by E. F. Benson
Reggie was very fond of music, but it was compatible, or rather essential, that his particular liking for it prompted him to say that Wagner seemed to him to be “awfully ugly.” Nor was it such a far cry that he should assert, that same evening to Gertrude, that he had thought the “Overture to Tannhäuser” “awfully pretty.”
Gertrude had been rather silent as they drove back. But something had prompted her to say to Reggie that evening, as they sat in the drawing-room before dinner:
“Ah! Reggie, I am so glad you are good.”
Reggie’s powers of analysis were easily baffled, and it is no wonder that he felt puzzled.
“I don’t like bad people,” he said.
“Nor do I, a bit,” said Gertrude. “I am glad you don’t either. I thought of that this afternoon at the concert.”
“Oh! I listened to the music,” said Reggie. “I liked it awfully.”
“Yes, I know, but it suggested that to me. Half of the overture—all that rippling part seemed so wicked. I think Wagner must have been a bad man. He evidently meant it to be much more attractive than the other.”
“I don’t see how you can say some parts are wicked and some good. It’s all done on the fiddles, you know.”
Gertrude laughed.
“I hope you’ll never understand, then,” she said. “I prefer you as you are. After all, that matters a great deal.”
The gong had sounded, and Mrs. Davenport, as she entered the room, heard the last words.
“What doesn’t Reggie understand?” she asked.
“Gertrude said she thought some of the overture was wicked,” said he, “and I said I didn’t know what she meant. Is it very stupid of me?”
Mrs. Davenport looked up quickly at Gertrude.
“No, dear; I think it’s very wise of you,” she said.
Reggie jumped up.
“I didn’t know I was ever wise,” he said. “It’s really a delightful discovery. Thank you, mummy. Gerty, you’ll have to respect me for ever, now you know I’m wise. I shall invest in a sense of dignity.”
“I never said you were wise,” remarked Gertrude, “and I refuse to be responsible for any opinions but my own.”
“Oh, I’ll be responsible,” murmured Mrs. Davenport.
Reggie looked from one to the other with the air of an intelligent dog.
“I daresay it’s all right,” he said, “but I don’t know what it’s all about.”
“Oh! Reggie, you do understand,” said Gertrude; “don’t be ridiculous.”
Reggie looked at her with the most genuine frankness.
“I don’t understand a word, but I should like you to explain it very much.”
Gertrude frowned and turned away to greet Jim Armine, who was dining with them. The vague pain which she had felt before was with her now. Somehow, she and Reggie seemed to have got on to different levels. It was his moral, not his intellectual, understanding which appeared to her every now and then as almost entirely wanting. What puzzled her was that she had been entirely unconscious of any such defect till a few months ago, and her present knowledge of it struck her somehow as not being the natural outcome of increased intimacy, but rather as if her own moral understanding, by which she judged Reggie, had been developed and showed the want of it in him. But here again the vague instinctiveness of the feeling in her mind precluded analysis. All she knew was that she viewed things rather differently from him, and that this difference had not always been there. But pity is akin to love, and love, when joined with pity, is not less love, but love joined to the most human protective instinct, which, if anything, adds tenderness to passion.
Jim Armine had been lunching with the Hayes, and brought a minatory message for Reggie. Why had he said he would come to lunch and bring Miss Carston, and then never turned up.
Reggie behaved in the most unchivalrous manner.
“It was all Gerty’s fault,” he said. “She made me go to hear music.”
“But you wrote to say so, didn’t you, Reggie?”
Reggie began to wish he had taken the blame on himself.
“Yes, I wrote,” he said.
“And forgot to send it,” interpolated Mrs. Davenport. “Reggie, you are simply abominable. You must go to call, and explain.”
“Oh, you can write a note to say how sorry you are,” said Gertrude, suddenly.
