The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  “I always understand you too well,” she said. “If only I didn’t understand you, just as I don’t understand Seymour, you have suggested a reason for why I don’t say ‘yes.’ I think it is correct. Ah, don’t quote silly proverbs about love’s being complete understanding. Most of the proverbs are silly; Solomon was so old when he wrote them.”

  His mouth uncurled from its gravity.

  “That wasn’t one of Solomon’s,” he said.

  “Then it might have been. In any case exactly the opposite is true. If love is anything at all beyond the obvious physical sense of the word, it is certainly not understanding. It is the not-understanding—”

  “Mis-understanding?”

  “No. The not-understanding, the mysterious, the unaccountable—” Nadine gathered her legs up under her and sat clasping them round the knees, and her utterance grew more rapid. Her face, young and undeveloped, and white and exquisite, was full of eager animation.

  “That is what I feel anyhow,” she said. “Of course I can’t say ‘this is love’ and ‘this is not love,’ and label other people’s emotions. There is one way of love and another way of love, and another and another. There are as many modes of love, I suppose, as there are people who are capable of it. And don’t tell me everybody is capable of it. At least, tell me so if you like, but allow me to disagree. All I am certain of is that I look for something which you don’t give me. Perhaps I am incapable of love. And if I was sure of that, Hughie, I would marry you. Do you see?”

  She, as was always the case with her, made him forget himself. When he was with her, she absorbed his consciousness: his only desire was to follow her, not caring where she led. This desire to apprehend her corrugated his forehead into the soft wrinkles of youth, and narrowed his eyes.

  “Tell me why that is not a bad reason,” he said.

  “Because I should see that the highest would be denied me,” she said. “Look what quantities of people marry quite without love. I don’t refer to the obvious reason of marrying for position or wealth, but to the people who marry from admiration or from fear. Mama, for instance: she married Daddy because she was afraid of him. Then she learned he was a bogey with a brandy bottle.”

  “I am neither,” said he.

  Nadine gave a little sigh, and he saw his stupidity.

  “I am supplying the answer to my own question,” he said. “Another answer is that I don’t understand you.”

  Somehow to Nadine this was unexpected, but almost instantly she recognized the truth of it.

  “That is true,” she said. “I want to be the inferior, mentally, spiritually, of the man I marry. I am just the opposite of those terrible people who want a vote, and say they are the equal of men. That is so bourgeois an idea. What woman with any self-respect could stand being her husband’s equal if she felt herself capable of loving? It is that. You are too easy, Hugh. I understand you, and you don’t understand me. I wish it was the other way round.”

  “Oh, you do wish that?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course, my dear.”

  “Then you have answered the other question. Your answer to me today is not final. I’ll puzzle you yet.”

  “You speak of it all as if it was a conjuring trick,” she said. “Don’t make conjuring tricks. Don’t let me see your approaching engagement to somebody else be announced. That would not puzzle me at all. I shall simply see that it was meant to. Conjuring tricks don’t mystify you: you know you have been cheated and don’t care.”

  “No, I shan’t make conjuring tricks,” he said.

  Nadine unclasped her knees, and got up, and began walking to and fro across the big room.

  “Hugh, I wish I was altogether different,” she said. “I wish I was like one of those simple girls whom you never by any chance meet outside the covers of six-shilling novels. They are quite human, only no human girl was ever like them. They like music and food and sentiment and sea-bathing and playing foolish games, just as we all do. But there is nobody behind them: they are tastes without character. If only one’s character was nothing more than the sum total of one’s tastes, how extraordinarily simple it would all be. We should spend our lives in making ourselves pleasant and enjoying ourselves. But there is something that sits behind all our tastes, and though those tastes express it, they do not express it all, nor do they express its essence. I am something beyond and back of the things I like, and the people I like. Something inside me says ‘I want: I want.’ I daresay it wants the moon, and has as much chance of getting it as I have of reaching up into the sky and pulling it down. Oh, Hugh, I want the moon, and what will the moon be like? Will it be hard and cold or soft and warm? I don’t care. I shall slip it between my breasts and hold it close.”

  She paused a moment opposite him.

  “Am I talking damned rot?” she asked. “I daresay I am. I am a rotter then, because all I say is me. Another thing, too: morally, I am not in the least worthy of you. I don’t know any one who is. I don’t really, and I’m not flattering you, because I don’t rate the moral qualities very high. They are compatible with such low organizations. Earwigs, I read the other day, are excellent mothers. How that seems to alter one’s conception of the beauty of the maternal instinct! It does not alter my conception of earwigs in the least, and I shall continue to kill any excellent mothers that I find in my room.”

  Hugh laughed suddenly and uproariously and then became perfectly grave again.

  “Your moral organization is probably extremely low,” he said. “But I settled long ago to overlook that.”

  “Ah, there we are again,” said Nadine. “You deliberately propose to misconceive me, with the kindest intentions I know, but with how wrong a principle. You shut your eyes to me, as if—as if I was a smut! You settle to overlook the fact that I have no real moral perception. Could you settle to overlook the fact if I had no nose and only one tooth? I assure you the lack of a moral nature is a more serious defect. But, poor devil that I am, how was I to get one? We were talking about heredity before you came in—”

  Nadine paused a moment.

  “As a matter of fact,” she said, “I was telling them that there was no truth in heredity. We will now take the other side of the question. How was I, considering my family, to have moral perceptions?”

  “Are you being quite consistent?” asked Hugh.

  “Why should I be consistent? Who is consistent except those simple people whom you buy so many of for six shillings, and they are consistently tiresome. How, I said, was I to have got moral perception? There is Daddy! If I was a doctor I would certify any one to be insane who said Daddy was a moral organism. There is darling Mama! I would horse-whip any one who said the same of her, for his gross stupidity and insolence. The result is me; I am more pagan than Heliogabalus. I do not think that anything is right or that anything is wrong. I want the moon, but I am afraid you are not the man in it.”

  “And now you are flippant.”

  “Flippant, serious, moral, immoral,” cried Nadine, “do not label me like luggage. You will tell me my destination next, shall we call it Abraham’s bosom? Dear Hugh, you enrage me sometimes. Chiefly you enrage me because you have such an angelic temper yourself. I am not sure that an angelic temper is an advantage: it is always set fair, and there are no surprises. Ah, how it all leads round to that: there are no surprises: I understand you too well. I am very sorry. Do me the justice to believe that. Really I believe that I am as sorry that I can’t marry you as you are.”

  Hugh got up.

  “I don’t think I do quite believe that,” he said. “And now as regards the immediate future. I think I shall go away tomorrow.”

  This time he succeeded in surprising her.

  “Himmel, but why?” she said.

  “If you understood me as well as you say, you would know,” he said. “I don’t find my own heart a satisfactory diet. Of course, if I thought you would miss me—”

  Nadine was quite silent for a moment.

  “You s
hall go if you like, of course,” she said. “But you do me the most frightful injustice: you understand nothing about me if you think I should not miss you. You cannot be so dull as not to know that I should miss you more than if everybody else went, literally everybody, leaving me alone. But go if you wish.”

  She walked across to the window, which Hugh had thrown open, and leaned out. A moon rode high in mid-sky, and to the West a quarter of a mile away and far below the sea glimmered like a shield of dim silver. Below the window the ground sloped sharply away down to the gray tumbled sand dunes that fringed the coast, and all lay blurred and melted under the uncertain light. And when she turned round again Hugh saw that her eyes were blurred and melted also.

  “Do exactly as you please, Hughie,” she said.

  He laughed.

  “Would you be surprised if I did not go?” he asked.

  She came towards him with both hands out.

  “Ah, that is dear of you,” she said. “Look out of the window with me a moment: how dim and mysterious. There is my moon which I want so much, too. I will build altars and burn incense to any god who will give it me. If only I knew what it was. My moon, I mean! Now perhaps as it is nearly two o’clock, we had better go to bed, Hughie. And I am so sorry that things are as they are.”

