The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  “Reggie!”

  That moment was one of pure and simple happiness to them both. He turned and saw her, the girl to whom he had given his heart and his young love, and for him, as for her, at that moment none but the other existed. Gertrude felt that the thoughts of that golden future, which had so filled her mind one morning, as she walked down to the lake, were now beginning to be fulfilled. As for him, the chief feeling in his mind was one of passionate, unutterable relief; the long nightmare was over, for the moment he felt that childish, pure happiness of waking from a bad dream and finding morning come, and the sun shining into a dear, familiar room.

  He had not had a very pleasant journey. The anger which Mrs. Davenport had seen in his face, and from which she had taken comfort, burned itself out and left him face to face with blankness. His passionate desire to see Eva rekindled itself, but that was impossible, and the sight of Gertrude he felt, in another sense, was impossible too. Several times he had been on the point of turning back, but the essential weakness of his character forbade so determined a step. But certainly, at that first moment of meeting her, he felt, with that unquestioning irresponsibility, that in natures not so sweet creates egoism, that the solution was here, and the relief was great.

  “Ah, it is good to see you, Gerty,” he said, when the first silent greeting was over. “I didn’t know how much I wanted to get to you, until I saw you standing there.”

  “It was nice of you to come so soon,” she said, drawing her arm through his, and leading him out on to the verandah; “but why did you come so suddenly? Nothing is wrong, I hope?”

  Reggie had foreseen and dreaded this question, and he had devoted some thought to it. But Gertrude had given it a form more easy of reply than that he had anticipated.

  He looked at her affectionately.

  “Nothing is wrong,” he said with emphasis, and, to do him justice, he believed at that moment with truth.

  “Everything is as right as it can be now,” he went on; “now I am here with you, and oh, Gerty, nothing else matters.”

  “No,” she said softly; “nothing else matters.”

  They stood there looking at each other, silent, almost grave—for happiness is no laughing matter—until a waiter came out with a tray on which was Gertrude’s breakfast. Reggie went upstairs to his room to get rid of his travel stains, and Gertrude ordered breakfast for him to be served at the table on the verandah where she had her own. But it was not to be expected that the change in Reggie which Mrs. Davenport had noticed would escape her, and though, in the grave, silent joy of that first meeting, she had not consciously noticed it, she remembered it now, and it struck her exactly as it had struck Mrs. Davenport.

  “He has become a man,” she said to herself, and the thought flooded her mind with a new joy. He had said that nothing was wrong; their meeting had been all and more than she had expected, for she felt he fulfilled his part of that union of soul which she had thought of as the germ which lurked in their first months of courtship, and which she felt she had become capable of by degrees only. But, lo! He had changed too. Truly, the golden future was dawning.

  Such moments are rare. We cannot live always at the full compass of our possibilities, any more than a horse can gallop at full speed for ever. That great characteristic of the human race, limitation, forbid us to walk for ever on the circumference of our circle. That most disappointing of phenomena called reaction will not be denied, and the hearts which are capable of the highest emotions in the highest degree, are not only capable, but necessarily liable to their corresponding depths. But at present, disconsolate reflections of this kind had no footing in Gertrude’s mind. She knew her emotions were expanded for the present sweet moment, even to the limits of her imagination, and room for further thought there was none.

  All that day and all the next day the joy grew no less deep. On the afternoon of the third day an invitation came from Princess Villari for Mrs. and Miss Carston to come to tea, also to bring Mr. Davenport if he was there. Gertrude wanted to go, and so sans dire did her mother, and she soon convinced Reggie—who was of opinion that tea-parties were bores—that he wanted to go too. It is always flattering to the male mind to know that a lady particularly wants to see you, especially when that lady is described in so promising a way as that in which Gertrude alluded to the Princess.

