The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

Reggie turned round in surprise.

  “Why, Gerty, what’s the matter?” he asked.

  “You hurt me when you talk like that,” she said.

  “Oh! What have I been saying?” said he, with an air of perplexity. “You know the worst of me is, I never know what I’m talking about. When I begin talking I get dreadfully puzzled.”

  “Most people explain what they mean by talking, not obscure it.”

  “Well, it’s just the opposite way with me,” said he, serenely. “I know what I think all right before I begin to say it, but as soon as I begin to say it, I begin not to know what I think.”

  This confident assertion failed to satisfy Gertrude.

  “You said you didn’t mind a woman being immoral, if she was only beautiful,” she said.

  “Oh! I never said a word about immorality,” exclaimed Reggie. “I don’t think it’s right to talk about such things. Gerty, what do you mean. As if I should say such things to you, especially since I never think them at all.”

  The open candour of her lover’s face had its due effect.

  “Well, you’re quite sure you meant nothing of the sort, are you?” she asked, ready to be mollified.

  “Of course I am,” said he with sincerity. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “What did you say, then?”

  The cloud had begun to drift, but the horizon was not clear yet.

  “Oh! Don’t ask me,” he said tragically. “I tell you I never know what I say, and I get so dreadfully confused. I said—Oh, Lord! What did I say. I said that an ugly woman—oh, dear!—that an ugly woman can’t do the things which, if a beautiful woman did, she wouldn’t be thought a beast,” he explained, with a fine disregard of coherency.

  “Oh! But, Reggie, that’s exactly what you said you didn’t say.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Reggie, who, though not exactly bored, wanted to talk about something else. “I said something about a beautiful woman being the fashion, which an ugly woman can’t be.”

  “What do you mean by the fashion?”

  “Why, I mean the fashion,” said Reggie; “the rage, the comme il something, the thing everybody else does—balloon sleeves and dachshunds, you know.”

  “Are you sure you only meant that sort of fashion?” asked she.

  “Oh! Yes, of course I am. Oh! Do let’s talk about something else.”

  But Gertrude was vaguely dissatisfied. The cloud had left a little drift of mist behind.

  And Reggie? Well Reggie’s cleanly, honest instincts gave him no directions on this subject; they drew in their feelers like sea anemones when a foreign substance touches them. A soul would have had a word or two to say to him about it, but Reggie unfortunately knew nothing about that.

  They sat silent for a minute or two, Reggie trying to think of something to say which should be sufficiently remote from this puzzling topic, Gertrude still rather troubled in her mind. In after years, she remembered that night as the first occasion on which a certain, vague pain had begun, the first of a series of blind pangs that stirred a new sort of feeling in her, that tore asunder some fibre in her inmost being. An elegant musing over devotional books is, as I have mentioned before, the accredited source of such an awakening.

  The unerring instinct of a lover in Reggie, divined, though very dimly, that some little change had taken place. He felt that Gertrude had felt something that he had not felt. In spite of his recent sense of irresponsibility, of utter contentedness on his own part, he could see that the edge had been taken, ever so slightly, off hers. You may observe something like this in the case of the more human animals. A dog sometimes will know that it does not understand, if the bond between itself and its human friend is very strong. Its inability to understand is something quite different; it is the knowledge of this inability that is rare, and Reggie felt this now.

  As is natural, he recovered himself first. After a twinge of pain, one is prone to sit quiet a minute or two, and regain one’s normal level. But the pain had been all on one side, and Gertrude required a little space to steady herself in.

  “Gerty, let’s play a game of some sort. Come and see what the others are going to do.”

  He got up and stood in front of her.

  “Pull me up,” she said.

  Her white hands lay in his great brown paws, like little patches of snow in some sheltered nook of the hills. But they were warm with life and love, and she was very fair. He bent down and kissed them gently, first one and then the other.

  “You sha’n’t kiss my hands,” she said. “Come, let’s go to the others.”

  The troubled look had gone from her face, but Mrs. Davenport, with a woman’s swift, infallible intuition, saw that something, ever so small, had happened. There was still in her eyes the shadow of a vague wonder.

