The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  Mrs. Davenport laid down her book, frightened.

  “Ah! Reggie, what’s the matter? What has happened?”

  Reggie turned away from her, and fingered a small ornament on the mantelpiece.

  “Nothing,” he said hoarsely. “I came away from the opera. I—”

  He turned round again, and knelt by his mother’s chair.

  “Don’t ask me just now,” he said. “There has been a scene, and I came away. Lady Hayes said things that disgusted me. I didn’t think she was like that.”

  Mrs. Davenport offered a short mental thanksgiving. Until the relief had come, she had not known how much Reggie’s intimacy with Lady Hayes had weighed on her. She waited for a moment to see if Reggie would say more. Then—

  “Won’t you tell me more, dear, or would you rather not?”

  “Yes, I want to tell you,” said he. “At dinner she told me all about Tannhäuser and Venusberg, and I didn’t understand her. Then, when the overture was played, I suddenly understood it all. It was horrible; it was wicked. If anybody else had said that, I should simply have thought it was very bad form, but that she should!”

  Mrs. Davenport had not quite realised before how serious it was, and Reggie’s tone, even in his renunciation of Eva, was a shock to her.

  “That she should say those things!” repeated Reggie. “But when I understood it, I couldn’t stop there. I don’t remember very clearly what happened. I told her she was a wicked woman, and then I came away.”

  The excessive baldness of his narrative struck Mrs. Davenport as convincing, and she felt a little reassured. But Reggie had not meant to reassure her, and he soon undeceived her.

  “Why should she have said those things to me?” he went on, getting up, and walking about the room. “Why, if she was like that, couldn’t she have kept it from me? I should have been content to know only half of her, and to have adored that.”

  “Ah!”

  Mrs. Davenport winced as with a sudden spasm of pain; then pity for Gertrude bred in her anger for Reggie. “What do you mean?” she said sharply. “I do not understand you in the least. You adored her, then; why not say love?”

  “I didn’t know it before,” said he, “until this thing came, or, of course, I should have gone away. I am not a villain. But I know it now; I adored her, and I loved her—and—”

  “And you do still?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a long silence, and the hum of the London streets came in at the open window. Mrs. Davenport found herself noticing tiny things, among others that Reggie had placed the ornament he had been fingering perilously near the edge of the mantelpiece. In a great crisis our large reflective and thinking powers get choked for a moment, and the ordinary surface perceptions, which are as instinctive and unnoticed as breathing, are left in command of our mind. The sight of that ornament there assumed an overwhelming importance to her, and she got up from her seat and put it back in a safer place. Then she turned to Reggie, who was standing still in the middle of the room, with his back towards her.

  “Sit down here, Reggie,” she said quietly. “I think we had better talk a little. Do you quite realise what that means?”

  “Ah, don’t talk to me like that,” he burst out. “As if I was not in hell already, without being reminded of it. Mummy, I don’t mean that. You are all that is good and loving. You know that I know it. You are very gentle with me. I won’t be angry again.”

  Mrs. Davenport’s anxiety for Gertrude made her very tender.

  “Ah, my dear,” she said, “I do not care for myself. It is very immaterial that you speak like that to me. I should be a very selfish woman if I thought of myself just now. There are others to think of, you and—and Gertrude.”

  “Yes, I know, I know. But what am I to do? Tell me that, and I will do it.”

  “Go to Aix,” said his mother promptly, “and go at once.”

  “Go to Aix!” said he. “Why, that’s just what I couldn’t possibly do. God knows, I have done Gertrude injury enough, without insulting her!”

  “Your waiting here in London is the worst insult you could do her. You must see that.”

  “I can’t do it!” he cried. “You know I can’t. How can I leave Eva—Lady Hayes—like this?”

  Mrs. Davenport got up, and waited a moment till her voice was more under her control. But when she spoke, her anger vibrated through it so strongly, that even Reggie, in his almost impenetrable self-centred wretchedness, was startled.