  The Princess had a genius for doing things in the best possible way. If she had given a soap-bubble party, the pipes would have been amber tipped, the soap, “Pears’ scented,” and even in an informal affair of this sort, her arrangements were indubitably perfect. Her sitting-room opened on to the verandah of the hotel, which in turn communicated with the garden. Tea and light refreshments were provided in all these three charming places, on a quantity of small tables, giving unlimited opportunities for any number of tête-à-têtes. The steps and the verandah were bright with sweet-smelling flowers, and in the room, where their fragrance would have been overpowering, were large, cool branches of laburnum and acacia. Needless to say, she had advertised the hotel-keeper that she would be using the verandah and hotel gardens that afternoon, and that, with her compliments, those places would be “interdite” to any one but her guests.

  The Princess was extremely glad to see Reggie, and she couldn’t help congratulating him, if he wouldn’t think it very interfering of her, but she had made great friends with dear Gertrude, and Gertrude had told her all about it. And here was Mrs. Rivière coming, and did Reggie know her; she was a great friend of Lady Hayes, whom she was sure he must have met in London.

  Gertrude was standing some little way off, but she heard the name mentioned, and she could not help turning half round and looking at Reggie. Reggie’s back, however, was towards her, and he was making his bow to Mrs. Rivière.

  Mrs. Rivière was very busy about this time on modelling herself after the Princess, but having nothing in her composition that could be construed into tact or ability, the result was that the imitation was limited to talking in a loud voice, and saying anything that came into her head.

  “Charmed to meet you,” she was telling Reggie in shrill tones, “and all the men here are going to be dreadfully jealous of you at once. Your reputation has preceded you; it came to me by the last mail; how nobody could get in a word edgeways with Lady Hayes, because she was always talking to you, and how your photograph stood on the mantelpiece in her room, and she would never allow the housemaids to dust it, but she dusted it herself every morning with a pink silk handkerchief, also belonging, or belonging once, to you. Oh, don’t deny it, Mr. Davenport—and how she sat out four, or was it forty—I think forty—forty dances with you at some ball one night.”

  Mrs. Rivière paused for breath, well satisfied with herself. Her monologue had been quite as rapid as the Princess’s and, she flattered herself, quite as fascinating. Mimi had moved away when Mrs. Rivière came up, and was talking to Gertrude, a few yards off. But Gertrude did not hear what she was saying, for the shrill tones of Mrs. Rivière’s voice rose high above the surrounding babble of conversation, and seemed as if they were spoken to her alone. Reggie’s back was still turned towards her; his face she could not see.

  Reggie was conscious that Gertrude was within hearing, conscious also that Mrs. Rivière did not know his relations to her. Eva’s name had caused the blood to rush up into his face, and Mrs. Rivière had been delighted with the success of her speech. The Princess had caught a few of her last words, and, looking up at Gertrude, she saw that she had heard too. She wheeled suddenly about, and approached Mrs. Rivière.

  “There are simply twenty thousand people whom I don’t know here,” she said; “you really must come and introduce me to them. Who is that there in a green hat with little purple, bubbly things on it? I want to know anyone who wears purple and green. They must be so very brave; I respect brave people enormously. Come and introduce me. Villari has asked a lot of people I never saw before. I shall talk to him about the woman with purple bobbles!”

  She drew Mrs. Riv
ière away, and Reggie turned round and found himself with Gertrude.

  “I heard what that woman said to you,” said Gertrude, simply. “It is only fair to tell you that.”

  She waited, looking at him expectantly, but he remained silent.

  “Reggie,” she said, touching his arm.

  He raised his eyes and looked at her.

  “Come and walk round the garden, Gerty,” he said, “I have something to say to you.”

  Gerty’s loyalty struggled again and again conquered.

  “What you have to say to me can be said here, surely,” she said gently and trustfully. “I do not even want you to deny the truth or any of the truth of what that woman said. I am ashamed of having told you that I heard. Forgive me instantly, please, Reggie, and then we’ll have a stroll.”

  Reggie paused, and it was a cruel moment for Gertrude.

  “Yes, I will say it here,” he went on at length. “Do you remember my telling you, three days ago, on the morning I came, that everything was right now I was with you? That was true.”

  “And it is true, and you have forgiven me?” asked Gertrude.

