by E. F. Benson
“If she is to be your wife, dear, I think I should,” said Esther.
Seymour laid his hand on hers. His smelt vaguely of wall-flowers.
“How disagreeable you are,” he said. “I don’t think I shall say anything about your dress in The Lady. I shall simply say that Lady Esther Sturgis was there looking very plain and tired. I shall describe my own dress instead. I had an emerald pin, properly set, instead of its being set like that sort of cheese cake you are wearing. No, it’s not exactly a cheese cake: it is as if you had spilt some crème-de-menthe and put a little palisade of broken glass round it to prevent it spreading. What a disgusting dinner we are having, aren’t we? I never know what to do before I dine with Mama, whether to eat so much lunch that I don’t want any dinner, or to eat none at all so that I can manage to swallow this sort of garbage. Tonight I am rather hungry: won’t you come away early with me and have some supper at home? Perhaps Nadine will come too.”
“If Nadine will come, I will,” said Esther. “I suppose we can chaperone each other.”
“Certainly, if it amuses you. Shall we ask anybody else? I see hardly anybody here whom I know by sight. I think they must all be earls and countesses. It’s funny how few of one’s own class are worth speaking to. Look at Mama! I know I keep telling you to look at Mama, but she is so remarkable. She said ‘sir’ just now to the man next her. He must be a Saxon king. I wish she was responsible for the wine instead of father: teetotalers usually give one excellent wine, because they don’t imagine they know anything about it, and tell the wine merchants just to send round some champagne and hock. So of course they send the most expensive.”
“I think we ought to talk to our neighbors,” said Esther. “Mama is making faces.”
“That is because she has eaten some of this entrée, I expect. I make no face because I haven’t. But I can’t talk to my neighbor. I tried, but she is unspeakable-to. I wish my nose would bleed, because then I should go away.”
One of the frequent pauses that occurred at Lady Ayr’s dinners was taking place at the moment, and Seymour’s rather shrill voice was widely audible. A buzz of vacant conversation succeeded, and he continued.
“That was heard,” he said, “and really I didn’t mean it to be heard. I am sorry. I shall make myself agreeable. But tell Nadine we shall go away soon after dinner. If you will be ready, I shall not go up into the drawing-room at all.”
Seymour turned brightly to the woman seated on his right.
“Have you been to ‘The Follies’?” he asked. “I hope you haven’t, because then we can’t talk about them, since I haven’t either. There are enough follies going about, without going to them.”
“How amusin’ you are,” said his neighbor.
Seymour felt exasperated.
“I know I am,” he said. “Do be amusing too; then we shall be delighted with each other.”
“But I don’t know who you are,” said his neighbor.
“Well, that is the case with me,” said he. “But my mother—”
His neighbor’s face instantly changed from a chilly neutrality to a welcoming warmth.
“Oh, are you Lord Seymour?” she asked.
“I should find it very uncomfortable to be anybody else,” said he. “I should not know what to do.”
“Then do tell me, because of course you know all about these things: Are we all going to wear slabs of jade next year? And did you see me at Princess Waldenech’s wedding this morning? And who manicures you? I hear you have got a marvelous person.” Seymour really wished to atone for the unfortunate remark that had broken the silence and exerted himself.
“But of course,” he said. “It is Antoinette. She cooks for me and calls me: she dusts my rooms, and brushes my boots. She stirs the soup with one hand and manicures me with the other. Fancy not knowing Antoinette! She is fifty-two: by the time you are fifty-two you ought to be known anywhere. If she marries I shall die: if I marry, she will still live I hope. Now do tell me: do you recommend me to marry?”
“Doesn’t it depend upon whom you marry?”
“Not much, do you think? But perhaps you are married, and so know. Are you married? And would you mind telling me who you are, as I have told you?”
“You never told me: I guessed. Guess who I am.”
