by E. F. Benson
“Kit, dear, it doesn’t matter, so to speak, whether Jack loves you or not,” she said. “Anyhow, it doesn’t concern what you must do. Oh, you will not find things easy, and I never heard that one was intended to. You will find a thousand things you want to do, and must not, a thousand things you must do which are hard—harder than the old bazaar-opening, Kit. I am assuming, of course, that, on the whole, you want to be good. There is the great thing, broadly stated.”
Kit nodded her head.
“I don’t know. I suppose I do,” she said.
“Well, there is no master key to it,” said Lily. “Separately and simply you have to take each thing, and do it or avoid it. You will need endless patience. I don’t want to preach to you, and I don’t know how; but you have asked me to help you. Your life has been passed in a certain way: you have told me certain things about it. On the whole, you wish the future to be different. Forget the past, then—try to forget it. Do not dwell on it: it is a bad companion. It will only paralyze you, and you need all your power for what lies in front of you.”
“Do you mean I must renounce the world, and all that?” asked Kit.
“No, nor go into a nunnery. You have a duty towards Jack. Do it; above all, keep on doing it, every day and always. Consider whether there are not many things, harmless in themselves, which lead to things not harmless. Avoid them.”
“Don’t flirt, you mean?” said Kit quite sincerely.
Lily paused a moment. There was a certain coarse simplicity about Kit which was at once embarrassing and helpful. Never were appearances more misleading; for Kit, with her pallor and exquisite face, looked the very image of a refined woman of the world, one who lived aloof from the grossness of life, yet of fine and complicated fibre. Instead, as far as present purposes were concerned, she was as ignorant as a child, but without innocence. She had lost the latter without remedying the former.
“Certainly don’t flirt,” she said; “but don’t do a great deal more than that. Remember that you are a certain power in the world—many people take their tone from such as you—and let that power be on the right side. One knows dimly enough what goodness is, but one knows it sufficiently. I don’t want you to be a raving reformer: that is not in your line. Set your face steadily against a great many things which are commonly done by the people among whom you move.”
“The things I have done all my life,” said Kit.
“Yes, the things you have done all your life.”
Kit sat silent, and the gentleness of her face to this straight speech was touching. At last she looked up.
“And will you help me?” she asked. “Oh, Lily! I have been down into hell. And I didn’t believe in it till I went there. But so it is—an outer darkness.”
She said it quite simply and earnestly, without bitterness, or the egotism which want of reticence so often carries with it. Round them early summer was bright with a thousand blossoms and melodies; the mellow jangle of church bells was in the air; the time of the singing-bird had come.
“But I can’t feel—I am numb. I don’t know where to go, or where I am going,” she went on, her voice rising. “I only know that I don’t want to go back to the life I have hitherto led; but there is nothing else. The great truths—God, religion, goodness—which mean so much, so everything to you, are nothing to me. I feel no real desire to be good, and yet I want to be not wicked. One suffers for being wicked. I can get no higher than that.”
“Stick to that, dear Kit,” said Lily. “I can tell you no more. Only I know—I know that, if one goes on doing the thing one believes to be best, even quite blindly, the time comes that one’s eyes are slowly opened. Out of the darkness comes day. One sees from where one has come. Then one look, and on again.”
“But for ever, till the end of one’s life?” asked Kit.
“Till the end of one’s life. And the effort to behave decently has a great reward, which is decent behaviour.”
“And Jack—what am I to say to Jack?”
“All you feel.”
“Jack will think it so queer,” said Kit.
“You did not see Jack when you were at your worst that afternoon. Oh, Kit! It is an awful thing to see the helpless anguish of a man. He will not have forgotten that.”
“Jack in anguish?” asked Kit.
“Yes; just remember that it was so. Here’s Toby. I thought he was at church. What a heathen my husband is!”
Toby strolled up, with his pipe in his mouth.
“I meant to go to church,” he said; “but eventually I decided to take—to take my spiritual consolation at home.”
“I, too, Toby,” said Kit.