  Ladies, I believe, have a bad habit of going to each other’s bedrooms when they are thought to have gone to bed, and sitting by the fire, talking things over. It is a bad plan to talk things over at night, because, while you are talking, there forms in the air, without your seeing it, a little grey ghost, to which your words give birth. There are no such things as barren words; all words uttered by you go to make up a little series of figures, who come and talk to you when nobody else is there. And the sort of conversation that Gertrude and Mrs. Davenport had that night gave rise to a little, pale, anxious, grey ghost, that sat by Gertrude’s bedside, and, as soon as her body had had enough sleep—the ghost always allows his victims the necessary minimum—it tapped fretfully on her shoulder, and said, “Come, wake up, let us go on talking!” And Gertrude stirred in her dreamless sleep, and knew that the little ghost had come to talk to her.

  It is a time-honoured custom for an author to describe the personal appearance of any character when he decides to lay his reflections before a discriminating public, and the neglect of this custom is a red rag to the stupid, furious bull called criticism. So, since this little ghost’s personal appearance is only to be described by retailing the conversation which took place between Gertrude and Mrs. Davenport the night before, this obedient and peace-loving author complies with the eminently English demand.

  Gertrude was sitting before her fire in her dressing-gown, when Mrs. Davenport came in. Her eyes still wore a troubled look, and the pictures in the fire were not so pleasant as she had known them.

  Mrs. Davenport noticed it at once. It was the same look as she had seen before that evening, a little intensified.

  “Are you tired, dear?” she asked. “Would you rather I left you to go to bed instead of talking?”

  Gertrude looked up.

  “No, I want to talk very much.”

  “Gerty, dear, is anything the matter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  There was a short silence. Mrs. Davenport was far too wise to press her. Then Gertrude said—

  “Do you know Lady Hayes?”

  Mrs. Davenport was puzzled. The carrier-pigeon always takes a few wide circles before he sets out on his unerring flight home.

  “Oh! Yes, quite well,” she replied. “Percy and I were talking about her this evening. It’s funny that neither you nor Reggie have even seen her.”

  She was feeling her way with tactful discretion. But it was a very narrow path down which Gertrude meant to go, and Mrs. Davenport not unnaturally had missed it.

  “What is she like?” asked Gertrude.

  “Ah! What isn’t she like? She is the most beautiful woman in England, I think, also one of the most reckless, and, I believe, very generous. I should call her dangerous as well. But she is so interesting, so unlike others, that you forget everything else, which is harder than forgiving it.”

  Gertrude turned round and faced her.

  “Ah, you too,” she said.

  “I don’t quite understand, dear,” said Mrs. Davenport, gently; “have you and Reggie been talking about her? Tell me, Gerty. I saw something was a wee bit wrong. I’m sure you haven’t been quarrelling, though. What has been the matter?”


  “I couldn’t love Reggie more than I do,” said Gertrude, irrelevantly, “and I don’t think he could love me more than he does. It’s odd that I should be troubled.”

  “Yes, dear, I am sure of your love for each other,” said Mrs. Davenport. “But tell me what is wrong. It does one good to tell things; they become so much smaller in the telling. Those vague thoughts are like those great spongy puff balls that we noticed today; as soon as you really examine them, you find there is nothing in them. What is it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Gertrude again.

  Ah, that infinite patience of womankind! Mrs. Davenport waited a moment, and then, by an unerring instinct, laid her hand softly on Gertrude’s, and pressed it gently. The touch had power in it, and the dumb soul spake.

  “I’ve got no right to be troubled,” said Gertrude, “and I feel it’s horribly ungrateful of me, when I think of what Reggie is to me, and how good you are all to me. But—”

  Her voice got tremulous, and she stopped abruptly.

  “Yes?” said Mrs. Davenport, softly, wanting to hear more for Gertrude’s sake.

  “It’s just this,” she said at last, speaking rapidly, and with a splendid self-control. “Reggie said something this evening which hurt me. He said that recklessness mattered less in a beautiful woman than in another.”

