The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  But out of chaos by such processes of evolution emerged order, and it was still an hour before sunset when they left again. Mrs. Brereton had to a high degree that most useful gift of being able to banish any one subject completely from her mind when she was occupied with another, and it was not till she was seated with Maud again in the carriage that the question which had occupied them so exclusively driving down reasserted itself. Even then she felt it was the better part of wisdom to let things be. Maud was clearly preoccupied, with what, it was impossible not to guess, and as she was, her mother knew, one who chose to make decisions for herself, she bridled her desire to know what was passing in her daughter’s mind. She always found that conversation with Maud was difficult; today it was particularly so. But just as they stopped at the Grosvenor Square house this desire mastered her.

  “And what do you think you intend to do?” she asked.

  “I think I intend to refuse him, but I am not sure.”

  And with such cold comfort her mother had to be content.

  That evening Mrs. Brereton was dining at Lady Ardingly’s, the woman whom she admired and respected more than any one in the world. She had been nobody quite knew who, but, anyhow, Russian and as poor as a church mouse; but she had got, and nobody quite knew how, a position which was in its way unique. She had married Lord Ardingly while quite a girl in the teeth of strenuous opposition, fighting her battle quite unaided, and, instead of his having to live her down, it had soon become quite clear that it would be his part to toil, faint yet pursuing, in her wake. All her life success had attended her, she always knew what she wanted and always got it, and whoever else rose and shone and passed, Lady Ardingly continued to burn with unbated luminance. Today, so Mildred Brereton thought, Marie Alston was the star, but she quite realized that this particular star, like those of the music-halls, might some day set; but Lady Ardingly remained swung high in the social heavens, a permanent centrepiece. Marie was the fashion, it is true, but Lady Ardingly was much more than the fashion; that word was far too superficial to describe her.

  She had been, no doubt, once of great personal beauty, but clearly it was not that which gave her the power she possessed, for it had passed years ago, and she was now something over sixty, with splashes of rouge dashed in an impressionist manner on to her face, not from any motive of vanity, but simply from long force of habit; a wig, no more to be mistaken for natural growth than a top-hat, was perched negligently on one side of her head, and to balance it, in the evening, a tiara perched on the other. Her neck was covered with jewels; her hands, which were somewhat lean and knuckly, were crammed with rings; and she dressed superbly. But all these things, like the rouge, were the result of habit; she had been accustomed to that sort of thing, and continued it, and certainly he would have been a bold man who tried to reason with her or alter her. Her husband, for instance, never attempted it. Finally, she was inordinately fond of gossip, card-playing, and other people’s business, and was eminently good-natured provided that path did not cross her own. But she had so many private side-paths down which she was liable to wander, that one never knew for certain where she would come out next, or how she would act in any given set of circumstances. But as long as doing a kindness to another did not interfere with what she desired herself, she was always ready, even at the cost of trouble and personal exertion, to help her friends if they approached her in the proper spirit, which implied a good deal of abasement. She had been in her time a very considerable political intriguer, and, following her invariable rule of always getting whatever she wanted, she had built up her husband into the edifice of the Conservative Government. But the game—for it had never been more to her than that—had now ceased to amuse her, and she cared no longer how greatly her poor Ardingly floundered in the spacious halls of the Admiralty. This he seldom failed to do. She was, finally, the very antipodes of those women who, because generals and statesmen tell them things not generally known, consider themselves, in that they are at the centre of things, as wielding some vague political influence, and fly about telling all their friends what everybody has said. Lady Ardingly never flew about; she sat quite still and gave orders. Why people did as she told them they never quite knew; it arose, perhaps, from her habit of always being right.

