The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  Just at the corner of Half-Moon Street was a flower-seller, with bunches and button-holes of spring flowers. The girl who sold them was pretty, and he looked at her a moment deftly twisting the wire round the stalks, wondering where the lower orders got their good looks from. There were yellow jonquils, breathing a heavy incense; creamy narcissi with flaming orange-coloured centres; exquisite single daffodils, most classic of all flowers, pure and girlish-looking; double daffodils, which reminded him of the same girls grown older and rather stout, overdressed, with fringes; and small fragrant bunches of violets. For violets, except in so far as they were of a lovely colour, he did not care; they were as formless as cotton-wool when put together for a button-hole (the object of flowers), and the scent of them was so precisely like essence of violets as to be banale. But as he was dressed in dark blue serge, with a violet satin tie and a sapphire pin, he bought a bunch, and put it in his button-hole, completing his scheme of colour. He gave the girl a shilling, and when she would have offered him a heavy copper change, told her to keep it, and walked on with a little warm charitable feeling, unencumbered by the dead weight of so many pennies.

  After his tailor’s, a visit to Perrin’s was necessary. He had a very particular hairdresser there, whom he must really take into serious consultation about certain gray hairs. There were at least a dozen of them above each of his ears, and they had appeared there during the last two or three months. All his family went gray early, and it was as well to face it. It was no use getting hair dyes, which might either ruin one’s hair or be the wrong colour; it was only wise to consult the very best authorities, and if hair dye was necessary, let it be put on, at any rate directed, by a professional hand.

  These were gloomy reflections; the shadow of age was beginning to peer over his shoulder, and he did not like it at all. He was as yet only thirty, but already ten years of being a young man, the only thing in the world worth being, were gone from him. Five years ago, men of forty, young for their age, were objects of amusing horror to him; their whole life, so he thought, must be one effort to retain the semblance of youth, and their antics were grotesque to the vraie jeunesse. But now both the amusement and the horror were gone; it would soon be worth while trying to learn a wrinkle or two from them. At twenty-five forty had seemed beyond the gray horizons; at thirty it had come so near that already, and without glasses (which he did not need yet), one could see the details of that flat, uninteresting land. What he would do with himself when he was forty he could not imagine. Marry very likely.

  But forty was still ten years off, thousands of days, and this morning was a jewel of spring, and he was so happy to think that probably Kit had nothing much amiss. Really, he had had some bad minutes, but Toby must have known if there had been anything wrong. So his spirits rebounded, and he resumed his reflections on age with a strong disposition towards cheerfulness as regards the outlook. When he looked over his contemporaries in his own mind, he candidly found himself younger than they. There was Tom Abbotsworthy, for instance, whose forehead was already nearly one with the top of his head, separated only by the most scrannel isthmus of hair, and corrugated with wrinkles on its lower parts, smooth and shining above. There was Jack Conybeare, with a visible tinge of gray in his hair, and lines about his eyes which were plain even by candlelight. Ted congratulated himself, when he thought of Jack, on his having so promptly gone to the face masseur on his return from Aldeburgh in September. It had meant a week of tedious mornings, and an uncomfortable sort of mask at night over the upper part of the face two or three times a week ever since, but the treatment had been quite successful. “Not only,” as the somewhat sententious professor of massage had said to him, “had the growth and spread of the lines been arrested, but some had actually been obliterated.” He congratulated Ted on his elastic skin. Again, his teeth were good, and really the only reconnoitring-parties of age at present in sight were this matter of gray hairs and a tendency to corpulency. For the former he was going to take prompt steps this morning, and he had already begun a course of gritty biscuits, most nutritious, but entirely without starch, which promised success in point of the latter.

  But while he was making his butterfly way down Piccadilly, occasionally sipping at a jeweller’s, or hovering lightly over a print-shop, Toby, after a long meditation on the top step of the club, during which time the hall-porter had held the door open for him, turned away instead of going in, and went up Park Lane to his brother’s house. Kit’s bedroom was directly over the front-door, and, looking up, he saw that the blinds were still down. Jack was coming into the hall from his room when Toby entered, and, seeing him, stopped.

