Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “No, Dodo,” she said, “you’re taking a wrong idea of it. I don’t believe you’re serious. Now I am. I want to do this Mass because I believe we can do it well, but I haven’t the least confidence in your reading prayers well, or caring at all about them. I am rather in doubt about the lessons, but I suppose we can have those.”

  It was distinctly news to Dodo that Edith was serious. For herself she had only wished to have a nice little amusement for Sunday morning, which, in Dodo’s experience, was rather a tiresome time if you stopped at home, but on the whole preferable there than at a country church. But Edith was really in earnest whatever she did, whether it was shooting, or music, or playing lawn-tennis. Frivolity, was the one charge she could not brook for a moment. Her amusements might, indeed, be frivolous, but she did them with all her heart. So the service was arranged to consist of a lesson, a Mass, and another lesson. The choice of lessons was left to Dodo. Accordingly, next morning Lord Chesterford and Mrs. Vivian drove off with Maud to eleven o’clock church, leaving the others still at breakfast. After that meal was over Dodo announced she was going to get the drawing-room ready.

  “We must move all the sofas out of the room, because they don’t look religious,” she said; “and I shall cover up the picture of Venus and Adonis. I have got the sweetest little praying-table upstairs, and a skull. Do you think we’d better have the skull, Edith? I think it makes one feel Sunday-like. I shall put the praying-table in the window, and shall read the lessons from there. Perhaps the skull might frighten old Truffler. I have found two dreadfully nice lessons. I quite forgot the Bible was such a good book. I think I shall go on with it. One of them is about the bones in Ezekiel, which were very dry — you know it — and the other is out of the Revelation. I think — —”

  “Dodo,” broke in Edith, “I don’t believe you’re a bit serious. You think it will be rather amusing, and that’s all. If you’re not serious I sha’n’t come.”

  “Dear Edith,” said Dodo demurely, “I’m perfectly serious. I want it all to be just as nice as it can be. Do you think I should take all the trouble with the praying-table and so on, if I wasn’t?”

  “You want to make it dramatic,” said Edith decidedly. “Now, I mean to be religious. You are rather too dramatic at times, you know, and this isn’t an occasion for it. You can be dramatic afterwards, if you like. Herr Truffen is awfully religious. I used to go with him to Roman Catholic services, and once to confession. I nearly became a Roman Catholic.”

  “Oh, I should like to be a nice little nun,” said Dodo; “those black and white dresses are awfully becoming, with a dear trotty rosary, you know, on one side, and a twisty cord round one’s waist, and an alms-box. But I must go and arrange the drawing-room. Tell me when your conductor comes. I hope he isn’t awfully German. Would he like some beer first? I think the piano is in tune. I suppose he’ll play, won’t he? Make him play a voluntary, when we come in. I’m afraid we can’t have a procession though. That’s a pity. Oh, I’m sorry, Edith. I’m really going to be quite serious. I think it will be charming.”

  Dodo completed her arrangements in good time, and forebore to make any more frivolous allusions to the service. She was sitting in the drawing-room, regarding her preparations with a satisfied air, when Herr Truffen was announced. Dodo greeted him in the hall as if it was the most natural thing in the world that he should be called upon to accompany Edith’s Mass.

  “We’re going to have service directly, if you’re ready. We want you to accompany Miss Staines’s Mass in G flat, but you mustn’t take the Kyrie too quick, if you don’t mind. Bertie Arbuthnot’s singing tenor, and he’s not very quick — are you, Bertie? Oh, by the way, this is Bertie. His other name is Mr. Arbuthnot.”

  Herr Truffen was most gratified by so charming an arrangement, and so great a musical treat. When Edith came down she greeted him effusively.

  “My dear Professor, this is delightful,” she said. “It’s quite like old times, isn’t it? We’re going to do the Mass in G flat. I wanted the one in A, only there are no French horns in the village — isn’t that benighted? And would you believe it, Lady Chesterford has positively got not one musical footman.”

  Herr Truffen was a large, spectacled German, who made everyone else look unnecessarily undersized.

  He laughed and fitted his fingers together with great nicety.