  Ardingly House was a vast and modern erection in Pall Mall. “So convenient for Ardingly,” as his wife used to say in her slow foreign speech, “now that he is at the Admiralty. He can come home to lunch, and tell me all the blunders he has made since breakfast. And there is plenty of time for him to take two steps and make them all over again before dinner.” Not long ago, at the time when Mrs. Maxwell was house-hunting, she had heard a vague rumour that there was a possibility of this mansion being in the market, and had had the temerity to call on Lady Ardingly to know if it was so. She heard her in silence, not helping her out at difficult points, and then remarked: “Yes, we are going to sell it, and live at Clapham Junction. So convenient a train service.” This Mrs. Maxwell had rightly interpreted to be a denial of the rumour, and had quitted the subject with some precipitation. It was also characteristic of Lady Ardingly that she did not fly about town, making the place ring with the story. Here, perhaps, lay one of the secrets of her effectiveness: she never dissipated her energy.

  It was to this lady that Mrs. Brereton decided to carry her doubts and perplexities. There was only a small dinner-party that night, and before the men left the dining-room she found herself sitting by her on a sofa. Lady Ardingly happened to be in an admirable temper, and the opportunity was golden.

  “I have not seen you for very long, dear Mildred,” said she. “Tell me your news. How is Jack Alston? Have you seen him lately?”

  This kind of frankness even Mildred found a little embarrassing. Lady Ardingly, of course, knew everything about everybody, and never, except when there was something to be got by it, assumed ignorance.

  “Jack Alston? Oh, yes, I constantly meet him, in the way one does meet in London,” she said rather foolishly.

  “Yes, dear, I know you are great friends. Who does not? Do you hope he will get a Government post after the election? Tell me; I am really asking for news.”

  “Well, Jack hopes for it, of course. The War Office is what he is running for.”

  “The War Office? He knows about rifles and powder, does he not? Well, there is a feeling just now for having men who know their work. Ardingly, I find, is reading Nelson despatches. Very nice for him. What is there of news? Never mind politics; they are dull. Some scandal.”

  “They say Mrs. Alington has made a mess of her affairs,” said Mildred. “I always knew she would, dabbling in the mining-market like that. Her husband is furious.”

  “Ah! Now, I wonder who can have told you that? I saw Alington only this evening. It is not so at all. They are the best of friends. What else?”

  “Did you hear about Jim Netson? I am told he was down at Brighton on Sunday with—”

  “Dear Mildred, where can you get these things from?” asked Lady Ardingly. “Jim Netson was lunching with me on Sunday. What else?”

  Mildred found it difficult to bear this sort of thing quite good-naturedly. Like many other women, she repeated what she heard, adding a little here and there, not caring particularly about the truth of a story so long as it amused. But Lady Ardingly contradicted her flat, and, the worst of it was, she was invariably right. She did not in the least care for made-up stories, and Mildred, who was by way of being a well-informed woman on the matter of other people’s backyards, was rather nettled. But she swallowed her pique and laughed.

  “Dear Lady Ardingly,” she said, “it is no use my telling you things. You always know best and most.”

  Lady Ardingly took some coffee, and as she removed the cup from the tray, the spoon clattered on the floor.

  “Clumsy fool!” she said to the footman, and without a pause: “You have got something on your mind, Mildred. What is it? Always get things off your mind, my dear, as soon as possible. It is very enfe
ebling to worry. Is it”—and her eye fell on Maud, who was talking in a group on the other side of the room—“is it about your daughter? She is getting a big girl. It is time you married her.”

  Mrs. Brereton gave a little staccato note of admiration.

  “You are too wonderful!” she said. “Yes, it is exactly that. Anthony Maxwell wants to marry her.”

  “Very nice. The son of the great Mr. Maxwell, you mean?” asked Lady Ardingly, without the slightest inflection of irony.

  “Yes.”

  Lady Ardingly laughed.

  “What a pity we did not sell them this house! Maud would have been mistress here,” she said. “At present she does not wish to marry him. Is it so? I do not wonder, dear Mildred, at a momentary hesitation. Do you? But it would be a very good marriage for her.”

  “So I have told her.”

