The Second E. F. Benson Megapack

by E. F. Benson

  Imperceptibly and instinctively after the start had been made Dodo began to run in the strenuous race again. She bought a bathing-dress and a morning paper at the post-office and some bull’s-eyes, and there arrived for her an admirable field-glass of German manufacture, with a copy of Bleichroder’s “Birds of Great Britain” in six volumes and Kuhlmann’s “English Botany” in eight. She was rather shocked at this exhibition of Hun industry, but speedily got over it, and drove down to the sea with these treasures and the key of a bathing-hut which she proposed to convert into a library. With the help of Bleichroder’s “Birds,” and Zeiss’s field-glass she was almost certain that she saw a golden eagle and a hoopoe (those rare visitors to Norfolk), of which she made an entry with a query in the ornithological note-book. Then she bathed and then she had lunch, and then, after smoking four cigarettes, she went to sleep in the shadow of the library and had an uneasy dream about Berlin. After that she botanised: the heathery-looking shrub proved to be “shrubby sea-blite,” and she duly noted its name in the botany note-book. Then there was orache and thrift, and sea-campion and stinking Archangel (this was thrilling) to be noted down, and then, returning to the birds, she put down tern, and great black-backed gull, and ringed plover and sparrow (probably Tree). Subsequently she crossed out the golden eagle and the hoopoe, for it was hardly possible that her first glance through her Zeiss should have revealed a couple of such distinguished visitors. Of course, it was possible that she had seen them, since the possible could be stretched to any degree of elasticity, but it was better to be cautious and wait for further appearances before astounding the entire world of ornithologists.

  Dodo took a volume of Bleichroder’s “Birds” back to her hotel that night, leaving the rest of the library in the bathing-hut. It contained admirable pictures, but what really struck her most about those pictures was the vivid resemblance between the birds which they portrayed and human beings. The Shoveller, especially with the addition (lightly pencilled and then erased) of spectacles looked precisely like Dr. Ashe, while Richardson’s Skua without any addition at all recalled Edith with extraordinary vividness. She wondered who Richardson was; if he had sent in his card just then, she would have been entranced to have a talk to him about his Skua. She wondered also how they were all getting on at Winston that evening; she wondered if Jack had got back from France, if David was asleep, if Edith was composing an unrivalled symphony, if Lord Ardingly was meditating on the duties of the upper classes towards the lower.… And then she became aware that the human race was beginning to interest her again. Up till now she had, at the most, been concerned with starfish and terns and shrubby sea-blite, things that touched her mind impersonally. Now she began to picture herself shewing these pleasant creatures to a person of some sort; she imagined herself directing David’s field-glasses towards Richardson’s Skua. When he had seen it, they would restore Bleichroder’s monumental work to the shelf in the sea-library and go to bathe.

  Suddenly the thought of the three weeks more which she had promised to spend here became intolerable, if she had to stay here alone. The hotel was quite empty, save for herself and her maid, and why should not her beloved David come straight here for a week when his term was over? A telegram in the morning would settle that, and if Jack was home from France, he could easily run over for next Sunday. She would continue this rest-cure just as before; in fact, if somebody didn’t come down she would get bored with it tomorrow or the next day, and undo all the good that it had brought her. Sea-blite and skuas had helped her enormously, but their efficacy would begin to wane if now she could not shew them to somebody. She had shewn a piece of sea-blite to her maid, and told her how very local it was, but Miss Henderson had replied in an acid voice, “It looks to me quite like a common weed, my lady.…”

  Somewhere down the street a gramophone was jigging out a lively tune, and Dodo stole forth, making a pretext to herself that she wanted to observe the stars of which there was a great number tonight, but she knew that she longed to be near human movement again. A rhythmical thump accompanied the gramophone’s shrillness, and she wondered if there might happen to be a little dancing going on. She soon localised the sound; there was a room facing the street with curtains discreetly drawn, so as to conform with the lighting order, but the thump of feet went gaily on inside. She forgot about the stars; they belonged to that steadfast imperishable thing called Nature that could be appealed to when you were tired. A dance to the wheezings of a gramophone, with the handsome girls of the village and the boys back on leave from France had become far more enthralling than Bleichroder’s “Birds” lying open on her table in the inn, or the wheeling heavens above her. There she lingered, rather like the Ancient Mariner without a wedding-guest to whom she might soliloquise.