  Was the ghost of Venusberg not laid yet? Else what was that murmur which Reggie had heard again, when Mrs. Rivière spoke of Eva, like the burden of a remembered song?—“She is not gone really, she has only gone elsewhere?” Was that the smell of red geraniums borne along from the flower-beds by the warm wind, faint, acrid, as you smell them in the dusty window-boxes of the great squares and streets in London? There should be no geraniums here, only wild flowers—meadow-sweet, dog-rose, violet—

  The sound of Gertrude’s voice had long died away, but Reggie stood silent. An overpowering feeling of anxiety swept over her; the trust that she had felt in his assurance that all was right was suddenly covered by a rolling breaker of doubt. And that silence cost her more than any speech.

  At last it became unbearable.

  “Speak, Reggie,” she cried, “whatever you have to tell me.”

  “Come, let us go round the garden, where we can be quiet,” he said, and together, in silence, they followed a path leading down between dark evergreen bushes to the garden gate.

  They sat down on a garden seat where they were hidden from the crowd gathering on the lawn.

  “Let us sit here, Reggie,” she said. “Just tell me, and when you have said ‘yes,’ forgive me for asking that it is true that everything is right.”

  “Ah! God knows whether it is true or false,” he cried.

  For him again, the army of Venus laughed and rioted as it had rioted once before in the crowded opera house. Again a woman, pale, wonderful, with dark eyes, sat beside him, beating time listlessly to the music with her feathered fan. She had worn that night her great diamond necklace, and the jewels had flashed and glittered in the bright light, till he could scarcely believe they were not living things. And he had thought it was all over, past and dead. Oh no! “she is not gone really; she has only gone elsewhere…she often turns up again.”

  Gertrude felt her heart give one great leap of strained suspense, and then stand still for fear.

  “I don’t understand,” she cried. “Tell me all about it, and tell me quickly. Yet, yet, you said it was all right, didn’t you, Reggie, and you wouldn’t tell me a lie? Ah! Say it is all right again, say it now. I cannot bear it. I should like to kill that woman for what she said. It was not true, was it? Tell me it was not true.”

  The ghost of Venusberg loomed large before Reggie’s eyes, blotting out the green bank of trees in front, the pure sky overhead, the mountains sleeping in the still afternoon, blotting out even the tall, English figure by him, leaning forward towards him in an agony of fear, hope, despair; he saw the gleam of electric light, the gleam of jewels, the gleam of another woman’s eyes.

  “I will tell you all,” he said. “I saw Lady Hayes for the first time after you had left London, and from that time till four days ago I have seen her constantly. Then one night she showed me she was like all those women she moved among, and from whom I thought her so different. She was like Mrs. Rivière, Princess Villari—all is one after that. It was at the opera, at Tannhäuser—”

  The intensity of Gertrude’s suspense relaxed a little. It was all over, then—

  “Ah! We heard the overture together. Do you remember? You said you did not like wicked people.”

  “Yes, I know. When I saw that, at that moment I loathed her. She had said to me things no woman should say, and when I heard the overture I understood, and told her she was a wicked woman. And not till then—you must believe me when I tell you this—not till I had vowed never to see her again, did I know—my God! That I should say these things to you—did I know I loved her. I have been through heaven and hell, and they are both hell.”

  Reggie paused.

  “That is not all,” said Gertrude.

  The suspense was over, and despair is as calm or calmer than joy.

  “I couldn’t leave her like that,” he went on. “I could not hate her utterly at the first moment that I knew I loved her, and I wrote to her asking her forgiveness, and she told me—she wrote to me, that she never would see me again, that I had behaved unpardonably. She made me angry. And I came straight off here the same day.”

  “And now?” asked Gertrude.

  “God only knows what now,” said he, leaning his head on his hands.

  There was a long silence, and the babble of laughter and talk came to them from the lawn, which was filling fast. Then Reggie heard Gertrude’s voice, very low and very tender, speaking to him—

  “Poor Reggie, poor dear boy. I am very sorry for you.”