The remark was insignificant enough, but to Gertrude it was the outcome of a feeling not at all insignificant. She felt as if she had inadvertently said something she did not mean to say, without reflecting that, to the others, the words were capable of a much less momentous interpretation. She looked up quickly at Mrs. Davenport, fearing for a moment that her self-betrayal was patent. Mrs. Davenport also remembered at the moment a certain conversation which she and Gertrude had had one night some months ago, and their eyes met. That look puzzled the elder woman; she had not fathomed Gertrude’s feeling on the subject of Lady Hayes, when she spoke to her about her, and the mystery remained still unsolved. The idea that Gertrude was in any way the prey of a jealous fear was too ridiculous to be entertained.
The Dowager Lady Hayes, who was staying with them, entered somewhat opportunely at this moment, followed by Mr. Davenport, and they all went in to dinner. That veteran lady appeared to be in a state of mind which, when it occurs in children, is called fractiousness.
She always took a homœopathic dose in globular form before dinner, which was placed in a little wooden box by her place, but tonight the dose had not been set out, and she disconcerted everybody horribly by saying, during the first moment of silence, inevitable, when English people meet to dine together, and in a voice of stentorian power—
“My dinner pills.”
A hurried consultation took place among the flunkies, and, after a few moments’ search, the box was found, and handed to her on a salver. Old Lady Hayes held them up a moment and rattled them.
“Pepsine,” she announced; “obtained from the gastric juices of pigs. An ostrich couldn’t eat the food we eat, and at these hours, without suffering from indigestion. I would sooner eat a box of tin tacks than an ordinary English dinner at half-past eight, without my pepsine.”
Mrs. Davenport cast a responsible eye over the menu, which, to the ordinary mind, appeared sufficiently innocent. She was always divided between the inclination to laugh and to be polite when dealing with Lady Hayes, which produced an inability to say anything.
Eva, as we have seen, adopted a different method; she neither laughed nor was she polite, but she was respectfully insolent, which is a very different matter. The utter indifference of her manner produced a sort of chemical affinity in those widely-sundered qualities, just as electricity produces a chemical affinity between oxygen and hydrogen, which turns them into pure water, though both gases seem sufficiently remote, to the unchemical mind, from their product.
“Soufflé,” continued the dowager, glancing down the menu, “when composed of meat—that is, of nitrogenous substance—is utterly unsuitable to human food. It produces a distention—”
But Mrs. Davenport broke in—
“Dear Lady Hayes, let me send for the wing of a chicken. I know you like chicken wing.”
A sigh resembling relief went round the table. Mrs. Davenport had broken the charmed circle, who were waiting, like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, for the unaccountable brimstone to descend on them. Reggie began to talk very rapidly about the Ascot cup; Jim Armine engaged Mrs. Davenport on the Irish question; and Mr. Davenport, by way of transition, asked Lady Hayes whether gas was not very unhealthy.
But the subject of gas did not appear to interest the old lady. She wished to talk about something else, and when she wished to do anything, she did it.
“My daughter-in-law—” she began.
Reggie was still discussing, or rather enunciating, truths or untruths on the chances of Orme, and Lady Hayes’s words did not reach him. But Lady Hayes was accustomed to demand a universal deference and attention for her remarks. So s
he glared at Reggie, who soon caught her eye—it was impossible not to catch her eye very soon when it meant business—and subsided.
“My daughter-in-law,” repeated the dowager—“whom I saw this afternoon, driving a dogcart in the Park—it was quite unheard of for a young woman to drive a dogcart alone when I was young—asked me to tell you all to keep Monday week open. She is sending out cards for a dance on that day—or rather she has sent them out, and she forgot to send them to you. Therefore I am a penny postman. She would be glad to see you all. Personally, I think the dances that are given now are simply disgusting. They are very unhealthy, because everyone sits up at the time when the ordinary evening fever sets in; that is, from twelve to two. But I promised to give her message. I am responsible no further. And the cotillion is indecent.”
Mr. Davenport made a bad matter worse.
“I am sure there will be none of that romping which you so rightly—ah!—dislike,” he said. “I always think—”
But what Mr. Davenport always thought will never be known, for her ladyship interrupted him.