  * * * *

  Jack arrived on Saturday night, and next morning Dodo seemed to feel that what she called a “picnic-service” on the beach would be rather a treat instead of going to church. Accordingly they took out a Bible and Prayer Book, and Dodo, whose bent was not strictly ecclesiastical, read a quantity of chapters out of Ecclesiastes for a first lesson and for a second lesson the chapter out of Corinthians which the Church had mistakenly appointed for Quinquagesima. Then she read the twenty-third Psalm, and rapidly turned over the next leaves.

  “There’s at least one more,” she said, “and I can’t find it. It’s about the House of Defence and the satisfaction of a long life.”

  “Try the ninety-first,” said Jack.

  “Darling, how clever of you. I never had a head for numbers. After that we’ll talk; I’m beginning to want to talk dreadfully.”

  Dodo read her psalms quite beautifully, and lay back on the warm shingle.

  “Oh, Jack, I feel so clean and washed,” she said. “These weeks which I’ve had quite alone have been like a lovely cold bath on a hot day, or, if you like, a lovely hot bath after a cold day. I’m beginning to see what they have done for me, besides resting me. I think people and things are meant to cure each other.”

  “How?” asked Jack.

  “Well, take my case. I was absolutely Fed Up with people, human beings, when I came here. You see, ill human beings are concentrated human beings. All the material side of them is exaggerated; you only think of them as bones to be mended and flesh to be healed. My soul got so sick of them, and when I came here I wanted never to see anybody again. Nor did I want to think any more; that I suppose was mere fatigue. The whole caboodle—living, I mean—wasn’t worth the bother it gave one. Are you following, darling, or are you only thinking about those pebbles which you are piling so beautifully on the top of each other?”

  “Not on the top of each other,” remarked Jack. “Otherwise—”

  “Oh, don’t be grammatical. On the top of each other.”

  “I’m following,” said Jack.

  “Very well. So I took the lid off my brain, let the stuffy air escape, and let in the wind and the sea. Now don’t say ‘water on the brain,’ because it isn’t true. It just lay open, and then after a time the sea-gulls and—and I’ve forgotten the name of the blighted thing, and that reminds me that it’s sea-blite—the sea-gulls and the sea-blite got in; I think the gulls nested in the blite. So I got interested in them, but still I didn’t want to see a single soul, not even you and David. But I sent for enormous books on birds and botany, and you’ll find them in my bathing-hut with the bill: unpaid. Those jolly insolent things, going where they chose and growing where they chose healed me of people-sickness. They didn’t care, bless them, if a convoy of wounded came in, or if nobody loved me. One of them squawked, and the other pricked my large ankles.”

  Dodo sat up.

  “Yes, what made me want to see you and David again,” she said, “was a course of sea-blite and Richardson’s skuas. That’s what I mean by people and things healing each other. I think I shall go back to Winston tomorrow.”

  “If I thought you meant that,” said he, “I should tell you that you would do nothing of the sort.”r />
  Dodo looked wildly round.

  “Oh, don’t tell me that!” she said, “or out of pure self-willed vitality I should do it.”

  “Very well; you will go back to Winston tomorrow,” said Jack.

  “That’s sweet of you; now I shan’t. I think if Sister Ellen came and asked me if the seven-tailed bandages had arrived, I should gibber in her face. She hasn’t got a face, by the way, she has only two profiles. How funnily people are made! She’s got two profiles and no face, and David has got a duck of a face and no profile: just the end of his nose comes out of a round, plump cheek. I wish I was eleven years old again. I wish I was a cat with nine lives, or is it tails? Seven lives, isn’t it? Or is seven rather too many? How many lives do you want, Jack? Choose!”

  Jack threw down his beautiful tower of stones.