CHAPTER X
TOBY DRAWS THE MORAL
Toby was sitting in the smoking-room of the Bachelors’ Club some weeks later on a hot evening in July. The window was open, and the hum of London came booming in soft and large. It was nearly midnight, and the tide of carriages had set westward from the theatres, and was flowing fast. The pavements were full, the roadway was roaring, the season was gathered up for its final effort. Now and then the door opened, and a man in evening dress would lounge in, ring for a whisky-and-soda, and turn listlessly over the leaves of an evening paper, or exchange a few remarks with a friend. As often as the door opened Toby looked up, as if expecting someone.
It had already struck midnight half an hour ago when Jack entered. He looked worried and tired, and by the light of a match for his cigarette, which he lit as he crossed the room to where Toby was sitting, the lines round his eyes, noticed and kindly commiserated a few months before by Ted Comber, seemed deeper and more harshly cut. He threw himself into a chair by Toby.
“Drink?” asked the other.
“No, thanks.”
Toby was silent a moment.
“I’m devilish sorry for you, Jack,” he said at length. “But I see by the paper that it is all over.”
“Yes; they finished with me this afternoon. Alington will have another week of it. Jove! Toby, for all his sleekness and hymn-singing, he is an iron fellow! He’s got some fresh scheme on hand, and he’s going about it with all his old quiet energy, and asked me to join him; but I told him I’d had enough of directorships. But there’s a strong man for you! He is knocked flat, he picks himself up and goes straight on.”
He picked up the paper, and turned to the money-market.
“And here’s the cruel part of it all,” he said, “for both of us: Carmel is up to four pounds again. If they had only given him another month, he would have been as rich as ever, instead of having to declare bankruptcy; and I—well, I should have had a pound or two more. Lord! On what small things life depends!”
Toby was silent.
“About the Park Lane house,” he said, after a pause. “I talked it over with Lily, and if you’ll let us have it at that price, we shall be delighted to take it. We only have our present house on a yearly lease, which expires in July.”
“You’re a good fellow, Toby.”
“Oh, that’s all rot!” said Toby. “Lily and I both want your house. It isn’t as if we were doing you a kindness—it isn’t really, Jack. But it’s such rough luck on you having to turn out. Of course, you and Kit will always come there whenever you like.”
Jack lit another cigarette, flicking the end of the old one out of the window.
“I think I will have a drink, Toby,” he said; “my throat is as dry as dust answering so many pertinent and impertinent questions, as to what I received as director, and what I made over Carmel East and West. They let me off nothing, and the Radical papers will be beautiful for the next week or two. They’ll be enough to make one turn Radical.”
“Poor old Jack! Whisky? Whisky-and-soda, waiter—two. Well, it’s all over.”
“Ted Comber was in court today,” continued Jack, “all curled, and dyed, and brushed, and manicured. He watched me all the time, Toby. Upon my word, I think that was the worst part of the whole show.”
Toby showed his teeth for a moment.
“By the way, how is Lily?”
“Happy as a queen when I left her this morning, and the boy, oh! Jack, a beauty. He was shouting fit to knock the house down: you could have heard him in Goring. I left early, but Kit got up and breakfasted with me. Knowing how she hates getting up early, I put that down at its proper value. But she didn’t attend to me much: she has no thoughts except for Lily and the boy.”
“Kit has behaved like a real trump all through this,” said Jack. “Never a word or a look of reproach to me. She’s just been cheery, and simple, and splendid. You know, Toby, she is utterly changed since—since that time before Easter. We had a long talk the day after you and Lily left us there two months ago. I was never so surprised in my life.”
“At what?”
“At what she said, and at what I said—perhaps most of what I said. She told me she was going to try not to be such a brute. And, upon my soul, I thought it was an excellent plan. I said I would try too.”
Toby laughed.
“There’s your whisky,” he said. “Hang it all! I haven’t got any money. You’ll have to pay for it yourself, Jack—and mine, too. So you and Kit made a bargain?”
Jack glanced round the room, which had emptied of all its well-dressed, weary occupants. He and Toby were alone.
