The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  Against the violence that had been done him he could set the news of Kit’s ameliorated condition. He told himself with sublime naïveté that it was worth while being knocked down to learn that. His anxiety had been terrible, really terrible, and he could not but balance that weight removed against other unpleasantnesses. Things were not so bad as they might have been. But it had been terrible, and he easily persuaded himself that he was suffering horribly. What had happened he did not yet exactly know; in any case it was horrible, and it would be wise not to dwell on it. He would know tomorrow, and as he brushed his hair he saw again with satisfaction the working of his pungent fluid.

  He felt battered and tired, and, putting on a floss-silk dressing-gown, lay down on the sofa in his bedroom, and rang the bell for tea. Really, he had been through a life-time of suffering since he rang the bell for tea an hour before at the Bachelors’ Club, and he desired that restorative agent most acutely. Most of all—and this was highly characteristic—he desired to dismiss the experiences of the day from his mind. It had all been extremely unpleasant, and there was a good deal that was unpleasant still hanging about, like the sultriness of a thundery day, low and imminent. But at the moment he could do nothing: no step that he could take would make matters better, no effort of will would disperse the thunder-clouds, and it was idle to brood over things, and mar one’s natural cheerfulness with morose and gloomy reflections. His bright, shallow personality reflected like a wayside puddle whatever was immediately above it, and held no darkling shadows or remote lights of its own, and he was rightly very careful of the buoyancy of his spirits, since that was the best of him, and undeniably of the greatest use.

  There was a small table by his hand, with the gold-topped scent-bottle, the evening paper, and a few yellow-covered French books on it. He sprinkled his forehead with the scent, threw the evening paper away, for there was a little paragraph in it which he wanted to forget, and took up Gautier’s “Mademoiselle de la Maupin,” and opened it at random. He read a page or two, and became interested, absorbed. The magic of words, a spell more potent than any wizard’s incantation, took hold of him, and the indoor hot-house atmosphere of infinitesimal intrigue was most congenial. The low roar of London traffic outside grew dumb, the agitations of harsh experience grew remoter, the events of the day became to him as the remembrance of some book he had read, and the book he was reading grew flushed with the realities of life.

  Toby in the meantime, after his short and decisive interview without words on the doorstep, had walked back to Park Lane, and got there not very many minutes after his interviewer had made his call. He went straight into Jack’s room, and found Lily there alone. Question and answer were alike needless; her face answered what he had not audibly asked.

  “She will get through,” she said. “They think she will certainly get through.”

  Toby threw his hat on to the sofa.

  “Thank God! Oh, thank God!” he cried. “Where is Jack?”

  “Upstairs. They let him see her for a moment. He will be down again immediately. But they could not save both Kit and the child, Toby.”

  Toby sat down by his wife.

  “Oh, Lily, what a difference five hours can make!” he observed with that grasp of the obvious which distinguished him. “By the way, I met someone when I was out.”

  “Whom?”

  “Him. I went home to see if there were any letters for either of us—oh, there were two for you; catch hold—and as I came out I found him on the doorstep.”

  “What had he come for?”

  “I didn’t ask him. But I know what he went for. Spread-eagle on the pavement. All in his beautiful clothes. And the hansom went over his hat; damned neat it was. Oh, Lily, that made me feel better, and I felt, too, it was a good omen. I wish you had been there. You would have roared.”

  “Toby, you are a barbarian! What good does that do?” she said with severity.

  “What that sort of a man wants is pain,” remarked Toby.

  “Was he much hurt?” asked Lily with extreme composure.

  “I don’t know. I hope so. I hope he was very much hurt.”

  “Do you mean you left him lying there?”

  “Yes. He may be there now.”

  Lily’s severity broke down.

  “Then please have him taken away before I get back,” she said. “Ah, here’s Jack!”

  Jack could not speak, nor was there need, but he shook hands, first with Lily, then with his brother, and nodded to them. Then suddenly his mouth grew tremulous, and he sat down quickly by the table, and covered his face with his hands.