  “Has it ever occurred to you that there is another concerned in this besides yourself?” she said. “Are you aware that Gertrude loves you in a way that it honours any man to be loved? Do you mean to make no effort to repair the injury you have done her? Be a man, Reggie; you have been a boy too long. Dare you say you ever loved Gerty, if you treat her like this—now? You wish to behave like a fool, and, what is worse, like a coward. I never thought I should be ashamed of you, as I shall be now, if you stop in London after what has happened.”

  Once more there was a dead silence. Mrs. Davenport, as she knew, had played her ace of trumps; she had brought to bear the strongest motive that she could think of to influence Reggie. If he would not listen to her because she was his mother, if he cared nothing about the effect his action would have on her opinion of him, she knew that there was no more to be done by her.

  Reggie flushed suddenly, as if he had been struck.

  “But what good will it do if I go?” he cried; “and where am I to go to? I can’t go to Gertrude now.”

  “Your place is with her,” said Mrs. Davenport. “If it is all over between you, it is your business to tell her. I don’t wish you to tell her at once, but go there and wait a week. Don’t be a coward, and don’t think that it will be any the better for putting it off. What do you propose to do in the interval—to wait here? She will write to you, and you will not answer, or will you pretend that you are hers, as she is yours? That would not be a very honourable position, would it? Don’t disgrace yourself and bring dishonour on us all. Have you no pride, even?”

  Reggie looked up in amazement.

  “Disgrace myself—bring dishonour on you—”

  “Has it never struck you that you are on the verge of doing that?” said Mrs. Davenport.

  It evidently had not, and Reggie received the possibility of it with deep perplexity. But the outcome was that he said wearily—

  “Do as you like with me. Yes; I will go.”

  “Ah! But what is the use of going like that?” said his mother. “You must go, not because I wish you to, but because you realise it, and mean to act up to it. The fact of your going is only a symbol that you are notquite disloyal yet. You are to go as if your heart was still whole; you are going to meet Gerty, to meet her to whom you promised so much. You told me Eva said things which disgusted you. Think of them; sting yourself into hating her. Oh! It will not be easy. I do not expect you will enjoy yourself.”

  Reggie sat still a moment; then he exclaimed inconsequently—

  “I am very tired. I shall go to bed. Yes, I want to see Gerty again very much.”

  Reggie, as he had said, had only that night realised how much Eva had entered into his life. It had not occurred to him before to put the case candidly to himself; not because he wished to shirk a conclusion, but because he regarded his feeling for Gertrude as sufficiently safe to warrant the assumption that things were all right. But when this sudden crash came—serious enough, at least, from his point of view, for he could not help regarding his words to Eva as a formal and complete rupture—he saw exactly where he stood. He was separated from Eva; but he was separated from Gertrude, not by any violent wrench, but by the gradual drift of the current, which he had not perceived till now. It had not occurred to him to be honest with himself before. Eva had been divinely kind to him, sympathetic, eager to share his confidence; it was no wonder that, in the blank which Gertrude’s absence made, he had found pleasure in giving it her, and that the aforesaid blank became gradually fill
ed with new interests. If the thought ever had occurred to him that the image of Eva was becoming a sort of palimpsest to that of Gertrude, he would have denied the imputation stoutly, perhaps the more stoutly because he was aware that he had not been at pains to find out.