“Yes, we made a bargain. The worst of it was that neither of us know how to try, so we consulted Lily. Did it ever occur to you, Toby, that you have married the nicest girl that ever breathed?”
“I had an idea of it. It was Kit’s doing, too. Funny, that.”
“Well, Lily told us. She said some damned clever things. She said that turning over a new leaf meant not even looking back once to the old one. You know, Toby, that’s devilish good. I thought she’d tell us to think what brutes we had been, and repent. Not a bit of it. We’ve just got to go straight on. Don’t grin; I’m perfectly serious.”
“I’m sure you are. I was only grinning at the notion of Lily telling you to repent. You know, if there are two things that girl is not, Jack, they are a preacher and a prig.”
“You’re quite right, and I always thought that to be good you had to be either one or the other, and probably both. She tells me it is not necessarily so, and so Kit and I are going to set to work. We are not going to run up any more huge bills which we can’t pay; we are not going to invent or to listen to scandalous stories about other people; and we are going to flirt. We suggested that, and Lily thought it would do to begin upon. Also I was to tell the truth about Alington’s bankruptcy. I did that. Really, Toby, it’s very easy to tell the truth: it requires no effort of the imagination. But the truth is a brute when it comes out.”
Toby looked up smiling, but Jack was perfectly grave and serious.
“Yes, you may think I don’t mean it,” he said, “but I do. We mean to reform, in fact; God knows it is high time. Kit and I have lived in what I suppose you would call rather a careless manner all these years, and we have come to an almighty, all-round smash. We had a very serious talk—we had never talked seriously before, as far as I can remember—and we are going to try to do better.”
Jack got up and went to the window, and leaned out for a moment into the warm summer night. Then he turned into the room again.
“We are indeed,” he said. “Good-night, Toby;” and he walked off.
Ted Comber had been to the opera that night, and was going on to a dance. They had been doing the “Meistersingers,” and it was consequently after twelve when he got out. The dance was in Park Lane, and he turned into the Bachelors’ Club to freshen himself before going on. He had spent a really delightful day; for he had lunched with amusing people, had sat an hour listening to Jack Conybeare’s examination in the Alington bankruptcy case, and had had the opportunity of telling a very exalted personage about it afterwards, making him laugh for ten minutes, and Ted, who had a fine loyal regard for exalted personages—some people called him a snob—was proportionately gratified. Of course it was too terrible for poor Jack, but it was absurd not to see the light side of it when properly considered.
“I was really so sorry for him I didn’t know what to do,” he had said to Lady Coniston at dinner. “Isn’t it too terrible?” and they had both burst into shrieks of laughter, and discussed the question from every point and wondered how dear Kit took it.
The freshening up in the lavatory of the Bachelors’ Club meant some little time and delicacy of touch. He had to be careful how he washed his face, for he had taken pains with it. Certainly the effect was admirable; for the least touch of rouge on the cheek-bone, and positively only the shadow of an antimony pencil below his eyes had given his face the freshness of a boy’s. He looked at himself quite candidly in the glass, and said, “Not a day more than twenty-five.” For he was no friend of false modesty, and any modesty he might have assumed about himself would have been undeniably false.
All this care for one’s appearance, it is true, made a terrible hole in one’s time; but if it lengthened one’s youth, it was an excellent investment of hours. There was nothing that could weigh against that paramount consideration. He dried his hands, still looking at himself, and put on his rings. A touch of the hairbrush was necessary, and for his hands the file of the nail-scissors. Then he put on his coat again and went into the hall. Jack Conybeare was in the act of coming out of the smoking-room.
Ted had only a short moment for reflection, and almost without a pause he went on, meeting Jack.
“Good-evening, Jack,” he said; “are you coming to the Tauntons’? Kit is in the country still, is she not?”
Jack had stopped on seeing him, and looked him over slowly from head to heel; then he walked by him without speaking, and went out.
Ted was only a little amused, and more than a little annoyed. Just now it did not matter much what Jack did, but, being wise in his generation, he did not care about being cut by anybody. The Conybeares would probably pick up again in a year or two, and to be cut by the master of quite one of the nicest houses in London was a bore. Besides, he was in an acme of good-fellowship after his amusing day.
He went on into the smoking-room to look round before proceeding to his dance. Toby was still sitting in the window where Jack had left him. Since their reconciliation a day or two before, Ted had felt most friendly towards him, and he went delicately across the room to him, looking charming.
“I just met Jack in the hall,” he said; “he looks terribly tired and old.”
Toby bristled like a large collie dog.
“Naturally,” he said.
“In fact, he was rather short with me,” said Ted plaintively.
This was too much. Toby got up.
“Naturally,” he said again.
The poor little butterfly felt quite bruised. Really, the Conybeares had not any manners. It serves so little purpose to be rude to anyone, and it was so easy and repaying to be pleasant. He knew this well, for the whole of his nasty little life was spent in reaping the fruits of being constantly pleasant to people. They asked you to dinner, they asked you to stay at their country houses, and having asked you once they asked you again, because you took the trouble to talk and amuse people. What more can a butterfly want than a sunny garden with flowers always open? Such a simple need! So easy to satisfy!
Well, there was a delicious flower open in Park Lane, and he went on to his dance. He must really give up the Conybeares, he thought; they were becoming too prickly. He had written twice to Kit, and had received no answer. Jack had given him a dead cut; Toby was a bear. And he sighed gently, thinking how stupid it was of the flowers to shut themselves up.
As soon as he had gone, Toby resumed his seat by the window. During the last few months he had touched life in a way he had never done before. To him this business of living had hitherto been a cheery, comfortable affair; the question of taking it seriously, e
ven of taking it at all, had never formally presented itself to him. Then quite suddenly, as it were, as he paddled pleasantly along, he had got out of his depth. The great irresistible forces of life had swept him away, the swift current of love had borne him far out into the great ocean of human experience. Then, still encircled by that, he had seen storm-clouds gather, grim tempests had burst in hail and howling wind, the sea had grown black and foam-flecked. He had seen the tragedy of his brother’s home—sin and its wages ruthlessly paid. There were such things as realities. And after that what? Into what new forms would the wreckage be fashioned, these riven planks of a pleasure-boat? But underneath the lightness of Jack’s words tonight there had lain, Toby felt, a seriousness which was new. And the change in Kit was more marked still.
Outside, the world rolled on its way, and each unit in the crowd moved to his appointed goal, some of set purpose, others unconscious of it, but none the less on an inevitable way. In the brains of men stirred the thoughts which, for good or ill, should be the heritage of the next generation, part of their instinctive equipment. The vast design was being worked out, unerringly, unceasingly, unhurried and undelayed, through the sin of one, the virtue of another. To fall itself and to fail was but a step towards the ultimate perfection; behind all worked the Master-hand. By strange pathways and chance meetings, by the death of the scarcely born and the innocent, by the unscathed life and health of the guiltiest, by love and beautiful things and terrible things, had all reached the spot where they stood today. Devious might be the paths they should hereafter follow, but He who had led them thus far knew.
And as Toby thought on these things, moved beyond his wont, he looked out, and saw with a strange quickening of the blood that in the east already there were signs that out of night was shortly to be born another day.
DODO’S DAUGHTER (Part 1)
CHAPTER I
Nadine Waldenech’s bedroom was a large square apartment on the ground floor at her mother’s cottage at Meering in North Wales. It was rather a large cottage, for it was capable of holding about eighteen people, but Dodo was quite firm in the subject of its not being a house. In the days when it was built, forty years ago, this room of Nadine’s had been the smoking-room, but since everybody now smoked wherever he or she chose, which was mostly everywhere, just as they breathed or talked wherever they chose, Nadine with her admirable commonsense had argued uselessness of a special smoking-room, for she wanted it very much herself, and her mother had been quite convinced. It opened out of the drawing-room, and so was a convenient place for those who wished to drop in for a little more conversation after bed-time had been officially proclaimed. Bed-time, it may be remarked, was only officially proclaimed in order to get rid of bores, who then secluded themselves in their tiresome chambers.