  Lily looked at Toby, and in answer to her look he went out of the room. As she passed Jack, following her husband, she laid her hand for one moment on his bowed shoulder, and went out also, closing the door behind her softly.

  CHAPTER VI

  LILY’S DESIRE

  Toby and his wife left London the day before Easter to spend a fortnight at the cottage in Buckinghamshire, which Jack had lent them. Kit was going on as well as possible, but she could not yet be moved; they hoped, however, that both of them would come down to Goring before the others left. Mrs. Murchison was also spending Easter there, before she went back to America, where she purposed at present to be with her husband for a fortnight at least.

  She had arrived just before tea, the others having come down in the morning, and was a torrent of amazing conversation.

  “And then on Tuesday,” she was saying, “I dined with dear Ethel Tarling at the Criterion. We had a beautiful dinner, and most amusing; and all during dinner some glee-club sang in the gallery those delicious English what-do-you-call-thems, only I don’t mean meringues.”

  “Madrigals?” suggested Lily, in the wild hope it might be so.

  “Madrigals, yes! They sang madrigals in the gallery—‘Celia’s Arbour’ and ‘Glorious Apollyon from on high beheld us.’”

  Lily gave a little spurt of uncontrollable laughter.

  “Always making fun of your poor old mother, you naughty child!” said Mrs. Murchison, with great good-humour. “Toby, you should teach her better. And then afterwards we went to the Palace Theatre to see the Biography. Most interesting it was, and the one from the front of a train made me feel quite sick and giddy—most pleasant. Oh! And I remember that it was that evening we heard about poor Lady Conybeare. How sad! I called there this morning, and they said she was much better, which is something.”

  “Yes, we hope that Jack and Kit will both come down here in ten days or so,” said Toby.

  “And Lord Comber, too,” went on Mrs. Murchison guilelessly. “It was that same day he had a fall, and bruised himself very badly. Misfortunes never come singly. Did you not hear? He fell on his head, and I should think it was lucky he did not get percussion of the brain.”

  Toby did not glance at his wife.

  “Very lucky,” he said.

  “Was it not? Then I spent Wednesday at Oxford, which I was determined to see before I left England. Most beautiful and interesting it is. I lunched with the Master of Magdalen College, whom I met in London several times, and saw the statue they put up on the place where Shelley died.”

  “I thought he was drowned,” said Lily.

  “Very likely, dear,” said Mrs. Murchison; “and now I come to think of it, the place is near the river, so I expect they put it up as near as they could. You couldn’t wish to see them put a recumbent statue, a very recumbent statue indeed, so it is, in ten feet of water, dear,” she observed, with great justice.

  Mrs. Murchison sipped her tea in a very ecstasy of content. It was barely a year since she had first seen Toby, and marked him down as the ideal husband for Lily; and there they were all three of them, drinking tea, as she said to herself, in the stately homes of England, how beautiful they stand! Her siege of London had been rapid and brilliantly successful. The fortifications had fallen sudden and flat, like the walls of Jericho; and she made no more of dining at the Criterion with that marvellous Lady Tarling than of
washing her hands or going to America.

  “Yes, the Master of Magdalen College was most kind,” continued Mrs. Murchison, “and said he remembered Toby well. Dear me, what a lot I shall have to tell your father, Lily! And after lunch—really, a most excellent lunch, I assure you, with quails in asps—we went down to the Ibis.”

  “To the where?” asked Lily.

  “To the river,” said Mrs. Murchison, suspecting a difficulty, “and saw where the college boats rowed their races—torpedoes, I think the Master called them, and I remember wondering why. His own torpedo won the last races.”

  Here Toby choked violently over his tea, and left the room with a rapid uneven step.

  “Perhaps it’s not torpedoes, then,” went on his mother-in-law, supposing that he would have corrected her if he had been able to speak; “but it’s something very like. Dear me, what a terrible noise poor Toby makes! Had we better go and pat him on the back? Then yesterday I went to the ‘Messiah’ at the Albert Hall, which made me cry.”

  Mrs. Murchison looked welcomingly at Toby, who here reappeared again, rather red and feeble.