Seymour looked at her attentively. She was a woman of about fifty, with a shrewd face, like a handsome monkey, and his millinerish eyes saw that she was dressed without the slightest regard to expense.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” he said. “But please don’t tell me, if you have any private reason for not wishing it to be known. I can readily understand you would not like people to be able to say that you were seen dining with Mama. Of course you are not English.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because you talk it so well. English people always talk it abominably. But—”
He looked at her again, and a vague resemblance both in speech and in the shape of her head struck him.
“I will guess,” he said, “you are a relation of Nadine’s.”
“Quite right: go on.”
Seymour was suddenly agitated and upset a glass of champagne that had just been filled. He took not the slightest notice of this.
“Is it too much to hope that you are the aunt who—who had so many snuff-boxes?” he asked. “I mean the one to whom the Emperor gave all those lovely snuff-boxes? Or is it too good to be true?”
“Just good enough,” she said.
“How wildly exciting! Will you come back to my flat as soon as we can escape from this purgatory and Antoinette shall manicure you. Do tell me about the snuff-boxes; I am sure they were beauties, or you would not—I mean the Emperor would not have given you them.”
“Of course not. But I am afraid I can’t come to your flat tonight, as I am going to a dance. Ask me another day. I hear you have got some lovely jade and are going to make it the fashion. Then I suppose you will sell it.”
Seymour determined to insure his jade before Countess Eleanor entered his rooms, for fear of its subsequently appearing that the Austrian Emperor had followed up his present of snuff-boxes with a present of jade. But he let no suspicion mar the cordiality of his tone.
“Yes, that’s the idea,” he said. “You see no younger son can possibly live in the way he has been brought up unless he has done something honest and commercial like that, or cheats at bridge. But that is so difficult I am told. You have to learn bridge first, and then go to a conjurer, during which time you probably forget bridge again. But otherwise you can’t live at all unless you marry and the only thing left to do is to take to drink and die.”
“My brother took to it and lives,” said she.
“I know, but you are a very remarkable family.”
A footman had wiped up the greater part of the champagne Seymour had spilt and now stood waiting till he could speak to him.
“Her ladyship told me to tell you that you seemed to have had enough champagne, my lord,” he said.
Seymour paused for a moment, and his face turned white with indignation.
“Tell her ladyship she is quite right,” he said, “and that the first sip I took of it was more than enough.”
“Very good, my lord.”
“And tell her that the fish was stale,” said Seymour shrilly.
“Yes, my lord.”
“And tell her—” began Seymour again.
Countess Eleanor interrupted him.
“You have sent enough pleasant messages for one time,” she said. “You can talk to your mother afterwards: at present talk to me. Did you go to the wedding this morning?”
“Yes.”
Seymour rather frequently allowed himself to be ruffled, but he always calmed down again quickly. “It is so like Mama to send a servant in the middle of dinner to say I am drunk,” he said, “but she will be sorry now. Look, she is receiving my message, and is turning purple. That is satisfactory. She looks unusually plain when she is purple. Yes: I
am describing the wedding for a lady’s paper. I shall get four guineas for it.”
“You do not look as if that would do you much good.”
“If you take four guineas often enough they—they purify the blood,” said he, “though certainly the dose is homeopathic. It is called the gold cure. About the wedding. I thought it was very vulgar. And it was frightfully bourgeois in spirit. It is very early Victorian to marry a man who has waited for you since about 1820.”
“But they will be very happy.”
“So are the bourgeoisie who change hats. At least I should have to be frightfully happy to think of putting on anybody else’s hat. I recommend you not to eat that savory unless you have a bad cold that prevents your tasting anything. Shall I send another message to Mama about it?”
“Ah, my dear young man,” said Countess Eleanor, “we are all common when we fall in love. You will find yourself being common too, some day. And the people who are least bourgeois become the most common of all. Nadine, for instance: there is no one less bourgeoise than Nadine, but if she ever falls in love she will be so common that she will be perfectly sublime. She will be the embodiment of humanity. But she is not in love with that great boy next her, who is so clearly in love with her. Dear me, what beautiful Sèvres dessert plates. I once collected Sèvres as well as snuff-boxes.”