“It is based on immorality,” she announced; “it is an exhibition that would disgrace any Christian country, and more especially England.”
“Why especially England?” asked Jim, who was conscious of a challenge in her words.
“Because English people seem to pretend to a high morality more than any other nation.”
“And are you cruel enough to include your daughter-in-law in that category?” asked Jim.
“Eva Hayes is very English,” said the old lady.
“I am sure she never made any pretence of an exceptional morality,” remarked Jim, eating his nitrogenous food, and getting angry.
“No one would accuse her of being exceptionally moral.”
“I said she didn’t make a pretence of it,” said Jim.
Mrs. Davenport threw herself into the breach, and asked the dowager how digitalis was made.
Gertrude was sitting next Jim Armine, and wished to know more. Old Lady Hayes was well embarked on the structure of foxglove seeds, and she turned to Jim.
“You know Lady Hayes very well, don’t you?” she asked.
“I was with them in Algiers last year.”
“Do you like her very much?”
“That’s a wrong word to use, somehow,” he said. “I think she is the cleverest woman I ever saw, and, perhaps, the most interesting,” he added, in a burst of veiled confidence.
“Ah!”—it was somewhat discouraging to hear that so many people took this as their main characteristic—“I don’t know her at all. But I don’t feel as if I should like her.”
“I believe women dislike her very much, as a rule,” remarked Jim, drily.
Something in his speech made Gertrude angry. It is always annoying, however modest an opinion we may have of ourselves, to be classed as a probable example to an universal rule. She waited a moment before she answered him.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, there are very few people whom both women and men like much. Of course, I am not referring to the ordinary, stupid, good-natured people who are universal favourites—that is to say, whom no one dislikes—but to the people whom many men or women get excited about. She is one of those.”
Mrs. Davenport was beginning to collect eyes—that is to say, she was looking at Gertrude, for no one could collect the dowager’s eyes—and Gertrude rose in obedience.
“I think I know what you mean,” she said.
Jim was left in excusable uncertainty as to what she meant, and the ladies left the room.
Mr. Davenport sat down again with an air of relief.
“I have always been considered a strong man,” he said, “but, by the side of that old lady, I am a cripple and a baby. Get the cigarettes, Reggie.”
“She told me that cigarettes were slow but certain death, yesterday,” remarked Reggie, “but she cannot make me rude to her. It would be such a pity.”
“Oh! She regards you as a possible convert,” said Jim. “She hopes that you will go about with eight holes in your boots before long.”
“How does she get on with Percy’s sister?” asked Reggie, innocently.
Jim Armine laughed.
“Didn’t you know you were her ark? She got routed in several pitched battles, and retired precipitately.”
“That was when you were abroad last year, Reggie,” said Mr. Davenport. “She came here one day with her boxes and medicines, and asked us to take her in. She gave no reason; but Lady Hayes told your mother.”
“Was Lady Hayes so rude to her?”
Jim Armine laughed.
“She was so polite, on the contrary. Don’t you know her?”
Gertrude went off next morning to meet Mrs. Carston at Tunbridge, and go with her to Aix. Reggie went with her to Victoria, and had parting words on the platform.
“I wish you were coming with me, Reggie,” said Gertrude. “We’re going to Lucerne in a month from now, when mother has had her course. That will be towards the end of June. Do come. It is an awfully nice place, and you can go up mountains—or row if you like. Will you?”
Reggie thought it a brilliant and feasible idea.
“I don’t care a bit about London,” he said, “and I do happen to care about you. It will be lovely. Write to me just before you go there, and tell me the hotel, and so on. Of course, I’ll come. Ah! Good-bye, Gerty.”
The train moved slowly out of the station, and Reggie was left standing on the platform, waiting for it to curl away into the dark arch which soon swallowed it up. He had lost a great deal, and he went home somewhat silently.