  “Oh, this one will do,” he said. “This and the next. If I must choose, I choose whatever happens. I might spoil everything by choosing.”

  “But if you could have your life over again, wouldn’t you choose that many things should be different?” she asked.

  “I don’t think so. If things had been different, they wouldn’t be as they are at this moment. You and me.”

  Dodo laid her hand on his.

  “My dear, are you content?” she asked.

  His eyes answered her.

  CHAPTER XI

  DODO’S NIGHT OUT

  It was within ten days of the completion of the fourth year of the war, and since the spring every morning had brought an extra turn of the screw, tightening a little more and again a little more the tension of the final and most desperate campaign of all. Late in March there had opened the last series of the furious German offensives, any one of which, it seemed, might have battered its way through to Paris or the Channel ports. Day by day territory captured by the enemy in their first irresistible invasion of French soil, and won back yard by yard in three and a half years of warfare, had been passing behind the German lines again. Once more the Germans advancing in that grim dance of death as in some appalling quadrille had taken Peronne, had taken Bailleul, had swarmed up over Kemmel Hill, had recaptured Soissons, had broken across the Marne. All that could be said was that neither materially nor psychically had the tension quite reached breaking-point. No irremediable breach in the lines had been made, and there was still enough spirit left in the nation to shout over the glorious adventure of Zeebrugge. Finally the counter-offensive of the Allies had begun, and today Jack brought to Winston, where the hospital was crammed to overflowing, the news that the Germans had been forced to retreat over the Marne again.

  Dodo had entirely refused to learn any sort of lesson from her break-down, and for the last two years had taken no further holiday beyond an occasional day off when David was at home from school, or a flying expedition to the hospital in London. But instead of being “served out” for her obstinacy, she had remained a glorious testimony of the health-giving properties of continuous over-work, and had shewn not the faintest signs of another collapse. Jack, the matron, the doctor, had all done their best to induce her to be more sensible without the slightest success, and today she was lucidly explaining to her husband how wrong they had all been and why.

  “The only thing that really can tire one is thinking,” she said, “and since I came back from Truscombe two years ago, I haven’t thought for two minutes. My mind has been like a ‘painted ship upon a painted ocean,’ and very badly painted too. That’s why I’m the life and soul of the party; I have become like one of the cheerful beasts that perish and I have thought as little about the war as about astronomy. It didn’t occur to any of you that it wasn’t the acting of silly charades or the ordering of aspirin or the giving out of bandages and books that made me collapse: it was letting my mind dwell on the reason for which I was doing it. But if you will only become a machine, as I have, and go on doing things without thinking why, they are as effortless as breathing. I shall never get out of the groove now, you know: I shall go on counting blankets and going to bed at eleven, and getting up at seven, till the end of my life. My dear, what did we all do before the war? The only effort I ever make is trying to remember that, and I never succeed. I think we talked, just talked. Precisely what I’m doing now, by the way. But I used to be an agreeable rattle, such clever chatter, God forgive me!”

  Jack began to laugh.

  “Go on; rattle!” he said.

  “I couldn’t. If you rattle you have to say anything that comes into your head, and try to think what it means afterwards. It was the old style of conversation which I invented when I was young. Nowadays I mean something first and say it afterwards. At least I do sometimes. When the war is over I shall become a Delphic oracle.”

  “Do! How will you set about it?” he asked.

  “I shall advertise in the Personal Column of the Times, for some retired oracle who will give me lessons. Besides, when once you get the reputation of being an oracle you have only got to say nothing at all, and everyone says how extraordinarily wise you are. Rich silences. Such nonsense!”

  “I thought you were going to stop in your groove and give out blankets and aspirin,” said Jack. “I was looking forward to a remarkable old age.”

  Dodo looked round her on the quiet familiar scene. She had strolled out across the park to meet her husband, and they had sent the motor on with his luggage and had sauntered home through the woods. At the edge of them, when they had come within sight of the house, stately and sunny below them, with the Red Cross flag drooping on its staff, they had sat down in the shade before facing the heat of the open ground now yellowed and parched by three months of strong heat. Even in the middle of summer the beeches were already tinged with gold; now and then a leaf dropped from its withered stem, and came spinning down through the windless air.

