to laugh at
physical incapacitation is a thing beyond all others barbarous.
I told her so. I tossed away the barely begun cigarette she had given me,
not choosing to go on smoking a cigarette of hers, and told her so with as
much Prussian thoroughness as is consistent with being at the same time a
perfect gentleman. No woman (except of course my wife) shall ever be able
to say I have not behaved to her as a gentleman should; and my hearers will
be more than ever convinced of the inexplicable toughness of Mrs. Menzies-
Legh’s nature, of the surprising impossibility of producing the least effect
upon her, when I tell them that at the end of quite a long speech on my part,
not, I believe ineloquent, and yet as plainspoken as the speech of a man can
be within the framework which should always surround him, the carved and
gilt and—it must be added—expensive framework of gentlemanliness, she
merely looked at me again and said:
“Dear Baron, why is it that men, when they have walked a little farther
than they want to, or have gone hungry a little longer than they like to, are
always so dreadfully cross?”
The lumbering into the field of the Ilsa with the rest of the party made an
immediate reply impossible.
“Hullo,” said Jellaby, on seeing us apparently at rest in the grass.
“Enjoying yourselves?”
I fancy this must be a socialistic formula, for short as the period of my
acquaintance with him had been he had already used it to me three times.
Perhaps it is the way in which his sect reminds those outside it of the
existence of its barren and joyless notions of other people’s obligations. A
Socialist, as far as I can make out, is a person who may never sit down. If he
does, the bleak object he calls the Community immediately becomes vocal,
because it considers that by sitting down he is cheating it of what he would
be producing by his labour if he did not. Once I (quite good naturedly)
observed to Jellaby that in a socialistic world the chair-making industry
would be the first to go to the wall (or the dogs—I cannot quite recollect
which I said it would go to) for want of suitable sitters, and he angrily
retorted—but this occurred later in the tour, and no doubt I shall refer to it in
its proper place.
Mrs. Menzies-Legh got up at once on his asking if we were enjoying
ourselves, as though her conscience reproached her, and went over to the
larder of her caravan and busily began pulling out pots; and I too seeing that
it was expected of me prepared to rise (for English society is conducted on
such artificial lines that immediately a woman begins to do anything a man
must at least pretend to do something too) but found that my short stay on
the grass had stiffened my over-tired limbs to such an extent that I could not.
The two nondescripts, who were passing, lingered to look.
“Can I help you?” said the one they called Jumps, as I made a second
ineffectual effort, advancing and holding out a knuckly hand. “Will you take
my arm?” said the other one, Jane, crooking a bony elbow.
“Thank you, thank you, dear children,” I said, with bland heartiness one
assumes—for no known reason—toward the offspring of strangers; and
obliged to avail myself of their assistance (for want of practice makes it at all
times difficult for me to get up from a flat surface, and my stiffness on this
occasion turned the difficult into the impossible), I somehow was pulled on
to my feet.
“Thank you, thank you,” I said again, adding jestingly, “I expect I am too
old to sit on the ground.” ^
“Yes,” said Jane.
This was so unexpected that I could not repress a slight sensation of
annoyance, which found its expression in sarcasm.
“I am extremely obliged to you young ladies,” I said, sweeping off my
Panama, “for extending your charitable support and assistance to such a poor
old gentleman.”
bending over the sticks began to arrange them quickly on some stones she
picked up.
I did not like to sit down and smoke, which is what I would have done at
home (supposing such a situation as the Ottringels lighting a fire out-of-
doors in Storchwerder were conceivable), because Mrs. Menzies-Legh
would probably have immediately left off peeling her potatoes to exclaim,
and Jellaby would, I dare say, have put down his buckets and come over to
inquire if I were enjoying myself. Not that I care ten pfennings for their
opinions, and I also passionately disapprove of the whole English attitude
toward women; but I am a fair-minded man, and believe in going as far as is
reasonable with the well-known maxim of behaving in Rome as the Romans
behave.
I therefore just stood with my back to the caravans and watched Edelgard.
In less time than I take to write it she had piled up the sticks, stuffed a bit of
newspaper she drew from her apron underneath them, lit them by means (as
I noted) of a single match, and behold the fire, crackling and blazing and
leaping upward or outward as the wind drove it.
