by E. F. Benson
Esther, since her camomile tea was quite spoiled, took a cigarette instead, which she liked better.
“Well, darling, you know every now and then you are a shade foreign,” she said. “Especially when you talk about nationalities. As a nation I believe you positively loathe us. But that doesn’t matter. It’s he and she who matter, not they.”
Bertie had sat up at the mention of golf and was talking to Tommy.
“Yes, I won at the seventeenth,” he said. “I took it in three. Two smacks and one put.”
“Gosh,” said Tommy.
“I wish I hadn’t mentioned that damned game,” said Nadine very distinctly. “You will talk about golf now till morning.”
“Yes, but you needn’t. Go on about Daddy,” said Esther.
“Certainly he is more interesting than golf, and gets into just as many holes. He is a creature of Nature. He falls in love every year, when the hounds of spring—”
A chorus interrupted her.
“Are on winter’s traces, the mother of months—”
“Oh, ripping!” said Bertie.
“Yes. How chic to have written that and to have lived at Putney,” said Nadine. “Mama once took me to see Mr. Swinburne and told me to kiss his hand as soon as ever I got into the room. So when we got in, there was one little old man there, and I kissed his hand; but it was not Mr. Swinburne at all, but somebody quite different.”
Again the door opened, and a woman entered, tall, beautiful, vital. There was no mistaking her. The others had not been lacking in vitality before, but she brought in with her a far more abundant measure. She was forty-five, perhaps, but clearly her age was the last thing to be thought about with regard to her. You could as well wonder what was the age of a sunlit wave breaking on the shore, or of a wind that blew from the sea. Everybody sat up at once.
“Mama darling, come here,” said Nadine, “and talk to us.”
Princess Waldenech looked round her largely and brilliantly.
“I thought I should find you all here,” she said. “Nadine dear, of course you know best, but is it usual for a girl to have two young gentlemen lying about with her on one bed? I suppose it must be, since you all do it. Are they all going to bed here? Have they brought their tooth-brushes and nighties? Berts, is that you, Berts? Really one can hardly see for the smoke, but after all this used to be the smoking-room, and I suppose it has formed the habit. Berts, you fiend, you made me laugh at dinner just when Bishop Spenser was telling me about the crisis of faith he went through when he was a young man so that he nearly became a Buddhist instead of a bishop. Or do Buddhists have bishops, too? Wasn’t it dreadful? He’s a dear, and he gives all his money away to endow other bishops, both black and white—like chess. Of course he isn’t a bishop any more, but only a dean, but he keeps his Bible like one. Hugh is playing billiards with him now, and told me in a whisper that he marked three for every cannon he made. Of course Hughie couldn’t tell him it only counted two. It would have seemed unkind. Hugh has such tact.”
“What I was saying,” said Nadine. “Mama, he proposed to me again this evening, and I said ‘no’ as usual. Is he depressed?”
“No, dear, not in the least except about the cannons. Probably you will say ‘yes,’ sometime. And I want a cigarette and something to drink, and to be amused for exactly half an hour, when I shall take myself to pieces and go to bed. I hate going to bed and it adds to the depression to know that I shall have to get up again. If only I could be a Christian Scientist I should know that there is no such thing as a bed, and that therefore you can’t go there. On the other hand that would be fatiguing I suppose.”
Tommy gave her a cigarette, and Nadine fetched her mother her bedroom bottle of water out of which she drank freely, having refused camomile tea with cigar ash in it.
“Too delicious!” she said. “Nadine darling, do marry Hugh before you are twenty-two. Nowadays if girls don’t marry before that they take a flat or something and read at the British Museum till they are thirty and have got spectacles, without even getting compromised—”
“Compromised? Of course not,” cried Nadine. “You can’t get compromised now. There is no such thing as compromise. We die in the ditch sooner, like poor Lord Halsbury. Being compromised was purely a Victorian sort of decoration like—like crinolines. Oh, do tell us about those delicious Victorian days about 1890 when you were a girl and people thought you fast and were shocked.”