That evening there was a great reception at one of the Foreign Embassies. Mrs. Davenport was the sister of the Ambassador’s wife, and, after dinner, she asked whether anybody was going with her. Her husband eschewed such festivities; like a sensible man, he preferred, he said, to sit quietly at home, than to stand wedged in among a crowd of people who didn’t care whether they saw him or not, and fight his way into a stuffy drawing-room. Reggie was sitting in the window, which he had thrown wide open, and was reading The Field. He had written a short note to Gertrude because he missed her, and as her bodily presence was not there, he felt it was something to communicate with her, but letter-writing was a difficulty to him, and the note had been very short.
An idea seemed to strike Mrs. Davenport when she saw him.
“Reggie, why don’t you come?”
“I’ll come if you like. Will it be amusing? Yes; I should like to come. Let me smoke in the carriage, mummy.”
The two went downstairs together, and got into the carriage.
“Poor old boy,” said Mrs. Davenport, laying her hand on his, “you will feel rather lonely tonight. I thought you’d like to come.”
“It’s an awful bore, Gerty having to go away,” said Reggie, without any obvious discontent, “but it’s only for a month, you know. I’m going to join her at Lucerne, if you don’t want me. I hope there’s something to do there. She said there were some mountains about. I shall climb.”
Mrs. Davenport was conscious of a slight chill.
“Well, there’ll be Gerty there,” she said.
“Oh, yes; of course,” said Reggie. “I shouldn’t think of going if she wasn’t there. You said I might smoke, didn’t you?”
“I’m very happy about you and Gerty,” said Mrs. Davenport, after a pause. “I should have chosen her of all others for a daughter-in-law.”
“Oh! But I chose her first,” said Reggie. “That’s more important, isn’t it? I wrote her a line this evening. I wish I didn’t hate writing letters so. I can never think of anything to say. What do you say in letters, mother, you always write such good ones?”
“But you don’t find it difficult to talk, Reggie. Why should you find it difficult to write?”
“Oh! But I do find it difficult to talk,” said he. “It’s dreadfully puzzling. I never talk to Gerty.”
“Are you always quite silent, th
en?”
“No; but I don’t talk. At least, I suppose I do talk, in a way. I babble, you know. She does most of the talking.”
Mrs. Davenport laughed.
“Babble on paper, then,” she said; “Gerty will like it just as well.”
“Oh! But I can’t. It’s so silly if you put it down. Is this the Embassy? I hope I shall meet a lot of people I know.”
Reggie’s common sense was enormous. Gertrude had gone away, and she wouldn’t come back for the wishing. He wished she had not gone very much, but here he was in England without her. Surely England without her was the same as England with her, except that she was not there. Her absence, from a practical point of view, did not take the taste out of everything else. How should it? She was a very charming person, the most charming person Reggie had ever met. But there were other charming people, on a distinctly lower level, no doubt, but they did not cease to be charming because Gertrude had gone to Aix. After all, Reggie agreed with the great materialistic philosophers of all time, though he had never read their works. Mrs. Davenport felt somewhat annoyed with this school of thought as she dismounted from the carriage.
The Embassy stood at the corner of a large square, and a broad, red carpet ran from the door across to the road, for royalty was expected. Inside the house the arrangements all corresponded with the magnificent promise of the red carpet. A row of gorgeous flunkies, a band in the hall beneath the stairs, several hundred pounds’ worth of hot-house flowers banked up against the wall, a crowd of perfectly-dressed, bustling aristocrats, crowding up and staring, in the worst possible breeding, at a small space between two pillars, where three princesses were looking rather bored, and a similar number of princes were talking to the few who had managed, by dint of loyal shoves, to edge themselves into the august presences; the smiling host and hostess, the pleasant music of women’s voices, crossing the somewhat sombre strains of the band below, all these things are the invariable concomitants of such festivities, and on the whole one crush is rather like another crush.
Mrs. Davenport and Reggie had moved slowly up the staircase, and Reggie certainly was finding it amusing. There were lots of people he knew, and he stood chatting on the stairs while Mrs. Davenport talked for a few moments to her sister.