No proof, if anything further in that way were needed, could be more
convincing as to the position women are intended by nature to fill. Their
instincts are all of the fire-lighting order, the order that serves and tends;
while to man, the noble dreamer, is reserved the place in life where there is
room, dignity, and uninterruption. Else how can he dream? And without his
dreams there would be no subsequent crystallization of dreams; and all that
we see of good and great and wealth-bringing was once some undisturbed
man’s dream.
But this is philosophy; and you, my friends, who breathe the very air
handed down to you by our Hegels and our Kants, who are born into it and
absorb it whether you want to or not through each one of your infancy’s
pores, you do not need to hear the Ottringel echo of your own familiar
thoughts. We in Storchwerder speak seldom on these subjects for we take
them for granted; and I will not in this place describe too minutely all that
passed through my mind as I watched, in that grassy solitude, at the hour
when the sun in setting lights up everything with extra splendour, my wife
piling sticks on the fire.
Indeed, what did pass through it was of a mixed nature. It seemed so
strange to be there; so strange that that meadow, in all its dampness, its high
hedge round three sides of it, its row of willows brooding over the sulky
river, its wood on the one hand, its barren expanse of mole-ridden field on
the other, and for all view another meadow of exact similarity behind
another row of exactly similar willows across the Medway, it seemed so
strange that all this had been lying there silent and empty for heaven knows
how many years, the exact spot on which Edelgard and I were standing
waiting, as it were, for its prey throughout the entire period of our married
life in Storchwerder and of my other married life previous to that, while we,
all unconscious, went through the series of actions and thoughts that had at
length landed us on it. Strange fruition of years. Stranger the elaborate
leading up to it. Strangest the inability of man to escape such a destiny.
Regarded as the fruition of years it was certainly paltry, it was certainly a
disproportionate destiny. I had been led from Pomerania, a most remote
place if measured by its distance from the Medway, in order to stand at
evening with damp feet on this exact spot. A believer, you will cry, in
predestination? Perhaps. Anyhow, filled with these reflections (and others of
the same character) and watching my wife doing in silence that for which
she is fitted and intended, my feeling toward her became softer; I began to
excuse; to relent; to forgive. Indeed I have tried to do my duty. I am not hard,
unless she forces me to be. I feel that no one can guide and help a wife
except a husband. And I am older than she is; and am I not experienced in
wives, who have had two, and one of them for the enormous (sometimes it
used to seem endless) period of twenty years?
I said nothing to her at the moment of a softer nature, being well aware of
the advantage of allowing time, before proceeding to forgiveness, for the
firmer attitude to sink in; and Jellaby bringing the iron stew-pot Mrs.
Menzies-Legh had bought that morning—or rather dragging it, for he is, as I
have said, a weedy creature—across to us, spilling much of the water it
contained on the way, I was obliged to help him get it on to the fire, fetching
at his direction stones to support it and then considerably scorching my
hands in the efforts to settle the thing safely on the stones.
“Please don’t bother, Baroness,” said Jellaby to Edelgard when she began
to replenish the fire with more sticks. “We’ll do that. You’ll get the smoke in
your eyes.”
But would we not get the smoke in our eyes too? And would not eyes
unused to kitchen work smart far more than eyes that did the kind of thing at
home every day? For I suppose the fires in the kitchen of Storchwerder
smoke sometimes, and Edelgard must have been perfectly inured to it.
“Oh,” said Edelgard, in the pleasant little voice she manages to have
when speaking to persons who are not her husband, “it is no bother. I do not
mind the smoke.”
“Why, what are we here for?” said Jellaby. And he took the sticks she was
still holding from her hands.
Again the thought crossed my mind that Jellaby must be attracted by
Edelgard; indeed, all three gentlemen. This is an example of the sort of
attention that had been lavished on her ever since we started. Inconceivable
as it seemed, there it was; and the most inconceivable part of it was that it
was boldly done in the very presence of her husband. I, however, knowing
that one should never trust a foreigner, determined to bring round the talk, as
I had decided the day before, to the number of Edelgard’s birthdays that very
evening at supper.
But when supper, after an hour and a half’s waiting, came, I was too
much exhausted to care. We all were very silent. Our remaining strength had
gone out of us like a flickering candle in a wind when we became aware of
the really endless time the potatoes take to boil. Everything had gone into the
pot together. Mrs. Menzies-Legh had declared that was the shortest, and
indeed the only way, for the oil-stoves in the caravans and their small
saucepans had sufficiently proved their inadequacy the previous night.
Henceforth, said Mrs. Menzies-Legh, our hope was to be in the stew-pot;
and as she said it she threw in the potatoes, the cabbages, the onion sliced by
her tender sister, a piece of butter, a handful of salt, and the bacon her
husband and Lord Sigismund had brought back with them from the village.
It all went in together; but it did not all come out together, for we discovered
after savoury fragrances had teased our nostrils for some time that the
cabbage and the bacon were cooked, while the potatoes, in response to the
proddings of divers anxious forks, remained obstinately hard.
We held a short council, gathered round the stew-pot, as to the best
course to pursue. If we left the bacon and the cabbage in the pot they would
be boiled certainly to a pulp, and perhaps—awful thought—altogether away,
before the potatoes were ready. On the other hand, to relinquish the potatoes,
the chief feature of our supper, would be impossible. We therefore, after
much anxious argument, decided to take out that which was already cooked,
put it carefully on plates, and at the last moment return it to the pot to be
warmed up again.
This was done, and we sat round on the grass to wait. Now was the
moment, now that we were all assembled silent in a circle, to direct the
conversation into the birthday channel, but I found myself so much
enfeebled and the rest so unresponsive that after a faltering beginning, which
had no effect except to draw a few languid gazes upon me, I was obliged
perforce to put it off. Indeed, our thoughts were wholly concentrated on
food; and looking back it is almost incredible to me that that meagre supper
should have roused so eager an interest.
We all sat without speaking, listening to the bubbling of the pot. Now and
then one of the young men thrust more sticks beneath it. The sun had set
long since, and the wind had dropped. The meadow seemed to grow much
damper, and while our faces were being scorched by the fire our backs were
becoming steadily more chilly. The ladies drew their wraps about them. The
gentlemen did that for their comfort which they would not do for politeness,
and put on their coats. I whose coat had never left me, fetched my
mackintosh and hung it over my shoulders, careful to keep it as much as
possible out of reach of the fire-glow in case it should begin to melt.
Long before, the ladies had spread the tables and cut piles of bread and
butter, and one of them—I expect it was Frau von Eckthum—had concocted
an uncooked pudding out of some cakes they alluded to as sponge, with
some cream and raspberry jam and brandy, which, together with the bacon
and excepting the brandy, were the result of the foraging expedition.
Toward these tables our glances often wandered. We were but human, and
presently, overcome, our bodies wandered thither too.
We ate the bread and butter.
Then we ate the bacon and cabbage, agreeing that it was a pity to let it get
any cooler.
Then we ate the pudding they spoke of—for after this they began to be
able to speak—as a trifle.
And then—and it is as strange to relate as it is difficult to believe—we
returned to the stew-pot and ate every one of the now ready and steaming hot
potatoes; and never, I can safely say, was there anything so excellent.
Later on, entering our caravan much softened by these various
experiences and by a cup of extremely good coffee made by Edelgard, but
feeling justified in withdrawing, now that darkness had set in, from the
confusions of the washing up, I found my wife searching in the depths of the
yellow box for dishcloths.
I stood in the narrow gangway lighting a cigar, and when I had done
lighting it I realized that I was close to her and alone. One is never at any
time far from anything in these vehicles, but on this occasion the nearness
combined with the privacy suggested that the moment had arrived for the
words I had decided she must hear—kind words, not hard as I had at first
intended, but needful.
I put out my arm, therefore, and proposed to draw her toward me as a
preliminary to peace.
She would not, however, come.
Greatly surprised—for resentment had not till then been one of her
failings—I opened my mouth to speak, but she, before I could do so, said,
“Do you mind not smoking inside the caravan?”
Still more surprised, and indeed amazed (for this was petty) but
determined not to be shaken out of my kindness, I gently began, “Dear wife
——” and was going on when she interrupted me.
“Dear husband,” she said, actually imitating me, “I know what you are
going to say. I always know what you are going to say. I know all the things
you ever can or ever do say.”
She paused a moment, and then added in a firm voice, looking me
straight in the eyes, “By heart.”
And before I could in any way recover my presence of mind she was
through the curtain and down the ladder and had vanished with the
dishcloths in the darkness.
CHAPTER IX