The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  “Oh, but he’s a nice fool. Really, he is very nice. He’s so dreadfully young.”

  “Well, you’re not very old, my lord,” said Eva.

  “But Reggie is much the youngest person I ever saw. He’ll never grow old.”

  “Ah! Well,” said Eva. “I expect he’s very happy.”

  The gong had sounded some minutes, when Mr. Martin shuffled in. He wore a somewhat irregular white tie and grey socks, and was followed almost immediately by Mr. Grampound.

  Eva had already written a little note to Lord Hayes, and told her maid to enclose a three-and-six-penny postal order. She had also expressed a vague hope, so as not to block her avenues, that they would meet again soon. Her chief desire was to obtain a respite; the whole thing had been too sudden and she wished to think it over. Meantime, it was nice to see Percy again.

  “What have you been doing with yourself?” she asked. “I notice that whenever young men go away in novels, they always fall in love before they get back, or get married, or make their fortunes or lose them. How many of these things have you done?”

  “None of them,” said Percy; “though I’ve been to Monte Carlo, I did not play there. It doesn’t seem to me at all amusing.”

  “I suppose you haven’t got the gambling instinct,” said Eva; “that’s a great defect. You know none of the joy of telling your cabman that you will give him a shilling extra if he catches a train. It’s equivalent to saying, ‘I bet you a shilling you don’t;’ only he doesn’t pay if he loses, and you do. But that’s immaterial. The joy lies in the struggle with time and space.”

  “Do you mean that you like to keep things in uncertainty as long as possible?” asked her father, looking at her.

  Their eyes met, and they understood each other. Eva looked at him a moment, and then dropped her eyes.

  “Yes; I’m sure I do.”

  “Even when you have all the data ready, do you like not deciding?”

  “Oh! One never knows if one has all the data; something fresh may always turn up. For instance—”

  “Well?”

  “I was thinking just before dinner that I didn’t know what in the world I should do with myself all the autumn, and now you see Percy’s arrived. I shall play about with him.”

  “I go away in two days,” said Percy.

  “Oh! Well, I daresay something else will turn up. I am like Mr. Micawber.”

  “No, not all,” said Mr. Grampound; “he was always doing his best to make things turn up.”

  Mrs. Grampound remarked that things were always turning up when you expected them least, and Percy hoped that his gun would turn up, because no one could remember where it was.

  The evening was so warm that Eva and her mother sat outside on the terrace after dinner, waiting for the others to join them. Mr. Grampound never sat long over his wine, and in a few minutes the gentlemen followed them. Eva was rather restless, and strolled a little way down the gravel path, and, on turning, found that her father had left the others and was walking toward her.

  “Come as far as the bottom of the lawn, Eva,” he said; “I should like a little talk with you.”

  They went on in silence for some steps, and then her father said—

  “I heard from Lord Hayes today. Your mother told me that you could guess what it was about.”

  She picked up a tennis-ball that was lying on the edge of the grass.

  “How wet it is!” she said. “Yes, I suppose I know what he wrote about.”

  “Your mother and I, naturally, have your happiness very much at heart,” said he, “and we both agree that this is a very sure and clear chance of happiness for you. It is a great match, Eva.”

  Eva as a child had always rather feared her father and at this moment she found her childish fear rising again in her mind. Tall, silent, rather scornful-looking men may not always command affection, but they usually inspire respect. Her old fear for her father had grown into very strong respect, but she felt now that the converse transformation was very possible.

  “You would wish me to marry him?” she asked.

  “I wish you to consider it very carefully. I have seen a good deal of the world, so I also wish you to consider what I say to you about it. I have thought about it, and I have arrived at the very definite conclusion I have told you. I shall write to him tonight, and, with your consent, will tell him that he may come and ask you in person in a few days’ time. You know my wishes on the subject, and your mother’s. Meanwhile, dear Eva, I must congratulate you on the very good fortune which has come in your way.”

  He bent from his great height and kissed her.

  “I don’t wish to force you in any way,” he said, “and I don’t wish you to say anything to me tonight about it. Think it over by yourself. I needn’t speak of his position and wealth, because, though, of course, they are advantages, you will rate them at their proper value. But I may tell you that I am a very poor man, and that I know what these things mean.”

  “I should not marry him for those reasons,” said Eva.

  “There is no need for you to tell me that,” said he. “But it is right to tell you that I can leave you nothing. In the same way I hope that any foolish notions you may have got about love, from the trash you may have read in novels, will not stand in your way either. I will leave the matter in the hands of your own good sense.”

  His words had an unreasonable mastery over Eva, for her father never spoke idly. He was quite aware of the value of speech, but knew that it is enhanced by its rarity. “No one pays any attention to a jabbering fool,” he had said once to his wife, à propos of a somewhat voluble woman who had been staying in the house, and of whose abilities he and his wife entertained very contrary opinions. Eva had seldom heard him express his philosophy of life at such length, and she fully appreciated the weight it was intended to convey.

  CHAPTER II.

  Lord Hayes found Eva’s note waiting for him when he came down to breakfast next morning, but its contents did not take away his appetite at all. He was quite as willing that she should think it over as her father or mother, and he had no desire to force her to refuse. He was fairly certain that at his time of life, for he was over forty, he was not going to fall in love in the ordinary sense of the word; that sense, in fact, which Eva had herself confessed she never felt likely to experience. He had had a succession of eligible helpmeets hurled at his head by ambitious mothers for many years, and in sufficient numbers to enable him to draw the conclusion that the majority of eligible helpmeets were very much like one another.

  They had ready for him smiles of welcome, slightly diverting small-talk, pretty faces, and any number of disengaged waltzes; and after having basked in their welcoming smiles, submitted to their small-talk, looked at their pretty faces, and hopped decorously round in their disengaged waltzes, he always finished by stifling a yawn and making his exit. It would convey an entirely wrong impression to describe him as either a misanthrope or a cynic; the charms of marriageable maidenhood simply did not appeal to him. But though he was neither misanthrope nor cynic, a little vein of malevolence ran through his system, and he had more than half made up his mind that he would have none of these. He was quite rich enough to afford a wife who would bring him nothing but unpaid bills; and provided that wife brought him something which he had not yet found, he was willing to pay them all.

  That he was going to marry some time had long been a commonplace to him, but the sight of his forty-fifth milestone had lent it a loud insistence which was becoming quite distracting. The thought had begun to haunt him; he saw it in the withered flowers of his orchid house, it stuck in the corners of his coat pockets, his garden syringe gurgled it at him with its expiring efforts to emit the last drop of water; even the toad which he kept in his greenhouse had the knowledge of it lurking in its sickly eye.

  He was very seldom at Aston; but in one of his visits there, he had met Eva and had been considerably struck by her. She was introduced to him, and bowed without smiling. H
e had asked her whether she played lawn-tennis, and she said, without simpering, that she did. He asked her whether she enjoyed the season, and she replied, without affectation, that she had got so tired of it by the middle of June that she had gone down into the country. He remarked that London was the loser, and she reminded him that, therefore, by exactly the same amount, the country was the gainer. Her eyes wandered vaguely over the green distance, and once met his, without shrinking from or replying to his gaze. She was astonishingly beautiful, and appeared quite unconscious of her charms. She looked so radically indifferent to all that was going on round her, that he had said, “These country parties are rather a bore!” and she replied candidly that she quite agreed with him. In a word, he felt that he might go farther and fare worse, and that he was forty-five years old.

  During the next few months, he had come across her not infrequently, both in the country and in London, and at the end of the season they had both met at the Brabizons, where two Miss Brabizons were alternately launched at his hand and heart—via brilliant execution on the piano and district-visiting—by their devoted mother, and Eva’s calm neutrality was rendered particularly conspicuous by the contrast. His attentions to her grew more and more marked, and Mrs. Brabizon metaphorically threw up the sponge when he changed the day of his departure without ceremony, in order to travel with Eva, and declared that she couldn’t conceive what he found in that girl.