  “I was just coming to see you, Toby,” he said. “I am glad you have come.”

  Jack’s face looked curiously aged and drawn, as if he had spent a week of sleepless nights, and Toby followed him in silence, with a heart sunk suddenly into his boots. There was deadly presage in the air. Jack preceded him into the smoking-room, and threw himself down in a chair.

  “Oh, Jack, what is it?” asked Toby.

  * * * *

  The two remained together for nearly an hour, and at the end of that time came out together again. Toby took his hat and gloves from the hall-table, and was putting on his coat, when the other spoke.

  “Won’t you go and see her?” he asked, and his voice was a little trembling.

  “I think I can’t,” said Toby.

  “Why not?”

  Toby had thrust one hand through the arm of his coat, and with it dangling remained a moment thinking.

  “For two reasons: she is your wife—yours,” he said, “and I am your brother; also you were a brute, Jack.”

  “For both reasons see her,” he said; and his voice was sorry and ashamed.

  “And it will do no good,” said Toby, still irresolute.

  “But it will be a pleasure to Kit,” said Jack. “Don’t, for God’s sake, be always thinking about doing good, Toby! Oh, it maddens me!”

  Toby disengaged the coated arm, and leaned against the hall-table.

  “I shouldn’t know what to say,” he replied.

  “You needn’t know; just go and see her.” Jack spoke with some earnestness. “Go and see her,” he went on. “I can’t, and I must know how she is. Toby, I believe you are sorry for both of us. Well, if that is so, I am sure Kit would like to see you, and certainly I want you to go. She was asking for you, her maid told me, an hour ago.”

  “I’m a damned awkward sort of fellow,” said Toby. “Suppose she begins to talk, God knows what I shall say.”

  “She won’t; I know her better than you.”

  Toby put his hat down, and drew off a glove.

  “Very well,” he said. “Send for her maid.”

  Jack laid his hand on Toby’s arm.

  “You’re a good fellow, Toby,” he said, “and may God preserve you from the fate of your brother!”

  Jack rang the bell, and sent for Kit’s maid. The two brothers remained together in the hall without speaking till she came down again.

  “Her ladyship will see Lord Evelyn now,” she said.

  Toby went up the staircase behind the woman. They came to Kit’s door, and having tapped and been answered, he entered.

  The blinds, as he had seen from the street, were down, and the room in low half-light. The dressing-table was close in front of the window, and in the dim rose light that filtered through the red stuff, he could at first see nothing but a faint sparkle of silver-backed brushes and bottles. Then to the right of the window the bed became outlined to his more accustomed gaze, and from it came Kit’s voice, rather gentler and lower-pitched than its wont.

  “Toby, it is dear of you to come to see me,” she said. “But isn’t it stupid of me? Directly after seeing Lily yesterday I came back here, and tripped on those steps leading from Jack’s room. I came an awful bang. I must have been stunned, for I remember nothing till I found myself lying on the sofa here. Oh dear, I’ve got such a headache!”

  Toby
found himself suddenly encouraged. Of all moral qualities, he was disposed to put loyalty the first, and certainly Kit was being magnificently loyal. Her voice was perfectly her own; she did not say that she had stumbled over something of Jack’s, still less that he, as Toby knew, had knocked her down. He drew a chair up to the bedside.

  “It is bad luck, Kit,” he said; “and really I am awfully sorry for you. Is your head very bad?”

  “Oh, it aches!” said Kit; “but it was all my own fault. Now, if anyone else had been to blame for it, I should have been furious, and that would have made it ache worse.” She laughed rather feebly. “So one is saved something,” she went on, “and even with this head I am duly grateful. It is a day wasted, which is always a bore, but otherwise—”

  And she stopped abruptly, for the glibness of her loyalty was suddenly cut short by a pang of pain almost intolerable, which pierced her like a sword. She bit the bedclothes in her determination not to cry aloud, and a twenty seconds’ anguish left her weak and trembling.