“My dear, you wouldn’t believe it,” said Dodo; “you would think I was describing what happened in Noah’s Ark. Bertie and Tommy, for instance, would never have been allowed to come and lie on your bed.”
“Oh, why not?” asked Esther.
“Because you and Nadine are girls and they are boys. That sounds simple nonsense, doesn’t it? Also because to a certain extent boys and girls then did as older people told them to, and older people would have told them to go away. You see we used to listen to older people because they were older; now you don’t listen to them, for identically the same reason. We thought they were bores and obeyed them; you are perfectly sweet to them, but they have learned never to tell you to do anything. You would never do what I told you, dear, unless you wanted to.”
“No, Mama, I suppose not. But I always do what you tell me, as it is, because you always tell me to do exactly what I want to.”
Dodo laughed.
“Yes, that is just what education means now. And how nicely we get along. Nobody is shocked now, in consequence, which is much better for them. You can die of shock, so doctors say, without any other injury at all. So it is clearly wise not to be shocked. I was shocked once, when I was eight years old, because I was taken to the dentist without being told. I was told that I was to go for an ordinary walk with my sister Maud. And then, before I knew where I was, there was my mouth open as far as my uvula, and a dreadful man with a mirror and pincers was looking at my teeth. I lost my trust in human honor, which I have since then regained. I think Maud was more shocked than me. I think it conduced to her death. You didn’t remember Auntie Maud, Nadine, did you? You were so little and she was so unrememberable. Yes; a quantity of worsted work. But that’s why I always want the bishop to come whenever he can.”
“I don’t see why, even now,” said Nadine.
“Darling, aren’t you rather slow? Bishop Spenser, you know, who was Auntie Maud’s husband. Surely you’ve heard me call him Algie. Who ever called a bishop by his Christian name unless he was a relation? Maud knew him when he was a curate. She fluffed herself up in him, just as she used to do in her worsted, and nobody ever saw her any more. But I loved Maud, and I don’t think she ever knew it. Some people don’t know you love them unless you tell them so, and it is so silly to tell your sister that you love her. I never say I love you, either, and I don’t say I love Esther, and that silly Berts, and serious Tommy. But what’s the use of you all unless you know it? Nadine, ring the bell, please. It all looks as if we were going to talk, and I had no dinner to speak of, because I was being anxious about Daddy. I thought he was going to talk Hungarian; he looked as if he was, and so I got anxious, because he only talks Hungarian when he is what people call very much on. Certainly he wasn’t off tonight; he is off tomorrow. And so I want food. If I am being anxious I want food immediately afterwards, as soon as the anxiety is removed. At least I suppose Daddy has gone to bed. You haven’t got him here, have you? Fancy me being as old as any two of you. You are all so delightful, that you mustn’t put me on the shelf yet. But just think! I was nice the other day to Berts’ sister, and she told her mother she had got a new friend, who was quite old. ‘Not so old as Grannie,’ she said, ‘but quite old!’ And all the time I thought we were being girls together. At least I thought I was; I thought she was rather middle-aged. How is your mother, Berts? She doesn’t approve of me, but I hope she is quite well.”
Bertie also was a nephew by affection.
“Aunt Dodo,” he said, “I think mother is too silly for anything.”
“I
knew something was coming,” said Dodo; “what’s she done now?”
“Well, it is. She said she thought you were heartless.”
“Silly ass,” said Esther. “Go on, Berts.”
Berts felt goaded.
“Of course mother is a silly ass,” he said. “It’s no use telling me that. Your mother is a silly ass, too, with her coronets and all that sort of fudge. But altogether there is very little to be said for people over forty, except Aunt Dodo.”
“Beloved Berts,” remarked Dodo. “Go on about Edith.”