  His mother always breakfasted alone, and spent the morning by herself, usually out of doors. Lord Hayes was vaguely grateful for this arrangement. Mr. Martin, as we know, had described her as an old witch, and even to her own son she seemed rather a terrific person. She was tall, very well preserved, and a rigid Puritan. Her hobby—for the most unbending of our race have their hobby—was Jaeger clothing. She wore large grey boots with eight holes in them, a drab-coloured dress, and a head-gear that reminded the observer of a volunteer forage cap. This hobby she varied by a spasmodic interest in homœopathy, and she used to walk about the lanes like a mature Medea, gathering simples from the hedges, which she used to administer with appalling firmness to the village people; but, to do her justice, she always experimented with them first in propriâ personâ, and declared she felt a great deal better afterwards. For the practice of medicine-taking generally, she claimed that it fortified the constitution, and it must be confessed that her own constitution, at the age of sixty-five, appeared simply impregnable.

  But in the morning her son was conscious of an agreeable relaxation. He was a neat, timid man, with a careful little manner, and he inherited from his mother a certain shrewdness that led him to grasp the practical issues of things with rapidity. For instance, on this present occasion, when he had finished his breakfast, he again read over Eva’s letter, put it carefully away, and was quite content to wait.

  Outside one of the dining-room windows opened a glass-covered passage leading into an orchid house, and he went down this passage with the heels of his patent leather shoes tapping on the tiles, and a large pair of scissors in his hand. Every morning he attended personally to the requirements of this orchid house; he snipped off dead sprays, he industriously blew tobacco smoke on small parasitic animals, and squirted them with soapy water, and this morning, being in a particularly good humour, he went so far as to tickle, with a wisp of hay, the back of the useful toad. That animal received his attentions with silent affability; it closed its eyes, and opened and shut its mouth like an old gentleman awaking from his after-dinner nap.

  It was a warm morning, and when he had finished attending to the orchids he strolled round outside the house, back to the front door. The house stood high above the river, and commanded a good view of the green valley; and, in the distance, two miles away, the red-roofed village slanted upwards from the stream towards the downs. He stood looking out over the broad, pleasant fields for some moments, and his eyes wandered across the river to where the red front of Mr. Grampound’s house, half hidden by the large cedar, stood, as if looking up to his. The flower-beds gleamed like jewels in the sunshine, and he could see two figures strolling quietly down the gravel path toward the river. One of them was a girl, tall, almost as tall as the man who walked by her side, and to whom she was apparently talking. Just as Lord Hayes looked, they stopped suddenly, and he saw her spread out her hands, which had been clasped in front of her, with a quick dramatic movement. The action struck him as slightly symbolical.

  He was roused by the sound of crunched gravel, and, turning round, saw his mother walking towards him. She was in her hygienic dress, and had a small, tin botanical case slung over her shoulders. In her hand she held a pair of eminently useful scissors, the sort of scissors with which Atropos might sever the thread of life. Lord Hayes wore a slightly exotic look by her side.

  “The under housemaid has fallen into a refreshing sleep,” she announced, “and the action of the skin has set in. In fact, she will do very well now. And how are you, dear James, this morning?”

  “I am very well,” said he; “very well indeed, thank you, mother.”

  His mother looked at him with interest.

  “You’ve got a touch of liver,” she remarked truculently.

  “No, I think not. I feel very well, thanks.”

  Lady Hayes snapped her scissors.

  “I’m afraid the harvest will be very bad this year,” she said. “There’s been no rain, and no rain means no straw.”

  “Yes, the farmers are in a bad way,” said Lord Hayes. “I shall have to make a reduction again.”