  Mrs. Davenport felt, when he had left her, that in a vague way she had expected all this. She had been quite aware that it is not possible for men to continue being boys indefinitely—that there is a time for everyone when they must ask themselves why they do a thing, or why they do not do it; and she knew that, for Reggie, that time had come. He was a boy no longer; that unconscious youth, which had moved Eva’s interest, then her love, had gone; he had awoke from his long, happy dream to the grey, convincing morning of reason and of claims. That he would be the better man for it, she did not doubt; that he could not have been a man without, she knew; and yet she was full of regret, full of those aching thoughts “for days that are no more,” which are even more poignant when we feel them for others than when we mourn over them for ourselves. Reggie had consented to go away—that was good; but was there not something left to be done? She knew from him that he had called Eva “a wicked woman,” and had left the box. What, then, was Eva’s feeling on the subject? If she was offended, so much the better; she might be induced to say so. If—worst chance of all—she cared for him, more than she cared for the hundred men who were dangling round her, was there still no possibility of making her say she was offended? All the mother’s pride and protectiveness revolted against the notion, but it was worth trying. Mrs. Davenport had so clearly in her mind the best solution of the problem—namely, the disenchantment of Reggie, by any means, or, failing that, the prolonged absence from Eva—that she put her pride in her pocket. She remembered perfectly well her talk with Percy; how he had felt uneasy at this engagement, because it resembled too much Reggie’s previous escapades: and surely, if he was right, Reggie’s very curtailed entanglement with Eva came under the same head. Let him only get away, with obvious discouragement from Eva, and let Gertrude reassert her previous relation, unconscious of any interruption.

  Lady Hayes had not passed a very good night. She was on the verge of doing a very difficult thing; that is to say, doing something directly opposed to her inclinations. In fact, she was, as she had told her husband, in love with Reggie Davenport, and such an experience was new to her. But this very simple and every-day phenomenon was curiously complicated in her case. She happened to be another man’s wife, and the man with whom she was in love was about to be another girl’s husband. She thought with some impatience of the hundred-and-one stories which are called realistic because they are improbable, in which the woman and man cast everything to the winds and say they obey the dictates of the divine mother of things, because that solution was very far from satisfying her. There is a book that says that love seeketh not its own, and, curiously enough, Eva found her thoughts straying to that short text, which has been abandoned as untrue by the apostles of evolution and modern life, who say that that particular gospel has served its time, that we now know a more excellent way. She had probably never devoted much thought as to whether she was modern or not, but she was surprised to find that so ancient a text seemed to represent her mood more clearly than less antique and hall-marked utterances.

  She had had breakfast and was still sitting in the dining-room with her husband, when a footman came in bearing a card. Eva looked at it and pondered. Then—

  “Tell Mrs. Davenport I will see her; show her in here.”

  Eva got up from her place, and walked up and down the room. She was very pale, and she looked anxious and worn. But she stopped opposite the flower-stand in the corner, and put two orchids in the front of her dress.

  Mrs. Davenport was announced, and remarked that it was a beautiful morning, and Lord Hayes assented. She had seldom seen him before, and he was dressed with extreme care, but appeared wholly insignificant. She remembered his enormous wealth, and it seemed to her to be a sort of label to prevent his getting quite lost in this large world. He reminded her of an undelivered parcel, waiting for its owner to turn up.

  Lady Hayes sat silent for a few minutes, and then turned to her husband.

  “Perhaps you would be so good as to go away,” she said in a low, musical voice, “as I have things to talk over with my friend, or, if you like, we will go upstairs. Perhaps that would be better.”

  Lord Hayes got up with alacrity.

  “The fact is,” he said, “I was on the point of going. I have some business to do. I was wanting to talk to you some time later on, if it would be convenient.”

  “Certainly,” said Eva. “I will see you about it later.”

  She dropped her eyes as he addressed her, and sat looking at the ground till he had left the room. Then she said to Mrs. Davenport—

  “What do you want with me?”

  Her tone belied the curtness of her words, and she waited eagerly for the answer. These few moments after she had said she would see Mrs. Davenport, were spent in an agony to control herself. She was hungering for more news from Reggie, but in her hand she held a note, which had come from him by the early post, which made her decision doubly difficult. It was a wild, absurd production, imploring pardon, entreating her to let him know that she had forgiven him—only half coherent—and Eva knew that he had really made his choice, or was willing to make his choice between her and Gertrude, if she would only say “Come.” “I am going to Aix today,” the note finished, “to see Gertrude. Cannot you send me one word, to say you forgive me? I behaved quite unpardonably.”

  Mrs. Davenport raised her eyes to Eva’s face, and answered her bravely.

  “I have come to talk to you about Reggie,” she said.