“Did you—did you get together a fine collection?” asked Seymour.
“Pretty well. It is easier to get snuff-boxes. My brother has some that used to be mine—Ah, they are all getting up. Let me come to see your jade some other day.”
* * * *
Nadine and Esther escaped very soon after dinner from this dreadful party, and went to Seymour’s flat where he had preceded them and was busy cooking with Antoinette in the kitchen when they arrived. He opened the door for them himself with his shirt sleeves rolled up above his elbows, showing an extremely white and delicate skin. Round one wrist he wore a gold bangle.
“I’ve left the kitchen door open,” he said, “so that the whole flat shall smell as strong as possible of cooking. There is nothing so delicious when you are hungry. We will open the windows afterwards. You and Esther must amuse yourselves for ten minutes, and then supper will be ready.”
“Oh, may I come and cook too, Seymour?” asked Nadine.
“Certainly not. Antoinette is the only woman in the world who knows how to cook. You would make everything messy. Go and rock the cradle or rule the world, or whatever you consider to be a woman’s sphere, until we are ready.”
Seymour disappeared again into the kitchen from which came rich cracklings and odors of frying, and Nadine turned to Esther with a sigh.
“My dear, I have got remorse and world yearnings tonight,” she said. “I attribute it to your mother’s awful party. But I daresay we shall all be better soon. You know, if I had asked Hugh to let me come and cook, he would have given me a golden spoon to stir with, and eaten till he burst because I cooked it. And I don’t care! He was so dear and so utterly impossible this evening. I told him I wasn’t going to the dance at the Embassy, and he said he should go in case I changed my mind. And if it had been Hugh cooking in there, I should have gone and cooked too, even if he hadn’t wanted me to. It’s no use, Esther: I can’t marry Hugh. There’s the end of it. Up till tonight I have always wondered if I could. Now I know I can’t. I think I shan’t see so much of him. I shall miss him, don’t think I shan’t miss him, but I want to be fair to him. As it is now, whenever I am nice to him, which I always am, he thinks it means that I am beginning to love him. Whereas it doesn’t mean anything whatever. I wish people hadn’t got into the habit of marrying each other, but bought their babies at a shop instead. And kissing is so disgusting. The only person I ever like kissing is Mama, because her skin is so delicious and smells very faintly of raspberries. Hugh smells of cigarettes and soap—”
“Darling Nadine, you haven’t been kissing Hugh, have you?” asked Esther.
“Yes, I kissed him this evening, when he was putting my cloak on, but there were ninety-five footmen there so it wasn’t compromising: we were heavily chaperoned. And I would just as soon have kissed any of the other ninety-five. But he wanted me to, and so I did, and then suddenly I saw how unfair it was for me. It didn’t mean anything: I kissed him just as I kiss my dog, because he is such a duck. Also because he wanted me to, which Tobias never does: he always cleans his face on the rug after I have kissed him, and sneezes.”
“Did he ask you to?” said Esther—“not Toby, Hugh!”
“No, but I can see by a man’s face when he wants. I saw one of the footmen wanted, too, and perhaps I ought to have kissed him as well, to show Hugh it did not mean anything.”
Nadine sat down and spread her hands wide with a surprisingly dramatic gesture of innocence and despair.
“It isn’t my fault,” she said; “it’s me. C’est moi: son’ io! I would translate it into all the languages of the world, like the Bible, if that would make Hugh understand. People can’t be different from what they are. It’s a grand mistake to suppose otherwise. They can act and talk in accordance with what they are, or they can act and talk otherwise, but they, the personalities, are unchangeable except by miracles. I could act contrary to my own self and marry Hugh, but it would be no particle of good. I want him to understand that I can’t love him, and I am too fond of him to marry him without. I wish to heaven he would marry somebody else.”
“He won’t do that,” said Esther.
“I am afraid not. I think it is rather selfish. It is putting it all on me. I shall have to marry somebody else, I suppose, and that will be very unselfish of me, because I don’t want to marry. Of course one has to: I don’t want to grow old, but I shall have to grow old. They are both laws of nature, and perhaps neither the one nor the other is so disagreeable really.”