  “Is that all?” said Mrs. Davenport, with considerable relief.

  “No, that’s not all,” said Gertrude. “That was all nonsense; of course I know he doesn’t mean that. But he didn’t see it hurt me. Oh! It’s so hard not to give you a wrong impression. I don’t mean that he was inconsiderate at all—he never is anything but considerate—but he simply didn’t know. It wasn’t tangible to his mind. If I cut my finger he’d be miserable about it, but somehow he was unable to understand how this hurt me, and so he could not see that it did hurt me. It hurt me somewhere deep down, ever so little, but the feeling was new and strange. This sounds horribly selfish, I’m afraid, but I can’t help it.”

  “Ah, I think I see,” said Mrs. Davenport.

  “It’s like this,” said Gertrude. “Hitherto I’ve always felt so entirely at one with Reggie. If I feel a thing, he’s always seemed to feel it too, like an echo, and the same with me. But just this once I listened for the echo and it didn’t come.”

  Mrs. Davenport paused a moment.

  “Did you ever hear of the man who was out riding with his wife when her horse threw her, and in dismounting to help her he dropped his whip, and while he was picking it up, the horse kicked her and killed her?” she asked. “It seems to me that you are just a little like that man, Gerty. Love is a very big thing; one’s own small sensibilities are very little things. Take care of the big thing, never mind the others.”

  “But they’re so mixed up,” said the girl. “You see the little thing is a part of the big thing.”

  “You are right—that is quite true. But there are many very lovely things which it is right to look at as a whole. Love is one of those. All philosophers, from the beginning of the world, have addled their brains over that impossible analysis. You and Reggie are not philosophers, Gerty; you are young lovers, and it is not your business to analyse or dissect, but to enjoy.”

  Mrs. Davenport was at the sore disadvantage of having to temporise. She could not but suspect what was at the bottom of this. But all she said was quite sincere. She fully believed that the strength of Gerty’s love would fill the interval, if there was to be an interval between her and Reggie. It is best that the woman be better, finer, bigger than the man, for the beautiful indulgence of a woman’s love has more passive endurance in these early stages than a man’s. In the perfect marriage, the two eventually are mixed “in spite of the mortal screen,” but such mixings are rare at first. They rushed together, they will inevitably recoil a little, and a woman has more power of waiting than most men. Gertrude seemed somewhat relieved, but it was not quite over yet. The grey ghost was waiting for his frillings.

  “I was just a little disappointed, you understand?” she said. “I waited for the echo, but it never came. Ah! Well, I am very happy. Yon are very good to me.”

  “God forbid that I or mine should ever give you pain,” said Mrs. Davenport, warmly.

  “And what am I to do?” said Gertrude, to whom the practical side of things always presented itself.

  “Be natural, dear,” said the other, “as you always are. You are both very young; well, that is a gift almost more worth having than anything else. It lies in your power a great deal to keep it. And, if you guard it well, it will build up in you the only other gift which is worth having, which will last you to your grave. They will melt into each other.”

  Gertrude looked at her inquiringly.

  “It is called by many names,” she said. “It is trustfulness, it is serenity, it is sympathy; it is all these, and many more. Some people call it the grace of God, and I think they are right.” She kissed the girl on her forehead very tenderly. “It will tide you over the difficult places, over which youth carries you now, for youth has the gift of a splendid stainlessness—of going through deep waters and not being drowned, of avoiding evil instinctively, without thought; but the time comes to us all when we avoid it with our reason as well, and with our soul.”

  “It was ridiculous of me,” said the girl suddenly. “Reggie didn’t know what I felt, and I didn’t tell him; and yet I was disappointed. I’ve probably done just the same to him lots of times, and he never told me. It was abominably selfish of me. I hope he’ll forgive me.”

  “I should think it extremely unlikely,” said Mrs. Davenport, with enormous gravity. “I should advise you to cry yourself to sleep. I am going to bed, and so are you. Good-night! Ah! My dear, I pray you may be very happy.”

  Gertrude clung to her in a long kiss, feeling a new bond had sprung up between them.

