Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Oh, I sha’n’t steal your spoons, you know,” said Miss Grantham.

  “That’s only because you don’t really want them,” remarked Dodo. “I can conceive you stealing anything you wanted.”

  “Trample on me,” said Miss Grantham serenely. “Tell us what I should steal.”

  “Oh, you’d steal lots of things,” said Dodo. “You’d steal anyone’s self-respect if you could manage to, and you couldn’t get what you wanted any other way. Oh, yes, you’d steal anything important. Jack wouldn’t. He’d stop just short of that; he would never be really disloyal. He’d finger things to any extent, but I am pretty sure that he would drop them at the last minute.”

  “How dreadfully unpleasant I am really,” said Miss Grantham meditatively. “A kind of Eugene Aram.”

  Jack was acutely uncomfortable, but he had the satisfaction of believing that what Dodo said about him was true. He had come to the same conclusion himself two nights ago. He believed that he would stop short of any act of disloyalty, but he did not care about hearing Dodo give him so gratuitous a testimonial before Miss Grantham and the gentleman whom he mentally referred to as “that ass of a showman.”

  The front door opened, and a blast of cold wind came blustering round into the inner hall where they were sitting, making the thick tapestry portière belly and fill like a ship’s sail, when the wind first catches it. The collie pricked his ears, and thumped his tail on the floor with vague welcome.

  Mrs. Vivian entered, followed by Lord Chesterford. He looked absurdly healthy and happy.

  “It’s a perfectly beastly day,” he said cheerfully, advancing to the fireplace. “Mrs. Vivian, let Dodo send you some tea up to your room. You must be wet through. Surely it is tea-time, Dodo.”

  “I told you so,” said Dodo to Jack.

  “Has Jack been saying it isn’t tea-time?” asked Chesterford.

  “No,” said Dodo. “I only said that your virtue in going to see almshouses would find its immediate reward in an appetite for tea.”

  Mrs. Vivian laughed.

  “You mustn’t reduce our virtues to the lowest terms, as if we were two vulgar fractions.”

  “Do you suppose a vulgar fraction knows how vulgar it is?” asked Miss Grantham.

  “Vulgar without being funny,” said. Jack, with the air of helping her out of a difficulty.

  “I never saw anything funny in vulgar fractions,” remarked Lord Ledgers. “Chesterford and I used to look up the answers at the end of the book, and try to make them correspond with the questions.”

  Dodo groaned.

  “Oh, Chesterford, don’t tell me you’re not honest either.”

  “What do you think about honesty, Mrs. Vivian?” asked Miss Grantham.

  Mrs. Vivian considered.

  “Honesty is much maligned by being called the best policy,” she said; “it’ isn’t purely commercial. Honesty is rather fine sometimes.”

  “Oh, I’m sure Mrs. Vivian’s honest,” murmured Miss Grantham. “She thinks before, she tells you her opinion. I always give my opinion first, and think about it afterwards.”

  “I’ve been wanting to stick up for honesty all the afternoon,” said Dodo to Mrs. Vivian, “only I haven’t dared. Everyone has been saying that it is dull and obtrusive, and like labourers’ cottages. I believe we are all a little honest, really. No one has got any right to call it the best policy. It makes you feel as if you were either a kind of life assurance, or else a thief.”

  Chesterford looked a trifle puzzled.

  Dodo turned to him.

  “Poor old man,” she said, “did they call him names? Never mind. We’ll go and be labelled ‘Best policy. No others need apply.’”

  She got up from her chair, and pulled Chesterford’s moustache.

  “You look so abominably healthy, Chesterford,” she said. “How’s Charlie getting on? Tell him if he beats his wife anymore, I shall; beat you. You wouldn’t like that, you know. Will you ring for tea, dear? Mrs. Vivian, I command you to go to your room. I had your fire lit, and I’ll send tea up. You’re a dripping sop.”

  Mrs. Vivian pleaded guilty, and vanished. Sounds of music still came from the drawing-room. “It’s no use telling Edith to come to tea,” remarked Dodo. “She said the other day that if anyone ever proposed to her, whom she cared to marry, she will feel it only fair to tell him that the utmost she can offer him, is to play second fiddle to her music.”

  Edith’s music was strongly exciting, and in the pause that followed, Dodo went to the door and opened it softly, and a great tangle of melody poured out and filled the hall. She was playing the last few pages of the overture to an opera that she had nearly completed. The music was gathering itself up for the finale. Note after note was caught up, as it were, to join an army of triumphant melody overhead, which grew fuller and more complete every moment, and seemed to hover, waiting for some fulfilment. Ah, that was it. Suddenly from below crashed out a great kingly motif, strong with the strength of a man who is pure and true, rising higher and higher, till it joined the triumph overhead, and moved away, strong to the end.

  There was a dead silence; Dodo was standing by the door, with her lips slightly parted, feeling that there was something in this world better and bigger, perhaps, than her own little hair-splittings and small emotions. With this in her mind, she looked across to where Chesterford was standing. The movement was purely instinctive, and she could neither have accounted for it, nor was she conscious of it, but in her eyes there was the suggestion of unshed tears, and a look of questioning shame. Though a few bars of music cannot change the nature of the weakest of us, and Dodo was far from weak, she was intensely impressionable, and that moment had for her the germ of a possibility which might — who could say it could not? — have taken root in her and borne fruit. The parable of the mustard seed is as-old and as true as time. But Chesterford was not musical; he had taken a magazine from the table, and was reading about grouse disease.

  CHAPTER SEVEN.

  Dodo was sitting in a remarkably easy-chair in her own particular room at the house in Eaton Square. As might have been expected, her room was somewhat unlike other rooms. It had a pale orange-coloured paper, with a dado of rather more intense shade of the same colour, an orange-coloured carpet and orange-coloured curtains. Dodo had no reason to be afraid of orange colour just yet. It was a room well calculated to make complete idleness most easy. The tables were covered with a mass of albums, vases of flowers, and a quantity of entirely useless knick-knacks. The walls were hung with several rather clever sketches, French prints and caricatures of Dodo’s friends. A small bookcase displayed a quantity of flaring novels and a large tune hymn-book, and in a conspicuous corner was Dodo’s praying-table, on which the skull regarded its surroundings with a mirthless and possibly contemptuous grin. The mantelpiece was entirely covered with photographs, all signed by their prototypes. These had found their quarters gradually becoming too small for them, and had climbed half way up the two-sides of a Louis Quinze mirror, that formed a sort of overmantel. The photographs were an interesting study, and included representatives from a very wide range of classes. No one ever accused Dodo of being exclusive. In the corner of the room were a heap of old cotillion toys, several hunting-whips, and a small black image of the Virgin, which Dodo had picked up abroad. Above her head a fox’s mask grinned defiantly at another fox’s brush opposite. On the writing table there was an inkstand made of the hoof of Dodo’s favourite hunter, which had joined the majority shortly after Christmas, and the “Dodo” symphony, which had just come out with great éclat at the Albert Hall, leant against the wall. A banjo case and a pair of castanets, with a dainty silver monogram on them, perhaps inspired Dodo when she sat down to her writing-table.

  Dodo’s hands were folded on her lap, and she was lazily regarding a photograph of herself which stood oh the mantelpiece. Though the afternoon was of a warm day in the end of May, there was a small fire on the hearth which crackled pleasantly. Dodo got up and looked
at the photograph more closely. “I certainly look older,” she thought to herself, “and yet that was only taken a year ago. I don’t feel a bit older, at least I sha’n’t when I get quite strong again. I wish Jack could have been able to come this afternoon. I am rather tired of seeing nobody except Chesterford and the baby. However, Mrs. Vivian will be here soon.”

  Dodo had made great friends with Mrs. Vivian during the last months. