The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  “Bishop Algie is such a dear, isn’t he?” she said. “He is accustomed not to talk at all, and so talking is a treat to him, and he loved you. He is taking a cinematograph show, all about the Acts of the Apostles, round the country next autumn to collect funds for Maud’s orphanage. The orphanage is already built, but there are no orphans. I think the money he collects is to get orphans to go there, scholarships I suppose. He made all his friends group themselves for scenes in the acts, and he is usually St. Paul. There is a delicious shipwreck where they are tying up the boat with rug-straps and ropes. He had it taken in the bay here, and it was extremely rough, which made it all the more realistic because dear Algie is a very bad sailor and while he was being exceedingly unwell over the side, his halo fell off and sank.”

  “We did not talk about the Acts of the Apostles last night,” said John firmly, “we talked about Gothic architecture, and Piccadilly, and Wagner.”

  “But how entrancing,” said Dodo. “I particularly love Siegfried because it is like a pantomime. Do you remember when the dragon comes out of his cave looking exactly like Paddington station, with a red light on one side and a green one on the other, and a quantity of steam, and whistlings, and some rails? Then afterwards a curious frosty female appears suddenly in the hole of a tree and tells Wotan that his spear ought to be looked to before he fights. Waldenech, we went together to Baireuth, and you snored, but luckily on the right note, and everybody thought it was Fafner. John, I was sitting in my window at dawn this morning, and all the birds in the world began to sing. It made me feel so common. Nobody ought to see the dawn except the birds, and I suppose the worms for the sake of the birds.”

  Waldenech turned to her, and again spoke in German. “You are still yourself,” he said. “After all these years you are still yourself.”

  Dodo’s German was far more expressive than his, it was also ludicrously ungrammatical, and intensely rapid.

  “There are no years,” she said. “Years are only an expression used by people who think about what is young and what is old. Every one has his essential age, and remains that age always. This man is about sixty, the age of his mother.”

  John Sturgis smiled in a kind and superior manner.

  “Perhaps I had better tell you that I know German perfectly,” he said. “Also French and Italian, in case you want to say things that I shan’t understand.”

  Dodo stared for a moment, then pealed with laughter.

  “Darling John,” she said, “I think that is too nice of you. If you were nasty you would have let me go on talking. Isn’t my German execrable? How clever of you to understand it! But you are old, aren’t you? Of course it is not your fault, nor is it your misfortune, since all ages are equally agreeable. We grow up into our ages if we are born old, and we grow out of them, like missing a train, if our essential age is young. When you are eighty, you will still be sixty, which will be delightful for you. I make plans for what I shall be when I am old, but I wonder if I shall be able to carry them out. When I am old, I shall be what I shall be, I suppose. The inevitable doesn’t take much notice of our plans, it sits there like the princess on the top of the glass-hill while we all try, without the slightest success, to get at it. Ah, my dear Waldenech, there is the motor come round for you. You will have to start, because I have at last trained my chauffeur to give one no time to wait at the station, and you must not jilt the compartment I have engaged you to. It will get to London all alone: so bad for a young compartment.”

  He made no further attempt to induce her to let him stop, and Dodo, with a certain relief of mind, saw him drive off and blew a large quantity of kisses after him.

  “He was such a dear about the year you were born, John,” she said, “but you are too old to remember that. Now I must be Martha, and see the cook and all the people who make life possible. Then I shall become Mary again and have a delicious bathe before lunch. Certainly the good part is much the pleasantest, as is the case always at private theatricals. I think we must act this evening: we have not had charades or anything for nearly two days.”

  * * * *

  John, like most prigs, was of a gregarious disposition, and liked that his own superiority of intellect, of which he was so perfectly conscious, should be made manifest to others and, literally, he could not imagine that Dodo should not seem to prefer burying herself in household affairs when he was clearly at leisure to converse with her. He did not feel himself quite in tune with the younger members of the party, and sometimes wondered why he had come here. That wonder was shared by others. His tediousness in ordinary intercourse was the tediousness of his genus, for he always wanted to improve the minds of his circle. Unfortunately he mistook quantity of information for quality of mind, and thought that large numbers of facts, even such low facts as dates, held in themselves the germ of culture. But since, at the present moment, Dodo showed not the smallest desire to profit by his leisure, he wandered off to the tennis-courts, where he had reason to believe he should find companions. His faith was justified, for there was a rather typical party assembled. Berts and Hugh were playing a single, while Esther was fielding tennis-balls for them. They were both admirable performers, equally matched and immeasurably active. At the moment Esther standing, as before Ahasuerus, with balls ready to give to Berts, had got in his way, and he had claimed a let.

  “Thanks awfully, Esther,” he said, as he took a couple of balls from her, “but would you get a little further back? You are continually getting rather in my way.”

  “Oh, Berts, I’m so sorry,” she said. “You are playing so well!”

  “I know. Esther was in the light, Hugh.”

  “Oh rather, lot, of course,” said Hugh.

  Nadine took no active share. She was lying on the grass at the side of the court with Tommy, and was reading “Pride and Prejudice” aloud. When Esther had a few moments to spare she came to listen. John joined the reading party, and wore an appreciative smile.

  Nadine came to the end of a chapter.

  “Yes, Art, oh, great Art,” she said, shutting the book, “but I am not enchained. It corresponds to Madame Bovary, or the Dutch pictures. It is beautifully done; none but an artist could have done it. But I find a great deal of it dull.”

  John’s smile became indulgent.

  “Ah, yes,” he said, “but what you call dull, I expect I should call subtle. Surely, Nadine, you see how marvelous.”

  Esther groaned.

  “John, you make me feel sick,” she began.

  “Balls, please,” said Hugh.

  Esther sprang up.

  “Yes, Hugh, I’ll get them,” she said. “Aren’t those two marvelous?” she added to Nadine.

  “John is more marvelous,” said Nadine. “John, I wish you would get drunk or cheat at cards. It would do you a world of good to lose a little of your self-respect. You respect yourself far too much. Nobody is so respectable as you think yourself. We were talking of you last night: I wish you had been there to hear; but you had gone to bed with your camomile tea. Perhaps you think camomile tea subtle also, whereas I should only find it dull.”

  “I think you are quibbling with words,” he said. “But I, too, wish I had heard you talking last night. I always welcome criticism so long as it is sincere.”

  “It was quite sincere,” said Nadine, “you may rest assured. It was unanimous, too; we were all agreed.”

  John found this not in the least disconcerting.

  “I am not so sure that it matters then,” he said. “When several people are talking about one thing—you tell me you were talking about me—they ought to differ. If they all agree, it shows they only see one side of what they are discussing.”

  Nadine sat up, while Tommy buried his dissipated face in his hands.

  “We only saw one side of you,” she said, “and that was the obvious one. You will say that it was because we were dull. But since you like criticism you shall know. We all thought you were a prig. Esther said you would be distressed if we thought
differently. She said you like being a prig. Do tell me: is it pleasant? Or I expect what I call prig, you call cultured. Are you cultured?”

  Tommy sat up.

  “Come and listen, Esther,” he shouted. “Those glorious athletes can pick up the balls themselves for a minute.”

  Esther emerged from a laurel bush triumphant with a strayed reveler.

  “Oh, is Nadine telling John what she thinks?” she asked.

  “Nadine is!” said Tommy.

  Nadine meantime collected her thoughts. When she talked she ascertained for herself beforehand what she was going to say. In that respect she was unlike her mother, who ascertained what she thought when she found herself saying it. But the result in both cases had the spontaneous ring.

  “John, somehow or other you are a dear,” she said, “though we find you detestable. You think, anyhow. That gives you the badge. Anybody who thinks—”

  Hugh, like Mr. Longfellow with his arrow, flung his racquet into the air, without looking where it went. He had a moment previously sent a fast drive into the corner of the court, which raised whitewash in a cloud, and won him the set.

  “Nadine, are you administering the oath of the clan?” he said. “You haven’t consulted either Berts or me.”

  Nadine looked pained.

  “Did you really think I was admitting poor John without consulting you?” she said. “Though he complies with the regulations.”

  Hugh, streaming with the response that a healthy skin gives to heat, threw himself down on the grass.

  “I vote against John!” he said. “I would sooner vote for Seymour. And I won’t vote for him. Also, it is surely time to go and bathe.”

  “I don’t know what you are all talking about,” said John. “I daresay it doesn’t matter. But what is the clan?”

  Hugh sat up.

  “The clan is nearly prigs,” he said, “but not quite. But you are, quite. We are saved because we do laugh at ourselves—”

  “And you are not saved because you don’t,” added Nadine.

  “And is the whole object of the clan to think?” asked John.

  “No, that is the subject. Also you speak as if we all had said, ‘Let there be a clan, and it was so,’” said Nadine. “You mustn’t think that. There was a clan, and we discovered it, like Newton and the orange.”

  “Apple, surely,” said John.

  Nadine looked brilliantly round.

  “I knew he would say that,” she said. “You see you correct what I say, whereas a clansman would be content to understand what I mean.”

  “Bishop Algie is clan, by the way,” said Hugh. “I went down to bathe before breakfast, and found him kneeling down on the beach saying his prayers. That is tremendously clannish.”

  “I don’t see why,” said John.

  Esther sighed.

  “No, of course you wouldn’t see,” she said.

  “Try him with another,” said Nadine.

  Esther considered.

  “Attend, John,” she said. “When the last Stevenson letters came out, Berts bought them and looked at one page. Then he took a taxi to Paddington and took a return ticket to Bristol.”

  “Swindon,” said Berts.

  “The station is immaterial, so long as it was far away. I daresay Swindon is quite as far as Bristol.”

  John smiled.

  “There you are quite wrong,” he said. “Swindon comes before Bath, and Bristol after Bath. No doubt it does not matter, though it is as well to be accurate.”

  Esther looked at him with painful anxiety.

  “But don’t you see why Berts went to Swindon or Bristol?” she said. “Poor dear, you do see now. That is hopeless. You ought to have felt. To reason out what should have been a flash, is worse than not to have understood at all.”

  John, again like all other prigs, was patient with those not so gifted as himself.

  “I daresay you will explain to me what it all amounts to,” he said. “All I am certain of is that Berts wanted to read Stevenson’s letters and so got into a train, where he would be undisturbed. Wouldn’t it have answered the same purpose if he had taken a room at the Paddington hotel?”

  Nadine turned to Berts.

  “Oh, Berts, that would have been rather lovely,” she said.

  “Not at all,” said he. “I wanted the sense of travel.”

  John got up.

  “Then I should have recommended the Underground,” he said. “You could have gone round and round until you had finished. It would have been much cheaper.”

  Nadine waved impotent arms of despair.

  “Now you have spoiled it,” she said. “There was a possibility in the Paddington hotel, which sounds so remote. But the Underground! You might as well say, why do I bathe, I who cannot swim? I can get clean in a bath, though I only get dirty in the sea, and if I want the salt I can put Tiddle-de-wink salt or whatever the name is in my bath—”

  “Tidman,” said John.

  “I am sure you are right, though who cares? I am knocked down by cold waves, I am cut by stones on my soles. I am pinched by crabs and homards, at least I think I am; the wind gnaws at my bones, and my hair is as salt as almonds. Between my toes is sand, and bits of seaweed make me a plaster, and my stockings fall into rock-pools, but do I go with rapture to have a bath in the bathroom? I hate washing. There is nothing so sordid as to wash my face, except to brush my teeth. But to bathe in the sea makes me think: it gives me romance. Poor John, you never get romance. You amass information, and make a Blue Book. But we all, we make blue mountains, which we never reach. If we reached them they would probably turn out to be green. As it is, they are always blue, because they are beyond. It is suggestion that we seek, not attainment. To attain is dull, to aspire is the sugar and salt of life. Don’t you see? To realize an ideal is to lose the ideal. It is like a man growing rich: he never sees his sovereigns: when he has gained them he flings them forth again into something further. If he left them in a box, the real sovereigns, under his bed, what chance would there be for him to grow rich? But out they go, he never uses them, except that he makes them breed. It is the same with the riches of the mind. An idea, an ideal is yours. Do you keep it? Personally you do. But we, no. We invest it again. It is to our credit, at this bank of the mind. We do not hoard it, and spend it piecemeal. We put it into something else. What I have perceived in music, I put into plays: what I have perceived in plays I put into pictures. I never let it remain at home. But when I shall be a millionaire of the mind, what, what then? Yes, that makes me pause. Perhaps it will all be converted, as they convert bonds, is it not, and I shall put it all into love. Who knows, La-la.”

  Nadine paused a moment, but nobody spoke. Hugh was watching her with the absorption that was always his when she was there. But after a moment she spoke again.

  “We talk what you call rot,” she said. “But it is not rot. The people who always talk sense arrive at less. There are sparks that fly, as when you strike one flint with another. Your English philosophers—who are they?—Mr. Chesterton I suppose, is he not a philosopher?—or some Machiavelli or other, they sit down soberly to think, and when they have thought they wrap up their thought in paradox, as you wrap up a pill for your dog, so that he swallows it, and his inside becomes bitter. That is not the way. You must start with pure enjoyment, and when a thought comes, you must fling it into the air. They hit a bird, or turn into a rainbow, or fall on your head—but what matter? You others sit and think, and when you have thought of something you put it in a beastly book, and have finished with it. You prigs turn the world topsy-turvy that way. You do not start with joy, and you go forth in a slough of despondent information. Ah, yes: the child who picks up a match and rubs it against something and finds it catches fire removes the romance of the match, more than Mr. Bryant and May and Boots is it? who made the match. Matches are made on earth, but the child who knows nothing about them and strikes one is the person who is in heaven. You are not content with the wonder and romance of the worl
d, you prefer to explain the rainbow away instead of looking at it. It is a sort of murder to explain things away: you kill their souls, and demonstrate that it is only hydrogen.”

  She looked up at Hugh.

  “We talked about it last night,” she said. “We settled that it was a great misfortune to understand too well—”

  A footman arrived at this moment with a telegram which he handed to Berts, who opened it. He gave a shout of laughter and passed it to Nadine.

  “What shall I say?” he asked.

  “But of course ‘yes,’” she said. “It is quite unnecessary to ask Mama.”

  Berts scribbled a couple of words on the reply-paid form.

  “It’s only my mother,” he said in general explanation. “She wants to come over for a day or two, and see Aunt Dodo again, but she doesn’t feel sure if Aunt Dodo wants to see her. Are you sure there’s a room, Nadine?”

  “There always is some kind of room,” said Nadine. “She can sleep in three-quarters of my bed, if not.”

  “I’m so glad she is tired of being a silly ass, as we settled she was last night,” said Berts. “Perhaps I ought to ask Aunt Dodo, Nadine.”

  “Pish-posh,” said Nadine.

  John got up, and prig-like had the last word.

  “I see all about the clan,” he said. “You have a quantity of vague enthusiasm, and a lack of information. You swim like jelly-fish without any sense of direction, and admire each other.”

  Nadine considered this.

  “I do see what he means,” she said.

  “And don’t live what you mean,” added John.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER III

  This sojourn at Meering in the month of June, when London and its diversions were at their midmost, was Nadine’s plan. Whatever Nadine was or was not, she was not a poseuse, and her contention that it was a waste of time to spend all day in talking to a hundred people who did not really matter, and in dancing all night with fifty of them, was absolutely genuine.