  “Dear Toby,” she said, “it’s just lovely to think of you and Lily so settled and titled and happy; and when I’m on the ocean, I shall often go to my state-room, and count the days till I come back. I must be in America at least a fortnight, if not ten days; and I shall try and persuade Mr. Murchison to come across with me when I return. I’m very lucky about ships: I go out in the Lucania, and come back in the Campagna. And is there anyone else coming down here before I go on Wednesday, or shall we have a nice little no-place-like-home all by ourselves?”

  “Oh, we are going to be simply domestic,” said Lily, rising, “and we shan’t have a soul beside ourselves. You know both Toby and I are naturally most domestic animals. We neither of us have any passion for the world. We like being out of doors, and playing the fool, and having high-tea—don’t we, Toby?”

  “I have no passion for high-tea,” remarked Toby.

  “Oh yes, you have. Don’t be stupid! I don’t mean literal high-tea, but figurative high-tea.”

  “The less literalness there is about high-tea, the better I like it,” said Toby.

  Lily passed behind his chair and pulled his wiry hair gently.

  “Lord Evelyn Ronald Anstruther D’Eyncourt Massingbird, M.P., is not such a fool as a person might suppose,” she remarked. “At times he shows glimmerings of sense. His love for figurative high-teas as opposed to figurative high-dinners is an instance. Don’t blush, Toby. You’ve little else to be proud of.”

  “I’ve got you to be proud of,” remarked Toby, bending back his head to look at her.

  Mrs. Murchison rustled appreciatively. That was the sort of thing which English people could say naturally without gush or affectation. A Frenchman would have bowed, put his heels together, and kissed his wife’s hand. An Italian would have struck the region of his heart. An American would have expressed it in four-syllable periphrasis. But Toby did none of these things. He said it quite simply, lit a cigarette, and growled:

  “Leggo my hair, Lily!”

  Lily “leggoed” his hair.

  “He is trying to blow rings,” she explained, “but he can only blow ribands and streamers. Also, he looks like an owl when he tries. Rings on his fingers and bells on his toes,” she added with immense thoughtfulness. “Toby, I’ll buy you a peal of bells if you will promise to wear them on your toes.”

  Toby got up from his chair.

  “If anyone has anything else of a peculiarly personal nature to say about me, now is their time,” he remarked; “otherwise, we’ll go out. Dear me! The last time I was here we got snowed up at Pangbourne, and slept in the Elephant Inn, and I remember I dreamed about boiled rabbit. I seldom dream, but I remember it when I do.”

  Lily sighed.

  “Yes, and poor Kit was waiting for us all here. She was quite alone, mother, and had an awful crise des nerves over it.”

  “I should have thought she was the last person in the world to be nervous,” said Mrs. Murchison.

  “Oh, crise des nerves is not nervousness,” said Lily; “it is being strung up, and run down, and excited.”

  “My mother,” remarked Mrs. Murchison, “was of a very nervous temperament. I have seen her on the coldest days suddenly empty a carafe of water over the fire, for fear of the house catching. And evenings she would sometimes blow out the candle for the same reason.”

  Toby giggled explosively.

  “And the cruel part was,” continued Mrs. Murchison, “that throughout life she was afraid of the dark, in which the blowing out of the candles naturally left her. So, between her dread of a conflagration and her terror of the dark, it was out of the fireplace into the fire.”

  “Frying-pan, mother,” said Lily.

  “Maybe, dear; I thought it was fireplace. But it’s six of one and half a dozen of another. Poor Mommer! She had a very nervous and excitable temperament, with sudden bursts of anger. At such times she would take out her false teeth—she suffered from early decay—and dash them to the ground, though it meant slops till they got repaired. Most excitable she was.”

  “Very trying,” said Toby rather tremulously.

  “No, we didn’t find her trying, Toby,” said this excellent lady. “We were very fond of her. Poor dear Mommer!”

  She sighed heavily, with memory-dim eyes, and Toby’s laughter died in his mouth. Mrs. Murchison got up.