  “Then, do not tell her so again. Ah, here come the men! Let us play Bridge immediately. Only I will not play with your husband, dear Mildred. I would sooner play with a groom out of the stables. We will have two tables, and he shall be at the other one. Send Maud here a moment. I will speak to her.”

  Mrs. Brereton rose with alacrity.

  “Dear Lady Ardingly, you are too kind!” she said with heartfelt gratitude.

  “And do not put your oar in, my dear,” said Lady Ardingly impassively.

  Maud, looking very shy and tall, came in obedience to the summons.

  “You are too unkind, dear Maud, to an old woman,” said Lady Ardingly. “You have not said a word to me all the evening, and now we are going to play Bridge. They all insist on playing Bridge. You would like to play with your father, would you not? We will arrange a table for you. Yes, that will be very pleasant. You must come and talk to me one of these days quite quietly. Tomorrow—no, tomorrow will not do. Come to lunch with me on Friday. What a tall girl you are! And, my dear, do you know you are wonderfully handsome? Now they want me to play Bridge.”

  CHAPTER VI

  It was Sunday afternoon, and Riversdale, by reason of the gaiety gathered there, had eclipsed the gaiety of all other places. Some dozen people were staying in the house, but the most of them had come down from London to spend the afternoon and return after dinner, and the lawns, which the company of blameless fools had caused to wear their most ravishing appearance, were suitably crowded. A set of croquet-hoops had been put up on one, and a game was proceeding in the orthodox Sunday afternoon style; that is to say, a nervous, palpitating little man, to whom at the moment croquet seemed of more importance than his eternal salvation, was busy, with a tea-party of four balls, separating adversaries and making hoops with intolerable precision, while a long, willowy girl, his partner, trailed after him in his triumphal progress and gave faint and languid sounds of sycophantic applause.

  “There you see they are separated, Miss Martin,” said the zealot at length, “and now I’ll mobilize with you. Then you can make your hoop next time, and I ought to go out.”

  “Yes, it’s quite too beautiful,” said Miss Martin; “but I know I’ll miss. Oh, it’s not my turn, is it? Where are they gone?”

  “They” at this moment—a Guardsman of the most pronounced type and a middle-aged woman of the most un-middle-aged type—being weary with this faultless exhibition, had retired to a seat at the far end of the garden, and were talking very low and laughing very loud. They were recalled with difficulty, still lingering on the way, and the unpromising situation was carefully explained to them by the palpitating man in a voice in which the endeavour not to appear jubilant was rather too marked. It being the lady’s turn, she chipped her ball sideways at about right angles to the required direction, and, without even affecting to look where it had gone, dropped her mallet in the middle of the lawn, and instantly retired with her Guardsman again.

  Elsewhere other groups were forming and dispersing. In the new wooden shelter Lady Ardingly had taken up her permanent position at the Bridge-table, and, while others cut in and out, kept her seat with tree-like composure, and played rubber after rubber with a success which appeared monotonous to her adversaries. Anthony Maxwell occasionally took a hand at her table, and in the intervals chased Maud Brereton from terrace to terrace with a hunter’s pertinacity, conscious of the approving eye both of his mother and of Maud’s. The fathers of them both would no doubt have viewed his employment with equal approbation, had they not been deeply engaged in a secluded corner in trying to rook each other at piquet, each, however, finding to his indescribable dismay that he had caught a Tartar. Like many very rich men, they played for very low stakes, and exhibited an inordinate greed for half-crowns, and even smaller coins.