  “Are we to begin at once?” he asked. “The congregation — haf they arrived?”

  “Oh, there’s no congregation,” explained Dodo; “we are all performers. It is only a substitute for going to church. I hope you aren’t shocked; it was such a disgusting morning.”

  “Lady Chesterford is surely a congregation in herself,” remarked Herr Truffen, with elephantine elegance.

  “Lord Chesterford is coming by-and-by,” continued Dodo. “He has gone to church. I don’t know whether he will be in time for the Mass.”

  “Then you haf all the service in a little chapel here, no doubt,” said the Professor.

  “Oh, no,” said Dodo; “we’re going to have two lessons and the Mass, and there isn’t a chapel, it’s only in the drawing-room. I’m going to read the lessons.”

  Herr Truffen bowed with undiminished composure, and Dodo led the way back into the drawing-room.

  Miss Grantham and Jack were introduced, and Dodo took her place at the praying-table, and Herr Truffen at the piano. Dodo gave out the lesson, and read the chapter through..

  “Oh, it is nice!” she exclaimed. “Sha’n’t I go on to the next chapter? No, I think I won’t.”

  “It would spoil the delightful impression of the very dry bones?” interrogated Herr Truffen from the piano. “Ah, that is splendid; but you should hear it in the Fatherland tongue.”

  “Now, Dodo, come here,” said Edith. “We must go on with this. You can discuss it afterwards. On the third beat. Will you give us the time, Professor?”

  The Mass had scarcely begun when Lord Chesterford came in, followed by Mrs. Vivian and Maud. The Professor, who evidently did not quite understand that he was merely a sort of organist, got up and shook hands all round with laboured cordiality. Edith grew impatient.

  “Come,” she said, “you mustn’t do that. Remember you are practically in church, Professor. Please begin again.”

  “Ah, I forgot for the moment,” remarked the Professor; “this beautiful room made me not remember. Come — one, two. We must begin better than that. Now, please.”

  This time the start was made in real earnest. Edith’s magnificent voice, and the Professor’s playing, would alone have been sufficient to make it effective. The four performers knew their parts well, and when it was finished, there followed that silence which is so much more appreciative than applause. Then Herr Truffen turned to Edith.

  “Ah, how you have improved,” he said. “Who taught you this? It is beyond me. Perhaps you prayed and fasted, and then it came to you.”

  As Edith had chiefly written the Mass while smoking cigarettes after a hearty breakfast she merely said, —

  “How does anything come to anyone? It is part of oneself, as much as one’s arms and legs. But the service is not over yet.”

  Dodo meanwhile had gone back to the praying-table.

  “I can’t find it,” she said, in a distracted whisper. “It’s a chapter in the Revelation about a grey horse and a white horse.”

  “Dodo,” said Edith, in an awful voice.

  “Yes, dear,” said Dodo. “Ah, here it is.”

  Dodo read the chapter with infinite feeling in her beautiful clear, full voice.

  Chesterford was charmed. He had not seen this side of Dodo before. After she had finished, he came and sat by her side, while the others got up and began talking among themselves.

  “Dodo,” he said, “I never knew you cared about these things. What an unsympathetic brute I must seem to you. I never talked to you about such things, because I thought you did not care. Will you forgive me?”

  “I don’t think you need forgiveness mu
ch,” said

  Dodo softly. “If you only knew — —” She stopped and finished her sentence by a smile.

  “Dodo,” he said again, “I’ve often wanted to suggest something to you, but I didn’t quite like to. Why don’t we have family prayers here? I might build a little chapel.”

  Dodo felt a sudden inclination to laugh. Her æsthetic pleasure in the chapter of Revelation was gone. She felt annoyed and amused at this simple-minded man, who thought her so perfect, and ascribed such fatiguingly high interpretations to all her actions. He really was a little stupid and tiresome. He had broken up all her little pleasant thoughts.

  “Oh, family prayers always strike me as rather ridiculous,” she said, with a half yawn. “A row of gaping servants is not conducive to the emotions.”

