Part 16

"Tell him a savoury one," said B., "or he will be bringing us something full of hot jam and chocolate-creams. You know their style."

"Oh, yes," I answered. "Of course. Yes. Let me see. What is the German for savoury?"

"Savoury?" mused B. "Oh! ah! hum! Bothered if I know! Confound the thing--I can't think of it!"

I could not think of it either. As a matter of fact, I never knew it. We tried the man with French. We said:

"Une omelette aux fines herbes."

As he did not appear to understand that, we gave it him in bad English. We twisted and turned the unfortunate word "savoury" into sounds so quaint, so sad, so unearthly, that you would have thought they might have touched the heart of a savage. This stoical Teuton, however, remained unmoved. Then we tried pantomime.

Pantomime is to language what marmalade, according to the label on the pot, is to butter, "an excellent (occasional) substitute." But its powers as an interpreter of thought are limited. At least, in real life they are so. As regards a ballet, it is difficult to say what is not explainable by pantomime. I have seen the bad man in a ballet convey to the premiere danseuse by a subtle movement of the left leg, together with some slight assistance from the drum, the heartrending intelligence that the lady she had been brought up to believe was her mother was in reality only her aunt by marriage. But then it must be borne in mind that the premiere danseuse is a lady whose quickness of perception is altogether unique. The premiere danseuse knows precisely what a gentleman means when he twirls round forty-seven times on one leg, and then stands on his head. The average foreigner would, in all probability, completely misunderstand the man.

A friend of mine once, during a tour in the Pyrenees, tried to express gratitude by means of pantomime. He arrived late one evening at a little mountain inn, where the people made him very welcome, and set before him their best; and he, being hungry, appreciated their kindness, and ate a most excellent supper.

Indeed, so excellent a meal did he make, and so kind and attentive were his hosts to him, that, after supper, he felt he wanted to thank them, and to convey to them some idea of how pleased and satisfied he was.

He could not explain himself in language. He only knew enough Spanish to just ask for what he wanted--and even to do that he had to be careful not to want much. He had not got as far as sentiment and emotion at that time. Accordingly he started to express himself in action. He stood up and pointed to the empty table where the supper had been, then opened his mouth and pointed down his throat. Then he patted that region of his anatomy where, so scientific people tell us, supper goes to, and smiled.

He has a rather curious smile, has my friend. He himself is under the impression that there is something very winning in it, though, also, as he admits, a touch of sadness. They use it in his family for keeping the children in order.

The people of the inn seemed rather astonished at his behaviour. They regarded him, with troubled looks, and then gathered together among themselves and consulted in whispers.

"I evidently have not made myself sufficiently clear to these simple peasants," said my friend to himself. "I must put more vigour into this show."

Accordingly he rubbed and patted that part of himself to which I have previously alluded--and which, being a modest and properly brought-up young man, nothing on earth shall induce me to mention more explicitly--with greater energy than ever, and added another inch or two of smile; and he also made various graceful movements indicative, as he thought, of friendly feeling and contentment.

At length a ray of intelligence burst upon the faces of his hosts, and they rushed to a cupboard and brought out a small black bottle.

"Ah! that's done it," thought my friend. "Now they have grasped my meaning. And they are pleased that I am pleased, and are going to insist on my drinking a final friendly bumper of wine with them, the good old souls!"

They brought the bottle over, and poured out a wineglassful, and handed it to him, making signs that he should drink it off quickly.

"Ah!" said my friend to himself, as he took the glass and raised it to the light, and winked at it wickedly, "this is some rare old spirit peculiar to the district--some old heirloom kept specially for the favoured guest."

And he held the glass aloft and made a speech, in which he wished long life and many grand-children to the old couple, and a handsome husband to the daughter, and prosperity to the whole village. They could not understand him, he knew; but he thought there might be that in his tones and gestures from which they would gather the sense of what he was saying, and understand how kindly he felt towards them all. When he had finished, he put his hand upon his heart and smiled some more, and then tossed the liquor off at a gulp.

Three seconds later he discovered that it was a stringent and trustworthy emetic that he had swallowed. His audience had mistaken his signs of gratitude for efforts on his part to explain to them that he was poisoned, or, at all events, was suffering from acute and agonising indigestion, and had done what they could to comfort him.

The drug that they had given him was not one of those common, cheap medicines that lose their effect before they have been in the system half-an-hour. He felt that it would be useless to begin another supper then, even if he could get one, and so he went to bed a good deal hungrier and a good deal less refreshed than when he arrived at the inn.

Gratitude is undoubtedly a thing that should not be attempted by the amateur pantomimist.

"Savoury" is another. B. and I very nearly did ourselves a serious internal injury, trying to express it. We slaved like cab-horses at it--for about five minutes, and succeeded in conveying to the mind of the waiter that we wanted to have a game at dominoes.

Then, like a beam of sunlight to a man lost in some dark, winding cave, came to me the reflection that I had in my pocket a German conversation book.

How stupid of me not to have thought of it before. Here had we been racking our brains and our bodies, trying to explain our wants to an uneducated German, while, all the time, there lay to our hands a book specially written and prepared to assist people out of the very difficulty into which we had fallen--a book carefully compiled with the express object of enabling English travellers who, like ourselves, only spoke German in a dilettante fashion, to make their modest requirements known throughout the Fatherland, and to get out of the country alive and uninjured.

I hastily snatched the book from my pocket, and commenced to search for dialogues dealing with the great food question. There were none!

There were lengthy and passionate "Conversations with a laundress" about articles that I blush to remember. Some twenty pages of the volume were devoted to silly dialogues between an extraordinarily patient shoemaker and one of the most irritating and constitutionally dissatisfied customers that an unfortunate shop-keeper could possibly be cursed with; a customer who, after twaddling for about forty minutes, and trying on, apparently, every pair of boots in the place, calmly walks out with:

"Ah! well, I shall not purchase anything to-day. Good-morning!"