  “Well, dear,” said his mother, “all I can say is that we shall probably be beggars. But porridge is wonderfully sustaining.”

  “We’ve still got a few acres in London,” he remarked. “Really, in these depressed times, I don’t know how a man could live without an acre or two there.”

  Old Lady Hayes laughed a hoarse, masculine laugh, and strode off, snapping her scissors again. Half-way across the lawn she stopped.

  “The Grampounds are at home, I suppose,” she said. “I want to see Mrs. Grampound some time.”

  “Oh, yes; I travelled with Miss Grampound yesterday. She said they were all at home.”

  “Ha! She is very handsome. But a modern young woman, I should think.”

  “She’s not very ancient. She was staying with the Brabizons.”

  His mother frowned and continued her walk.

  Lord Hayes always felt rather like a naughty child under his mother’s eye. He did not at present feel quite equal to telling her what his relations with Eva were. Modernity was the one failing for which she had no sympathy, for it was a characteristic of which she did not possess the most rudimentary traces. To her it meant loss of dignity, Americanisms, contempt for orthodoxy, and general relaxation of all that is worthy in man. She preferred the vices of her own generation to the virtues of newer developments, and almost regretted the gradual extinction of the old three-bottle school, for they were, in her opinion, replaced by men who smoked while they were talking to women, while the corresponding women had given way to women who smoked themselves. For a man to drink port wine in company with other men was better, as being a more solid and respectable failing, than for him to talk to a woman with a cigarette between his lips.

  Eva, as Lord Hayes had guessed from his point of vantage by the front door of his house, had strolled out into the garden after breakfast with Percy. She had not told him of Lord Hayes’s offer, but she could not help talking to him with it in her mind. It was like a bracket preceded by a minus sign, which affected all that was within the bracket.

  “I wish you weren’t going away, Percy,” she said. “When I woke up this morning, I thought with horror of all the slow days that were coming. I don’t care a bit for doing all those things which ‘nice girls’ are supposed to do. I have no enthusiasms, and the enthusiasms of the people I see here are unintelligible to me. The sight of a dozen little boys in a Sunday school, with pomatum on their heads, inspires me with slight disgust—so do bedridden old women. I su
ppose I have no soul. That is quite possible. But, but—”

  “Yes, I’m luckier than you,” said Percy; “I like little quiet things. I like fishing, and reading the paper, and doing nothing.”

  “Yes, you’re luckier than I am just now,” said Eva, “but when I do get interested in things, I shall be in a better position than you. I’m sure there are lots of interests in the world, but I don’t realise it.”

  “Well, I daresay you will discover them sometime,” said Percy, consolingly.

  “Who can tell? There are lots of women who do not feel any interest in anything—though, perhaps, fewer women than men. But why does London interest you so? It seems to me just as stupid in its way as this place.”

  “I like the sense of there being loads of people about,” said Percy. “A lot of people together are not at all the same as a number of units.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s just the same as with gunpowder. One grain of powder only spits if you set light to it, but if you were to throw a pound of gunpowder into the fire the result would be quite different from the effect of a thousand spits.”

  It was at this point that Lord Hayes was watching the two from his front door. Eva stopped suddenly in her walk, and spread out her hands, stretching her arms out.

  “That’s what I want,” she said. “I want to develop and open. I fully believe the world is very interesting, but I am like a blind man being told about a sunset. It conveys nothing to me. And I don’t believe that fifty million Sunday schools and mothers’ meetings would do it for me. It must touch me somehow else. Religion and philanthropy are not the keys. I long to find out what the keys are.”

  “It’s a pity you don’t want to marry,” said Percy.

  “How do you know I don’t want to marry?”

  “You’ve told me so yourself, plenty of times. You said only a few weeks ago that you thought all men most uninteresting.”

  “Yes, I know. But I’m not so egotistical as not to suspect that the fault is mine. I don’t know any men well, except you, and I don’t think that you are at all uninteresting. If only I could be certain—”