  She got up and joined the other groups, and then suddenly became aware that, for the first time, she had failed in her part. Jack was watching her, and saw what had happened. Chesterford had remained, seated at the window, pulling his long, brown moustache, with a very perceptible shade of annoyance on his face. Dodo felt a sudden impulse of anger with herself at her stupidity. She went back to Chesterford.

  “Dear old boy,” she said, “I don’t know why I said that. I was thinking of something else. I don’t know that I like family prayers very much. We used to have them at home, when my father was with us, and it really was a trial to hear him read the Litany. I suppose it is that which has made me rather tired of them. Come and talk to the Professor.”

  Then she went across to Jack.

  “Jack,” she said, in a low voice, “don’t look as if you thought you were right.”

  CHAPTER SIX.

  The same afternoon Chesterford took Mrs. Vivian off to see “almshouses and drunkards,” as Dodo expressed it to Jack. She also told him that Edith and her Herr were playing a sort of chopsticks together in the drawing-room. Maud had, as usual, effaced herself, and Bertie was consuming an alarming number of cigarettes in the smoking-room, and pretending to write letters.

  It was natural, therefore, that when Jack strolled into the hall, to see what was going on, he should find Dodo there with her toes on the fender of the great fireplace, having banished the collie to find other quarters for himself. Dodo was making an effort to read, but she was not being very successful, and hailed Jack’s entrance with evident pleasure.

  “Come along,” she said; “I sent the dog off, but I can find room for you. Sit here, Jack.”

  She moved her chair a little aside, and let him pass.

  “I can’t think why a merciful providence sends us a day like this,” she said. “I want to know whom it benefits to have a thick snowfall. Listen at that, too,” she added, as a great gust of wind swept round the corner of the house, and made a deep, roaring sound up in the heart of the chimney.

  “It makes it all the more creditable in Chesterford and Mrs. Vivian to go to see the drunkards,” remarked Jack.

  “Oh, but that’s no credit,” said Dodo. “They like doing it, it gives them real pleasure. I don’t see why that should be any better, morally speaking, than sitting here and talking. They are made that way, you and I are made this. We weren’t consulted, and we both follow our inclinations. Besides, they will have their reward, for they will have immense appetites at tea.”

  “And will give us something to talk about now,” remarked Jack lazily.

  “Don’t you like Grantie, Jack?” asked Dodo presently. “She and Ledgers are talking about life and being in my room. I went to get a book from here, and the fire was so nice that I stopped.”

  “I wish Ledgers wouldn’t treat her like a menagerie, and put her through her tricks,” said Jack. “I think she is very attractive, but she belongs too much to a class.”

  “What class?” demanded Dodo.

  “Oh, the class that prides itself on not being of any class — the all things to all men class.”

  “Oh, I belong to that,” said Dodo.

  “No, you don’t,” said he. “You are all things to some men, I grant, but not to all.”

  “Oh, Jack, that’s a bad joke,” said Dodo, reprovingly.

  “It’s quite serious all the same,” said he.

  “I’m all things to the only man to whom it matters that I should be,” said Dodo complacently.

  Jack felt rather disgusted.

  “I wish you would not state things in that cold-blooded way,” he said. “Your very frankness to me about it shows you know that it is an effort.”

  “Yes,” she said, “it is an effort sometimes, but I don’t think I want to talk about it. You take things too ponderously. Don’t be ponderous; it doesn’t suit you in the least. Besides, there is nothing to be ponderous about.”

  Dodo turned in her chair and looked Jack full in the face. Her face had a kind of triumph about it.

  “I want to say something more,” said Jack.

  “Well, I’m magnanimous to-day,” said Dodo. “Go on.”

  “All you are doing,” said he gravely, “is to keep up the original illusion he had about you. It is not any good keeping up an illusion, and thinking you’re doing your whole duty.”

  “Jack, that’s enough,” said Dodo, with a certain finality in her tone. “If you go on, you may make me distrust myself. I do not mean that as a compliment to your powers, but as a confession to a stupid superstitious weakness in myself. I am afraid of omens.”

  They sat silent a minute or two, until a door at the far end of the hall opened and Miss Grantham came through, with her showman in tow.