  “Well, I shall put on my hat,” she said, “and come out with you both. I brought an evening paper down with me, but there is nothing in it, except that there has been a terrible tomato in the West Indies, destroying five villages—tornado, I should say—and great loss of life.”

  She went out of the room to fetch her hat, and Lily and Toby were left alone. Toby looked furtively up, wondering what he should meet in Lily’s eye. Her face, like his, was struggling for gravity, and both shook with hardly-suppressed laughter. Neither could speak, and they turned feebly away from each other, Toby leaning with trembling shoulder on the mantelpiece, and Lily biting her lip as she looked helplessly out over lawn and river. Now and then there would come from one or other a sobbing breath, and neither dared look round. Once Lily half turned towards her husband, to find him half turned towards her with a crimson strangling face, and both looked hastily away again. The plight was desperate, and after a moment Lily said, in a choking, baritone voice:

  “Toby, stop laughing.”

  There was no answer, and she gave him another moment for recuperation. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him wiping away the moisture of laughter. Then with a violent effort he subdued the muscles round his mouth.

  “She’s an old darling,” he said; “but, Lily, I shouldn’t have liked your grandmother.”

  Lily heaved a long sigh, herself again.

  “Toby, you behaved very well,” she said, “and mother is an old darling. Come, we’ll go out.”

  Mrs. Murchison took her cheerful presence away after three days, as she was sailing to America almost immediately, and the two were alone for the next week. Spring had definitely come, and day after golden day ran its course. Life, eternally renewed with the year, had burst from its winter chrysalis, and stood poised a moment with quivering, expanding wings before launching itself into the half-circle of summer months. Everywhere, on field and tree, the effervescence of green and growing things foamed like some exquisite froth. One morning they would rise to see that the green buds on the limes had split, shedding their red sheaths; on another, the elms were in sudden tiny leaf; on another, the mesh of new foliage round the willows of the water’s edge would make a delighted wonder for them. The meadows were scarce starred with pink-edged daisies when the buttercups sowed a sunshine on the fields, and in cool, damp places yellow-eyed forget-me-nots reflected the pale blue they gazed at so steadfastly. Toby and his wife would spend long, lazy mornings in the punt or drive about the deep-banked, primrosed lanes—he all tenderness and solicitude for her, she
happier than she had known it was given to mankind to be. They talked but little; to both it seemed that their joy lay beyond the region of words.

  On the evening of one such day they were strolling about the garden as dusk fell. Birds called in the thickets and shrubs, now and then a rising fish broke the mirror of the river, and each moment the smell of the earth, as the dew fell, grew more fragrant.

  “I wish we were going to stay here a long time,” said Lily, her arm in his; “but we must go up to London when Parliament meets after the Easter holidays. The M.P.! Good gracious, Toby, to think that the welfare of your country depends upon a handful of people of whom you are one!”

  “Parliament may go hang,” said Toby, “and Jack will be delighted to let us stay here just as long as you like.”

  “I am sure of it, but I don’t like. What do you suppose I wanted you to get into Parliament for, if you were not going near the House?”

  “Never could guess,” said Toby. “It’s much more important that you should stop here if you want to.”

  “Don’t be foolish—but, oh, Toby, when my time comes let me come down here again. It was here we were engaged; let it be here you take your first-born in your arms. I do want that.”

  She turned to him with the light of certain motherhood in her eyes, a thing so wonderful that the souls of all men are incomplete until they have seen it, and her beauty and her love for him made him bow his head in awe. His wholesome humble soul was lost in an amazement of love and worship.

  “It shall be so, Toby?” she asked, with a woman’s delight in learning how unnecessary that question was. “Will my lord grant the request of his handmaiden?”

  “Ah, don’t,” he said suddenly. “Don’t say that, even in jest.”

  “Then will you, Toby?” she asked.

  “If my queen wills it,” said he.

  “Nor must you say that, even in jest,” she said.

  “I don’t; I say it in earnest—in deadly earnest. It is the truest thing in the world.”

  “In the world? Oh, Toby, a big place! Then that is settled.”