  “Oh, don’t let us be remarkable whatever we are,” said she. “Let us go gently Darby-and-Joaning it down the hill, Jack, and watch David skipping about. He got swished the other day at Eton—oh, I promised not to tell you!”

  “Go on, then,” said Jack.

  “Well, I’ve done it now. He made a book on the Derby, or whatever did duty for the Derby last month, and won thirty shillings, so he considered it well worth it. He bought me a delicious little mother-of-pearl box out of his winnings, which came to bits at once. Then, when he was caught, he had to return his winnings, so the poor darling was out of pocket!”

  “So you sent him a tip,” remarked Jack.

  “Naturally; that’s all by the way. But it really does worry me to wonder what we shall all do when the war is over. Personally I shall be extremely cross and bored; I know I shall, and yet it will be very odd of me. Considering that there is nothing that I have really wanted for the last four years, except the end of the war, it seems rather strange that I should miss it, the great brutal, bloody monster. I would give literally anything in the world except you and David and a few trifles of that sort, if it would stop this minute, and if it did I—I should yawn. And the thought of beginning other things again would make me feel lazy. But I daresay I shall be dead long before that. Gracious me, Jack, what was my life before the war? If you had to write my biography, you could only say that I rattled. I suppose that has been my profession, while yours has been to listen to me without ever really wanting to divorce me. But I never talked in my sleep; there’s that to be said for me. You do: last time you were here you woke me by calling out, ‘Sickle-hocked: take it away.’”

  “The further the better,” said Jack.

  Dodo wrinkled up her eyes as she looked out over the hot, bright noon.

  “All the same I had a very good mare once that was sickle-hocked,” she said. “I called her ‘Influenza,’ so that I shouldn’t get it and she had rather long eyes like Nadine. Oh, Jack, I quite forgot to tell you. I had a joyous telegram from Nadine to say that Hughie had crashed out in France, and had broken his arm. She was pleased.”

  “But why?” asked he.

  “Darling, you are dull.
He’s safely tucked up in hospital and with any luck he will be transferred to town. Isn’t it lovely for her? He won’t be ably to fly again for months.”

  Dodo gave an awful groan.

  “Oh, I’m thinking about the war,” she said. “What are we coming to? Here are Nadine and I simply delighted because Hughie’s broken his arm. That’s singular, you know, if you come to think of it. We hope it will take a long time to mend, so that he won’t be able to fly again yet.”

  “Perhaps he won’t be wanted to,” said Jack.

  “Why?”

  Jack lit a cigarette, and with the flaring match burned a withered beech-leaf that had fallen on the turf without replying.

  “I don’t want to say too much,” he began at length.

  “Darling, you’re not saying anything at all at present,” said she.

  “I know. Perhaps it’s best not to. Besides, you don’t want to hear about the war.”

  Dodo waved her hands wildly.

  “But get on,” she said. “You speak as if there’s something good to be heard. What do you mean? As if I wouldn’t give my—my shell-like ears to hear something good. My dear, the number of times I’ve chucked the paper away because the headlines only said, ‘New German offensive. Slight loss of ground near Parlez-vous.’ Go on, Jack, or I shall burst.”

  “Well, do you know anything about the position on the west front?” asked he.

  “Nothing whatever. I only know it’s a beastly front.”

  Jack took his stick and drew a long line with two bulges in it on the short turf.

  “That lower bulge is the Marne,” he said, “and the upper one is round about Amiens.”

  “Where one has coffee on the way to Paris,” said Dodo breathlessly.

  “Yes. They battered away at the Marne bulge, and have now had to go back. Then they battered alternately at the Amiens bulge, and it isn’t bulging any worse. There was no earthly reason why the Huns shouldn’t have walked straight through to Abbeville, which is there, last week. They meant to give us a knock-out in one place or the other. But—how shall I explain it?”