“But it is so. They’re all antiques except you, battered antiques. Let’s talk about mothers generally. Look at Esther’s mother. She doesn’t want me to marry Esther because my father is only an ordinary Mister. There’s a reason! And I don’t want to marry Esther because her mother is a marchioness. After all, mine has done more than hers, who never did anything except cut William the Conqueror when he came over, and tell him he was of very poor, new family. But my mother wrote the ‘Dods Symphony’ for instance. She’s something; she was Edith Staines, and when she has her songs sung at the Queen’s Hall, she goes and conducts them.”
“Bertie, in a short skirt and boots with enormous nails,” said Esther.
“And why not? She may be a silly ass in some things, but she’s done something.”
Bertie uncoiled all his yards of height and stood up.
“You began,” he said. “I’m only answering you back. Lady Ayr has never done anything at all except talk about her family. She doesn’t think about anything but family: she’s the most antiquated and absurd type of snob there is. And your ridiculous brother John is exactly the same. You’re the most awful family, and make one long for grocers, like Nadine.”
“Darling, what do you want a grocer for?” asked Dodo.
But Berts had not finished yet.
“And as for your brother Seymour, all that can be said about him is that he is a perfect lady,” he said, “but he ought to have been drowned when he was a girl, like a kitten.”
Esther shouted with laughter.
“Oh, Berts, I wish you would be roused oftener,” she said; “I absolutely adore you when you are roused. But you aren’t quite right about Seymour. He isn’t a lady any more than he’s a gentleman. And after all he has got a brain, a real brain.”
“Well, it takes all sorts to make a world,” said Dodo, “and, Esther dear, I’m often extremely grateful to Seymour. He will always come to dinner at the very last moment—”
“That’s because nobody else ever asks him,” said Bertie, still fizzing and spouting a little. “That’s one of the objections to marrying you, Esther, you will always be letting him come to dinner.”
“Be quiet, Berts. As I say, he never minds how late he is asked, and he invariably makes himself charming to the oldest and plainest woman present. Here, for instance, he would be making himself pleasant to me.”
“Poor chap!” said Berts, lighting another cigarette, and lying down again.
A tray with some cold ham, a plate of strawberries, and a small jug of iced lemonade which had been ordered by Nadine for her mother was here brought in by a perfectly impassive footman, and placed on the bed between her and Nadine. No servants in Dodo’s house ever felt the smallest surprise at anything which was demanded of them, and if Nadine had at this moment asked him to wash her face, he would probably have merely said, “Hot or cold water, miss?”
Nadine had not contributed anything to this discussion on Seymour, because she was almost inconveniently aware that she did not know what she thought about him. Certainly he had brains, and for brains she had an enormous respect.
“Seeing things to eat always makes me feel hungry,” said Nadine, absently taking strawberries, “just as the sight of a bed makes me very wide-awake. It is called suggestion. Really the chief use of going to bed is that you are alone and have time to think.”
“And that is so exhausting that I instantly go to sleep,” remarked Tommy.
“You get—how do you call it—into training, if you practise, Tommy,” said Nadine. “People imagine that because they have a brain they can think. It isn’t so: you have to learn to think. You have a tongue, but you must learn to talk: you have arms and yet you must learn how to play your foolish golf.”
“You don’t learn it, darling,” said Dodo.
“Mama, you are eating ham and have not been following. Really it is so. Most people can’t think. Esther can’t: she confesses it.”
“It’s quite true,” said Esther. “I felt full of ideas this morning, and so I went away all alone along the beach to think them out. But I couldn’t. There were my ideas all right, and that was all. I couldn’t think about them. There they were, ideas: just that, framed and glazed.”
Tommy rose.
“I’m worse than that,” he said. “I never have any ideas. In some ways it’s an advantage, because if we all had ideas, I suppose we should want to express them. As it is I am at leisure to listen.”
Dodo took a long draught of lemonade.
“I have one idea,” she said, “and that is that it’s bed-time. I shall go and exhaust myself with thought. The process of exhaustion does not take long. Besides, if I sit up much later than twelve, my maid always pulls my hair, and whips my head with the brush instead of treating me kindly.”
“I should dismiss her,” said Nadine.
“I couldn’t, dear. She is so imbecile that she would never get another situation. Ah, there’s Hugh! Hugh, did poor Algie Balearic-isles beat you?”
A very large young man had just appeared in the doorway. He held in his hand a sandwich out of which he had just taken an enormous semi-circular bite. The rest of it was in his mouth, and he spoke with the mumbling utterance necessary to those who converse when their mouths are quite full.
“Oh, is that where he comes from?” he asked.
“No, my dear, that is where he went to; then of course since he is here he did come from them in a sense. Dear me, if he had been bishop there about fifty years earlier, he might have copied Chopin. How thrilling!”
“Yes, the Isles won,” said Hugh, his voice clearing as he swallowed. “Oh, Aunt Dodo”—this again was a relationship founded only on affection—“he said your price was beyond rubies. So I said ‘What price rubies?’ and as he didn’t understand nor did I, we parted. What a lot of people there seems to be here! I came to talk to Nadine. Oh, there she is. Or would it be better taste if I didn’t? Perhaps it would. I shall go to bed instead.”
“Then what you call taste is what I call peevishness,” said Nadine succinctly.
“I don’t understand. What is better peevishness, then?”
“You take me at the foot of the letter,” said she. “You see what I mean.”
“Yes. I see that you mean ‘literally.’ But in any case there are too many people, chiefly upside down from where I am. That’s Esther, isn’t it, and Berts? Tommy is the right way up. Nadine upside down also.”
Esther got up.
“Why, of course, if you want to talk to Nadine, we’ll go,” she said.
Bertie gave a long sigh.
“I shall lie here,” he said, “like the frog-footman on and off for days and days—”
“So long as you lie off now,” said Hugh.
Bertie got up.
“You can all come to my room if you like,” he said, “as long as you don’t mind my going to bed. Good-night, Nadine; thanks awfully for letting me lie down. It has made me quite sleepy.”
Hugh Graves went to the window as soon as they had gone and threw it open.
“The room smells of smoke and stale epigrams,” he said in explanation.
“That’s not very polite, Hugh,” said she, “since I have been talking most, and not smoking least. But I suppose you will answer that you didn’t come here to be polite.”
In a moment, even as the physical atmosphere of the room altered, so also did the spiritual. It seemed to Nadine that she and Hugh took hands and sailed
through the surface foam and brightnesses in which they had been playing into some place which they had made for themselves, which was dim and sub-aqueous. The foam and brightness was all perfectly sincere, for she was never other than sincere, but it had no more than the sincerity of soap-bubbles.
“No. I didn’t come here to be polite,” said Hugh, “though I didn’t come here to be rude. I came to ask you a couple of questions.”
Nadine had lain down on the bed again, having put all the pillows behind her, so that she was propped up by them. Her arms were clasped behind her head, and the folds of her rainbow dressing-gown fell back from them leaving them bare nearly to the shoulder. The shaded light above her bed fell upon her hair, burnishing its gold, and her face below it was dim and suggested rather than outlined. The most accomplished of coquettes would, after thought, have chosen exactly that attitude and lighting, if she wanted to appear to the greatest advantage to a man who loved her, but Nadine had done it without motive. It may have been that it was an instinct with her to appear to the utmost advantage, but she would have done the same, without thought, if she was talking to a middle-aged dentist. Hugh had seated himself at some little distance from her, and the same light threw his face into strong line and vivid color. He had still something of the rosiness of youth about him, but none of youth’s indeterminateness, and he looked older than his twenty-five years. When he was moving, he moved with a boy’s quickness; when he sat still he sat with the steadiness of strong maturity.
“You needn’t ask them,” she said. “I can answer you without that. The answer to them both is that I don’t know.”
“How? Do you know the questions yet?” said he.
“I do. You want to know whether my answer to you this evening is final. You want also to know why I don’t say ‘yes.’”
His eyes admitted the correctness of this: he need not have spoken.
“After all, there was not much divination wanted,” he said. “I am as obvious as usual. And you understand me as well as usual.”
She shook her head at this, not denying it, but only deprecating it.