  Eva flushed, and unconsciously closed her hand on the note she held.

  “What about him?”

  “He is not very happy,” said Mrs. Davenport, gently, “and I think perhaps you can help me.”

  “Ah! I think I probably can,” said Eva. “I am glad you have come to see me. I am afraid I have made mischief, and I am sorry. It is odd for me to be sorry; I suppose it’s a sign that I am growing old. You know for some time he has been seeing a good deal of me. That was my fault; I ought to have stopped it. And last night I gave him a sudden shock. He only knew one little bit of me, and I thought it was better—”

  Eva stopped, for her voice was trembling, and Mrs. Davenport waited.

  “It was better,” she continued, after a moment, “that he should know the rest of me. Then, when he knew, he called me a wicked woman, and went away straight from the opera. It was splendid. I admired him immensely. But it appears he is sorry he did so. I have just got a note from him imploring forgiveness.”

  “Ah! The foolish boy,” said Mrs. Davenport, half involuntarily.

  “Yes, I quite agree with you. You see it puts me in a difficulty. I like him very much—so much that I should be sorry to do him an injury. I should do him an injury if I allowed him to fall in love with me again. On the other hand, I like him well enough to be very sorry not to see him again, and I have to choose.”

  Eva stopped again, and Mrs. Davenport laid a hand on hers.

  “Yes, yes,” she said eagerly.

  Eva was gradually regaining her control over herself.

  “I want him to be very happy,” she said, “and his best chance of happiness, I am sure, is with that girl; I forget her name. I have never seen her, but Reggie has spoken of her to me. He ought to go to Herefordshire, or wherever it is, and live among the daisies with his beloved. He is not made for this sort of thing; he is too good. I don’t at all wish to spoil his life or the girl’s life.”

  Mrs. Davenport bent forward again in her chair.

  “Ah! Eva, you will do it, won’t you? I am sure you are right. He will be very happy with her. Do write to him, and say you are offended; make him angry, touch his pride, be as brutal as possible.”

  “But I don’t feel brutal,” said Eva. “It is rather hard on me. Oh! I can’t,
I can’t,” she exclaimed suddenly.

  Mrs. Davenport saw how matters stood at once, and she paused. She had not expected this complication.

  Eva started up as she made this self-betrayal, and stood with the colour rising in her cheeks, furiously angry with herself, and wondering how Mrs. Davenport would interpret it. She blamed herself for ever having seen her; she had passed a sleepless night and her nerves were disordered. But the other lady spoke again, almost at once. She saw that it made it harder for Eva, but she saw that the only thing to be done was to pretend to have noticed nothing. So, before the silence grew portentous, she went on, but with more tenderness in her voice—

  “Yes, of course it is hard for you,” she said. “It is very hard to be unselfish in this weary world. But it is worth an effort, is it not? And that you are fond of Reggie ought to make it easier. You don’t wish to spoil his life, as you say.”

  “How did he behave last night when he came home?” asked Eva, suddenly.

  “He is changed,” said Mrs. Davenport. “I think you would see it. Somehow, he is a boy no longer; he has become a man, and he finds it not pleasant.”

  “Ah! That is so, is it?” said Eva. “It was horribly stupid of me. But it makes it easier for me. He was so young, somehow—which I have never been. Are you sure you are right?”

  “Yes, quite sure.”

  “That makes it easier for me, and perhaps for him. Does he take things hard?”

  “I don’t think Reggie has known anything before which he could take hard. He has been very happy.”

  “You mean he will be less happy now.”

  “For the time, yes,” said Mrs. Davenport; “but I feel sure it will be for the best. He is one of those people who are made to be happy, and I am sure he will have less unhappiness this way than if you took any other course.”

  “I must think about it,” said Eva, turning and walking up and down the room. But even as she spoke she tore Reggie’s letter in half, and threw the pieces into the grate. “It is hard for me, is it not?” said she, stopping in front of Mrs. Davenport, “but it appears I am to be the victim.”