  Jack Alston and his wife had been among the guests who came down from the Saturday till Monday, but he had gone over for the day, rather to Mildred’s disgust, to a neighbouring golf-links, and would not be back till dinner. Marie, however, had been, so Mildred considered, at her very best all the afternoon, conferring, as she in some mysterious manner had always the power to do, an air of distinction and success to the party. Wherever she was there was a crowd; wherever she was there was more constant laughter, more animated conversation. She had the gift, rare and inimitable, of making people play up. Dull folk aroused themselves when she talked to them, brilliant people coruscated, for there went from her, an unconscious but pervading emanation, some air of freshness and vitality, which acted like a breath of wind in a close atmosphere, reviving and bracing. At present she was talking to Lady Devereux and Arthur Naseby, who wore a straw hat which was strangely unsuitable to him and appeared stouter than ever, in the comparative privacy of the lower lawn.

  “Ah yes,” she was saying, “that is just the fault with us all now. We think we can be amused merely by having people to amuse us. It is not so; being amused depends almost entirely on one’s self. Some days nothing amuses one; on others one is amused by the other sort of nothing.”

  “It’s always the other sort of nothing with me,” said Arthur Naseby. “And what I like really best of all is the pantomime. You find in the pantomime exactly what you take there. I take there an invincible gaiety. That is why I find it there.”

  “That’s what I mean,” said Marie. “It is the case with everything. I love the pantomime, like you. Everything takes place without the slightest reason. It is so like life; and, like the clowns, we belabour each other with bladders and throw mud at butter belonging to other people. But the audience—the part of it like Mr. Naseby and me—are enormously amused.”

  “You are horribly unjust, Marie,” said Lady Devereux in her sleepy, drawling voice. “We never belabour you. You are a privileged person; you go flying over hedges and ditches, while if I, for instance, as much as look over a hedge, I am supposed to be there for no good purpose. Is it the consciousness of innocence that gives you such license! One can acquire almost anything by practice. I think I shall set about that.”

  Marie laughed.

  “I would, dear. Be innocent for an hour a day, to begin with, and increase it by degrees.”

  “Ah, it’s not innocence, but the consciousness of it, I want,” said Blanche. “It is a different matter.”

  “But it leads to absolutely nothing,” said Arthur Naseby, in a discontented voice, “except, perhaps, promotion in the Church; but I have given up all real thought of that.”

  “I thought the real way to get on in the Church now was to preach heretical doctrine,” remarked Lady Devereux. “Our parson at Rye always casts doubt on things like Jonah and the whale, or tries to explain them by supposing it was not a whale, but an extinct animal with an enormous gullet, which seems to me just as remarkable. They tell me he is certain to be made a Bishop. My grandfather was a Bishop.”

  “And mine was a draper,” said Arthur Naseby. “I am thankful every day that he was such a successful one. Really, nothing matters nowadays except money. That is so convenient for the people who have some. Here is a most convenient person, for instance, just coming.”

  Jim Spencer entered the tent w
ith the air of looking for somebody. He also had the air of having found somebody when he saw Marie, and sat down in a low chair by her.

  “I have been playing croquet,” he said; “but I shall never play again.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened. I remained in sublime inactivity, except when other people used me for their own base ends. I never felt so useful in my life.”

  “But that, again, is no use,” said Arthur—“like the consciousness of innocence which Lady Devereux means to cultivate. Being simply an opportunity for other people seems to me the very type of a wasted life. I am continually being an opportunity for other people, and the opportunity I give them is to make unkind remarks about me; they constantly take advantage of it.”

  “What do they say?” asked Marie.

  “They say I am idle, and therefore probably vicious. Now, nothing was ever less proved than that; it is a perfect fallacy, entirely due to that pessimistic person who said that Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do. That I am idle is, of course, quite true. For thirty years I have been very busy doing nothing whatever, and every day I live I find more nothing to do, if you understand.”

  “Then, you allow the world doesn’t libel you?” said Lady Devereux.

  “Certainly it does. It is that to which I so strongly object. People go about saying all sorts of things about me which are perfectly true. The greater the truth, the greater the libel.”

  Marie got up from her chair.

  “It is true that the world has a keen grasp of the obvious,” she said. “Why don’t you disappoint them, Mr. Naseby, and do something?”