Esther gave her long, appreciative sigh.
“It would be too wonderful of you to marry somebody else, in order to make it clear to Hugh that you couldn’t marry him,” she said. “It would be the most illustrious thing to do and it shows that really you are devoted to Hugh. But you really think that people don’t change, Nadine?”
“Not unless a moral earthquake happens and earthquakes are not to be expected. Only an upheaval of that kind makes any difference in the essential things. Their tastes change, as their noses and hair change, but the thing that sits behind like some beastly idol in a temple never moves and looks on at all that changes round it with the same wooden eyes. Oh, dear, I am so tired of myself, and I can’t get out of sight of myself.”
Nadine looked at herself in a Louis Seize mirror that hung above the fireplace and pointed a contemplative finger at the reflection of her pale loveliness.
“I wish I was anything in the world except that thing,” she said. “I am genuine when I say that, but having said that there is nothing else about me but what is intolerable. But I am aware that I don’t really care about anybody in the world. The only thing that can be said for me is that I detest myself. I wish I was like you, Esther, because you care for me: I wish I was like Aunt Eleanor because she cares for stealing. I wish I was like Daddy because he cares for old brandy. You are all better off than I. I envy anybody and everybody who cares for anybody with her heart. No doubt having a heart is often a very great nuisance, and often leads you to make a dreadful fool of yourself, but it gets tedious to be wise and cool all the time like me.”
Seymour entered at this moment carrying a little silver censer with incense in it.
“The smell of food is sufficiently strong,” he said. “And supper is ready. Also the smell of incense reminds one of stepping out of the blazing sunlight into St. Mark’s at Venice. Nadine, you look too exquisite, but depressed. Has not the effect of Mama worn off yet?”
“Oh, it’s not your mother, it’s me,” said she.
“You think about yourself too much,” observed Seymour. “I know the temptation so well, and generally yield to it. It is a great mistake: one occasionally
has doubts whether one is the nicest person in the world and whether it is worth while doing anything, even collecting jade. But such doubts never last long with me.”
“Don’t you ever wish you had a heart, Seymour?” she asked. “You and I have neither of us got hearts.”
“I know, and I am so exceedingly comfortable without one, that I should be sorry to get one. If you have a heart, sooner or later you get into a state of drivel about somebody, who probably doesn’t drivel about you. That must be so mortifying. Even if two people drivel mutually they are deplorable objects, but a solitary driveler is like a lonely cat on the tiles, and is a positive nuisance. Poor Hugh! Nadine, you suit my wall-paper quite exquisitely. Also it suits you. Don’t let any of us go to bed tonight, but see the morning come. The early morning is the color of a wood-pigeon’s breast, and looks frightfully tired, as if it had sat up all night too. Most people look perfectly hideous at that moment, but I really don’t believe you would. Do sit up and let me see.
“I look the color of an oyster at dawn,” said Esther, “it is just as if I had gone bad.”
Her brother looked at her thoughtfully.
“Yes, my dear, I can imagine your looking quite ghastly,” he said. “You had better go away before dawn. It might make me seriously unwell.”
“I shall. I shall go to the dance at the Embassy, I think. Madame Tavita is so hideous that she makes me feel good-looking for a week.”
“You always behave as if you were pretty, which matters far more than being pretty,” said Seymour. “It matters very little what people look like, if they only behave as if they were Venuses, just as it does not matter how tall you are if you consistently look at a point rather above the head of the person you are talking to.”
Nadine was recovering a little under the influence of food.
“That is quite true,” she said. “And if you want to look really rich, you must be shabby, or not wash your face. Seymour, let us try and write a little book together, ‘Fifty ways of appearing enviable.’ You should eat a great deal in order to make it appear you have a good digestion, although you may be quite sick afterwards, and refuse a great many invitations to show what a wild social success you are, even though you dine all by yourself at home. My dear, what delicious food; did you cook it, or Antoinette?”