  CHAPTER II

  It had been said, by Edith Arbuthnot, perhaps unkindly, but with sufficient humor to neutralize the acidity, that there was always somebody awake day and night in Dodo’s house tending the flame of egoistic introspection. Edith did not generally use long words, but chose them carefully when she indulged in polysyllables. She had not been so careful in the choice of her confidant, for she had fired this withering criticism at her son Berts, who in the true spirit of an affectionate nephew instantly repeated it to Dodo, who had roared with laughter and sent Edith an enormous telegram (costing nine shillings and a halfpenny, including sixpence for a paid reply in case Edith wanted to continue the discussion) describing a terrible accident that had just happened to herself.

  “A most extraordinary and tragic affair” (this was all written out in full) “has just occurred at Meering at the house of Princess Waldenech. The unfortunate lady has just died of a sudden though not unexpected attack of spontaneous egoism. Loud screams were heard from her room, and Mr. Bertie Arbuthnot, son of the celebrated Edith Arbuthnot, the musical composer, rushed in to find the princess enveloped in sheets of blue flame. The efforts made to quench her were of no avail and in a few moments all that was left of her was a small handful of ashes, which curiously enough, as they cooled, assumed the shape of a capital ‘I.’ Fear is felt that this outbreak may prove to be contagious, and all those who have been in contact with the combusted princess are busy disinfecting themselves by talking about each other. It is believed that Mrs. Arbuthnot has begun to write a funeral march for her friend, for whom she felt an adoring affection amounting almost to worship, in the unusual key of ten sharps and eleven flats. It is in brisk waltz time and all the performers will blow their own trumpets. She is sending copies to nearly all the crowned heads of Europe.”

  Edith’s reply was equally characteristic.

  “Dodo, I love you.”

  The truth in Edith’s criticism was certainly exemplified in the night of which we are speaking, for Hugh did not leave Nadine’s room, where she had been engaged on the self-analysis given in the last chapter till two o’clock, and at that precise moment Dodo, who had gone to bed more than an hour before, woke up and began thinking about herself with uncommon intensity. And indeed there was sufficient to think about in the circumstances with which she had at this moment allowed herself to be surrounded. For the last two days, the husband whom she had divorced with such extreme facility had been staying with her, and tomorrow, directly on his departure, Jack Chesterford, to whom she had been engaged when she ran away with the husband she had just divorced, was arriving. All her life Dodo had liked drama, as long as it occurred outside the walls of English theaters, but better than the theaters even of Paris were the dramas which came into real life, especially when you could not possibly tell (even though you were acting yourself) what was going to happen next. Best of all she liked acting herself, having a part to play, without the slightest idea what she or anybody else was going to do or say.

  Dodo’s zest for life did not decrease with years, nor did her interest in it in the least diminish as the time of her youth began to recede into horizons far behind her. For all the time other horizons were getting closer to her, and she could imagine herself being quite old—“as old as Grannie” in fact—without any of the tragic envy of past years that so often make wormwood of the present. She had indeed settled the mode of her procedure for those years, which were still far enough off, with some exactitude, and was quite determined to have a mob-cap with a blue riband in it, and gold-rimmed spectacles. Also she would read Thomas à Kempis a great deal—she had read a little already, and was now deliberately keeping the rest until she was seventy—and walk about her garden with a tall cane and pick lavender. She had, moreover, promised herself to make no attempts at sprightliness or to have her hair dyed, since one of the few classes of women whom she really objected to were those whom she called grizzly kittens, who dabbed at you with their rheumatic old paws, and pretended that they had no need of spectacles, though it was quite clear they could not read the very largest print. But she fully intended to remain exceedingly happy when those years came, for happiness so it seemed to her was a gift that came from within and could not be taken from you by any amount of external calamities or accumulation of decades. Certainly in the years that had passed she had had her share of annoyances, and in support of her theory with regard to happiness it must be confessed that they had not deprived her of one atom of it. Her late husband’s conduct, for instance, had for years been of the most disagreeable kind, and she had borne with it not in the least like a tearful lamb but more like a cheerful lion. It had not in the least discouraged her with life in general, but only disgusted her with him. For the last two years before she got her divorce, he had been, as she expressed it, “too Bacchic for anything,” and she had sent Nadine away from their homes in Austria to live with a variety of old friends in England. Eventually Dodo had decided that she would waste no more time with her husband and got her freedom coupled with an extremely handsome allowance. She continued to call herself “Princess Waldenech,” because it was still rather pleasant being a Princess, and Waldenech told her that, as far as he was concerned, she might call herself “Dowager-Empress Waldenech,” or anything else she chose.

  So for a year now she had been in England, and had stepped back, or rather jumped back, into the old relations with almost all that numerous body of people who twenty years ago had helped to make life so enchanting. And with the same swiftness and sureness she had established herself in the hearts of the younger generation that had grown up since, so that the sons and daughters of her old friends became her nephews and nieces. Nadine, with the beauty, the high spirits and power of enjoyment that was hers by birthright, had so it seemed to her mother succeeded to a place that was very like what her own had been rather more than twenty years ago. Of course there was a tremendous difference in their modes, for the manners and outlook of one generation are as divergent from those of the last, as are the clothes they wear, but the same passionate love of life, the same curiosity and vividness inspired her daughter’s friends, even as they had inspired her own. And since she herself had lost not one atom of her own vitality, it was not strange that the years between them and her were easily bridged over.

  * * * *

  There were one or two voices that were silent in the chorus of welcome with which Dodo’s reappearance had been hailed. One of these was Edith Arbuthnot, who, though she did not desire to put any restrictions on Berts’ intimacy (which was lucky, since Berts was a young gentleman hideously gifted with the power of getting his way) loudly proclaimed that she could never be friends with Dodo again. But the answer she had s
ent to Dodo’s remarkable telegram about combusted egoism a few days before seemed to indicate that she had surrendered and, though she had subsequently announced that Dodo was heartless, might be regarded as a convert, especially since Jack had at last yielded too, and had invited himself down here. Another fortress hitherto impregnable was Mrs. Vivian, for whom Dodo in days gone by had felt as solid an affection as she was capable of. Consequently she regretted that Mrs. Vivian was invariably unable to come and dine, and never manifested the slightest desire that Dodo should come to see her. Her regret was slightly tempered by the fact that Mrs. Vivian had an ear-trumpet in these days, which she presented to people whose conversation she desired to hear rather in the manner that elephants at the Zoo hold out their trunks for refreshments. Somehow that seemed to make her matter less, and Dodo had not at present made any determined effort to beleaguer her. But she intended when she went back to town in July to capture what was now practically the only remaining stronghold of the disaffected.

  When Dodo drowsily awoke that night just at the time that Hugh and Nadine had finished their talk it was the thought of Jack that first stirred in her mind. Instantly she was perfectly wide-awake. During this last year, though he was great friends with Nadine, he had absolutely avoided coming into contact with herself. He never went to a house where Dodo was expected, and once finding she was staying for a Saturday-till-Monday with the Granthams, had left within ten minutes of his arrival. Miss Grantham had conceived this misbegotten plan of bringing them unexpectedly face to face, with the only result that the party numbered thirteen, and her father was very uncomfortable for weeks afterwards. Once again they had been caught in a block in taxi-cabs exactly opposite each other. Dodo, taking the bull by the horns, had leaned impulsively toward him with both hands outstretched and cried, “Ah, Jack, are we never to meet again?” On which the bull, so to speak, paid his fare, and continued his journey on foot. Dodo had been considerably disappointed by this rebuff: it had seemed to her that no man should have resisted her direct appeal. On the other hand, Jack on seeing her had nailed to his face so curiously icy a mask that his appearance became quite ludicrous. Also he knocked his hat against the roof of the closed half of his cab, and it fell into the road, in the middle of an unusually deep puddle. She noticed that he was not bald yet, which was a great relief, since she detested the sight of craniums.