  But the odious, little, grey ghost, who had been grinning sardonically at her easy enthusiasm, was sitting by her bed, waiting till the renewal of strength, brought by sleep, had quickened her capabilities for listening to his cold accuracies—until that generous, sudden glow had begun to burn somewhat less warmly in her breast.

  CHAPTER III.

  Lord Hayes had been rather troubled about his health during the winter in which the foregoing events had occurred, though it had not stood in the way of their giving several large house-parties. But at one of these he had suddenly fainted dead off in the middle of dinner, and, when the house was empty again, he had gone up to London to see a doctor.

  Eva was sitting in her room when he returned, feeling rather bored.

  “Well, Hayes,” she said, as he came in, “what did they say to you?”

  Lord Hayes adjusted his trousers about the knee before he answered.

  “I have all the symptoms of dangerous heart disease,” he said. “I may live for many years, and die of something else. Again, I may die almost at any moment.”

  Eva’s book drooped off her knee.

  “How horrible!” she said at length. “Can nothing be done? Are they sure they are right?”

  “Unfortunately, they are quite sure,” he said; “and nothing can be done. They consider the chance of my dying quite suddenly at any time as possible, but not at all likely.”

  Eva, in her serene health, felt a sudden, great pity for him, but not unmixed with horror. She had no sympathy with disease; it seemed to her hardly decent.

  “Poor Hayes,” she said. “I cannot tell you how shocked I am.”

  “I thought it was best to tell you,” said he, “but let us avoid the subject altogether. I shall live to bore you for many years yet.”

  Eva looked at him admiringly.

  “You are a brave man. But you are right. Don’t let us talk about it.”

  This took place late in November, but the fact that the symptoms, which had been the result of over-fatigue, did not re-occur, made Eva soon get used to the thought, and, in a measure, her husband too. He took the doctor’s advice, did not over-exer
t himself at all, and found that the discovery they had made did not affect his health. The days soon began to pass on as usual.

  Eva had suddenly determined to go abroad for a few weeks, for she had an intense dislike to an English winter. Hence it came about that one morning at breakfast, when she and her husband were alone, she had said to him—

  “What do you propose to do during these next two months, Hayes?”

  Lord Hayes looked up from his breakfast, not quite understanding the purport of her question.

  “I suppose we shall remain here till Easter,” he said. “We are paying some visits in January, I believe.”

  “I should rather like to go abroad for a few weeks now this horrible weather has begun.” She looked out of the window, where snow was beginning to fall heavily, and shivered sympathetically. “I hate this English weather,” she said; “it is like being in a cold bath. Dry cold is not so bad, there is something exhilarating about it. But this doesn’t suit me in the least. Why shouldn’t we go to Algiers again?”

  “I thought you didn’t like Algiers,” he said. “Do you propose that we should go alone?”

  “Oh no, we won’t make any intolerable demands of that sort on each other. I think it suits us best to have people with us. I daresay Percy would like to come for a bit, perhaps your mother would join us, and then there’s Jim Armine, who always wants to go abroad whenever he can.”

  Eva spoke with the utmost indifference, but her husband found himself wondering whether that indifference was not a very subtle piece of acting. That he had some inkling of the young man’s feelings towards his wife was very possible, but he had not the least objection to that. In fact, it rather pleased him than otherwise, as it afforded a sort of testimonial to his own admirable taste in wishing her to become his wife, and to his enviable success in securing her for that purpose. He knew quite well that the rôle of jealous husband would not suit him in the least, and he had no intention of being a complaisant one, but he had sense enough to guess that complaisance was not necessary. He had no reason to believe that Eva had a heart at all; and he had no desire to make a mistake. If he suggested to Eva that he would rather not have Jim Armine with them, his remark would be liable to be interpreted in a way which she might with justice resent; in fact, that was the only interpretation open to her, for he liked the young man well enough in himself. He did not even admit the smallest suspicion into his mind; he only realised that there was the possibility of an avenue, down which suspicion might some day choose to walk; and when suspicion was seen by him walking down that avenue, he would go and take its hand, and they would knock at Eva’s door, and show themselves.