  She laid her hand on his knee, and then, drawing closer to him, as he sat with down-bent head, leaned forward to kiss him. But in a moment she recollected herself, and by an effort of supremest delicacy, before he was conscious what she had intended, drew back with one long look at him, in which her soul said “Farewell.”

  She had something more to say, but it was not easy for her to say it. The uprootal of all one loves best makes it difficult to talk just then. But easy or not, it had to be said, and it was better to say it now.

  “I am sure you told me the truth,” she began, “when I met you three days ago, and you said everything was right. We know nothing for certain, do we; we can only say what we think, and I am sure you thought that. Anyhow, these last three days have been very sweet. And now, Reggie, there is only one thing more to say…you are free, absolutely free.… I am not so selfish as to wish to bind you to me.… I love you…surely I may tell you once more what I have told you so often…I love you with all my heart and soul, and I do not think I shall change. But we must wait. If that day comes when you say to me, ‘Will you have me?’ I shall say ‘Yes.’ But, you must say it in the same spirit in which I shall say ‘Yes.’ You know what that means, don’t you? Ah, Reggie, I don’t blame you. How could I do that?”

  “Gerty, Gerty,” cried he, “I would give all the world to be able to say that to you. I know what you mean. But I am helpless, dumb, blind, deaf. I can do nothing. I am tossed about. I don’t know what is happening to me. And that you should suffer too.”

  Gertrude smiled, ever so faintly.

  “It’s a difficult world, isn’t it,” she said, “but it has its ups and downs. I have been very happy almost all my life.”

  “Forgive me, forgive me,” he cried. “Gerty, say you don’t hate me.”

  A deep tremor ran through her. When she met his imploring gaze, the desire of her young, strong love to gather him into her arms, to comfort him, to make him feel the depths of her yearning for him, to lose all for one moment in one last, clasping embrace was very hard to resist. “What harm is done?” whispered one voice within her, but another said, “He is not yours; he belongs to the woman he loves.” For one moment she hesitated: tenderness, love, memory, wrestled with that other voice, but prevailed not. There was that within her stronger than them all.

  “I love you more than all the world,” she
said, “and there is nothing to forgive.”

  For one moment she stood looking at him, treasuring the seconds that passed too quickly, knowing that before a short minute had passed that last look would be over. Such a pause is purely instinctive, and when instinct tells us that it is time to take up one’s life again, it is impossible to stay longer.

  That moment came all too soon, and Gertrude spoke again.

  “Come, we must be going back. They will wonder where we are. Ah! There is the Princess. Reggie, pick me that tea-rose.”

  The Princess felt vaguely reassured. The look in Gertrude’s face when she heard what Mrs. Rivière was saying was not pleasant, and it remained in her mind with some vividness. But the last remark which she had overheard was distinctly encouraging.

  “Really, you two people are too bad,” she said. “You are here to amuse me and my guests, and show these little French people how magnificent, clean, nice, English boys and girls are. I’ve been entertaining a lot of stupid people, whom I didn’t want to see, and who wouldn’t have wanted to see me if I hadn’t been a Highness. But I’ve got a great notion of my duty as a hostess. Didn’t somebody write an “Ode to Duty”? You might as well write an “Ode to Dentistry.” They are both very unpleasant, but they both keep you straight.”

  She led the way back to the lawn, and Gertrude and Reggie followed.

  Society may be a farce, but it is a very grim farce. The devout but rejected lover, who has proposed to the lady of his love beneath an idyllic moon, goes to bed that night as usual, and if, in the agony of his mind, he has forgotten, to take the links out of his shirt in the evening, he will have to do it in the morning. The bows of his evening shoes will want untying just as much that night as on any other, and next morning he will find himself at the breakfast-table just as usual, having washed and brushed his teeth and combed his hair. The unkempt, haggard lovers of fiction have no existence in real life. Edwin does not refuse to shave because Angelina will have none of him, nor does he use his razor, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, for any more anatomical process than that of removing his superfluous hair. And Gertrude did not go home in floods of tears and refuse to be comforted, but she talked to several old acquaintances, and made several new ones, and quite a number of people said, “What a delightful girl Miss Carston is.” But her grief was none the less deep for that.