  “Lord Ledgers and I were boring each other so,” said Miss Grantham, “that we came to bore someone else. When you are boring people you may as well do it wholesale. What a pity it is that one hasn’t got a tail like a dog, that cannot help wagging if the owner is pleased, and which stops wagging when he isn’t.”

  “I shall certainly buy a tail,” said Dodo, with grave consideration. “One or two, in case the first gets out of order. Must you wag it whenever you are pleased, Grantie? Is it to be an honest tail? Suppose you only think you are pleased, when you are not really, what does the tail do then? Oh, it’s very complicated.”

  “The tail shares the same illusions as the dog,” said Miss Grantham.

  “Jack and I were talking about illusions,” said Dodo.

  “I’m going to get a quantity of illusions,” said Miss Grantham. “In any case, what did you find to say about them?”

  “Jack said it was a bad thing to keep an illusion up,” said Dodo, broadly.

  Miss Grantham was staring pensively at the fire.

  “I saw two boys sitting on a gate yesterday,” she said, “and they pushed each other off, and each time they both roared with laughter. I’m sure it was an illusion that they were amused. I would go and sit on a gate with pleasure and get my maid to push me off, if I thought it would amuse either of us. Mr. Broxton, would you like me to push you off a gate?”

  “Oh, I’m certain that the people with many illusions are the happiest,” said Dodo. “Consequently, I wouldn’t willingly destroy any illusion anyone held about anything.”

  “What a lot of anys,” said Miss Grantham.

  Lord Ledgers was leaning back in his chair with a sense of pleased proprietorship. It really was a very intelligent animal. Jack almost expected him to take a small whip from his pocket and crack it at her. But his next remark, Jack felt, was a good substitute; at any rate, he demanded another performance.

  “What about delusions, Miss Grantham?” he said.

  “Oh, delusions are chiefly unpleasant illusions,” she said. “Madmen have delusions that somebody wants to kill them, or they want to kill somebody, or that King Charles’s head isn’t really cut off, which would be very unsettling now.”

  “Grantie, I believe you’re talking sheer, arrant nonsense,” said Dodo. “It’s all your fault, Tommy. When one is asked a question, one has to answer it somehow or other in self-defence. If you asked me about the habits of giraffes I should say something. Edith is
the only really honest person I know. She would tell you she hadn’t any idea what a giraffe was, so would Chesterford, and you would find him looking up giraffes in the Encyclopædia afterwards.”

  Lord Ledgers laughed a low, unpleasant laugh.

  “A very palpable hit,” he murmured.

  The remark was inaudible to all but Jack. He felt quite unreasonably angry with him, and got up from his chair.

  Dodo saw something had happened, and looked at him inquiringly. Jack did not meet her eye, but whistled to the collie, who flopped down at his feet.

  “I really don’t know where I should begin if I was going to turn honest,” said Miss Grantham. “I don’t think I like honest people. They are like little cottages, which children draw, with a door in the middle, and a window at each side, and a chimney in the roof with smoke coming out. Long before you know them well, you are perfectly certain of all that you will find inside them. They haven’t got any little surprises, or dark passages, or queer little cupboards under the stairs.”

  “Do you know the plant called honesty, Grantie?” asked Dodo. “It’s a very bright purple, and you can see it a long way off, and it isn’t at all nicer when you get close than it looks from a distance.”

  “Oh, if you speak of someone as an honest man,” said Miss Grantham, “it implies that he’s nothing particular besides. I don’t mind a little mild honesty, but it should be kept in the background.”

  “I’ve got a large piece of honesty somewhere about me,” said Jack. “I can’t always lay my hand on it, but every now and then I feel it like a great lump inside me.”

  “Yes,” said Dodo, “I believe you are fundamentally honest, Jack. I’ve always thought that.”

  “Does that mean that he is not honest in ordinary matters?” asked Miss Grantham. “I’ve noticed that people who are fundamentally truthful, seldom tell the truth.”

  “In a way it does,” said Dodo. “But I’m sure Jack would be honest in any case where it really mattered.”