  “I wanted to see you, Toby,” she said. “Just to tell you how, how—” And she paused a moment thinking that her insistence on the fact that her accident was no one’s fault but her own, might seem suspicious—“how glad I was to see Lily yesterday!” she went on. “I wonder if she would come to see me; ask her. But you must go now; I can’t talk. Just ring the bell as you go out. I want my maid.”

  She stretched a hand from under the bedclothes to him, and he took it with a sudden fright, feeling its cold feebleness.

  “Good-bye, Kit,” he said. “Get better soon.”

  She could not reply, for another sword of pain pierced her, and he went quickly out, ringing the bell as he passed the mantelpiece.

  Jack was still in the hall when he came downstairs again, and he looked up in surprise at the speed of Toby’s return.

  “She fell down, she told me,” he said. “You were quite right, Jack—not a word.”

  Jack had not time to reply when Kit’s maid hurried downstairs into the hall.

  “What is it?” asked Jack.

  “Her ladyship is in great pain, my lord,” she said. “She told me to send for the doctor at once.”

  Jack rang the bell and looked up at Toby blankly, appealingly.

  “Go into your room, Jack,” he said. “I’ll send for the doctor, and do all that.”

  A footman was sent off at once for Kit’s doctor, and Toby sat down at a writing-table in the hall and scribbled a note to his wife, to be taken by a messenger at once to his house. If Lily was not at home, he was to find out where she had gone and follow her. The note only contained a few words:

  “My Dearest: Kit is in trouble—worse than I can tell you. Come at once to her. She wants you.

  “Toby.”

  When he had written and sent this, he went back to Jack. The latter was sitting at his table, his face in his hands, doing nothing. Toby went up to him.

  “Come, Jack,” he said, speaking as if with authority, “make an effort and pull yourself together. Get to your work, or try to. There is a pile of letters there you haven’t looked at. Read them. Some may want answers. If so, answer them. I have sent for Kit’s doctor, and for Lily.”

  Jack looked up.

  “It isn’t fit that Lily should come here,” he said.

  Toby thought of Kit’s visit the afternoon before, and Lily’s refusal to him to say anything of what it had been about. That it had been private was all she would tell him, and not about money. And as they were sitting alone in the evening he thought he saw her crying once.

  “I think it is very possible she knows,” he said. “Kit had a private talk with her yesterday. Wait till she comes.”

  Jack rose from his seat.

  “Oh, Toby, if you had only telegraphed for me from Stanborough, instead of packing him off!”

  “I wish to God I had!” said Toby drearily.

  Jack took up his letters, as Toby had told him, and began opening them. There was one from Mr. Alington enclosing a cheque. He barely looked at it. Money, his heart’s desire, had been given him, and the leanness of it had entered into his soul. But seeing the sense of Toby’s advice to do something, he answered some of these letters, mechanically and correctly.

  Before long Lily was announced, and Toby rose quickly, and went out into the hall to meet her.

  “Ah, Toby,” she said, “you did quite right to send for me. They just caught me before I went out. You needn’t tell me anything. Kit told me all.”

  Toby nodded.

  “Will you see Jack?” he asked.

  “Yes, if he would care to see me. Ask him whether he will or not.”

  But Jack had followed Toby, and before he could answer had come out of his room.

  “It is awfully good of you to come, Lily!” he said. “But go away again. It is not fit you should be here.”

  “If Kit wants me, I shall see her,” she said. “Please let her know that I am here, Jack.”

  “It isn’t fit,” said Jack again.

  “I think differently,” said Lily gently. “Please tell her at once, Jack.”

  Jack looked at her a moment in silence, biting his lip nervously.

  “Ah God!” he cried, suddenly stung by some helpless remorse and regret, and without more words he went upstairs to see whether Kit would see her. He could not bring himself to go into the room, but asked through the maid. Soon he appeared again at the head of the stairs, beckoning to Lily, who was waiting in the hall below, and she went up. He held the door of Kit’s bedroom open for her, and she went in.

  The room was very dark, and, like Toby, it took her a few seconds before she could distinguish objects. From the corner to the right of the rose-square of the window came a faint moaning. Lily walked across to the bedside.

  “Kit,” she said, “my poor Kit! I have come.”

  There was silence, and the moaning ceased. Then came Kit’s voice in a whisper:

  “Lily,” she said, “I told him. I told him all. Then—then—I somehow fell down those stairs leading from his room, and hurt myself awfully. My fault entirely.… I was not looking where I was going. Oh, I have felt so terribly ill since this morning, and it is only morning still, isn’t it? Have they sent for the doctor?”

  “Yes, they expect him immediately. Oh, Kit, are you not glad you told him? It was the only way. Now you have done all you can. It would be worse to bear if you had not told him. Oh, I wish—I wish I could take the pain instead of you! Hold my hand. Grip it with all your force; it will make the pain seem easier. And oh, Kit, pray to God without ceasing.”

  “I can’t—I can’t,” moaned Kit; “I never pray. I have not prayed for years.”

  “Pray now, then. If you have turned your back on Him, He has never turned His back on you. The Man of Sorrows, acquainted with grief, born of a woman! Only be willing to let Him help you—that is sufficient. Think of the graciousness of that! And this is the very week of His Passion.”

  “I can’t pray,” moaned Kit again; “but pray for me.”

  The grip of Kit’s hand tightened in Lily’s, and she could feel the stones in her rings biting into her flesh. Yet she hardly felt it; she was only aware of it. And her whole soul went up in supplication.

  “O most pitiful, have pity,” she said. “Help Kit in the hour of her need; deliver her body from pain and death, and her soul, above all, from sin. Give her amendment of life, and time to amend, and the will to amend. Make her sorry. Oh, Almighty One, stand near one of Thy children in her pain and need. Help her—help her!”

  The door of the room opened quietly, and Dr. Ferguson entered. He held in his hand a little bag. He went to the window and drew up the blinds, letting in a splash of primrose-coloured sunshine; then shook hands with Lily, who rose at his entrance, in silence.

  “You had better leave us, Lady Evelyn,” he said. “Please send the nurse up as soon as she comes.”

  Lily turned to the bedside once more before leaving the room, and Kit smiled in answer to h
er. Her face was terribly drawn and white, and the dew of pain stood on her forehead. Lily bent and kissed her, and left the room.

  She rejoined Toby and Jack in the smoking-room. Jack got up when she entered with eyes of questioning.

  “The doctor is with her,” said Lily. “He will be sure to tell us as soon as he can.”

  “Do you think she is very bad?”

  “I don’t know. She is in dreadful pain. How on earth did she manage to fall so badly down these steps?”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “Yes; she said it was entirely her own fault.”

  Jack turned away a moment.

  “I knocked her down,” he said at length.

  Lily’s eye flashed, but grew soft again.

  “Don’t let her know that you have told me,” she said. “Oh, poor Jack!”

  Jack turned to her again quickly.

  “Lily, do you think she will die?” he asked. “And will it be that which killed her?”

  “Don’t say such things, Jack,” said Lily firmly. “You have no right to say or think them yet. We must hope for the best. Dr. Ferguson will certainly tell us as soon as he knows.”

  For another half-hour they sat there, the most part in silence. Lily took up a book, but did not read it; Jack sat at a table beginning letter after letter, and tearing them up again, and all waited in the grip of sickening, quaking suspense for the doctor’s report. Footsteps, which at such times fall with a muffled sound, moved about the house, and occasionally the ceiling jarred with the reverberation of a step in Kit’s room, which was overhead. Lunch was announced, but still none of them moved. At last a heavy footstep came downstairs, the door of the smoking-room opened, and Dr. Ferguson entered.

  “It is a very grave case,” he said quietly. “I should like another opinion, Lord Conybeare.”

  Jack had faced round in his chair, and sat for a moment in silence, biting the end of his pen. His hands were perfectly steady, but one of his eyebrows kept twitching, and the colour was struck from his face.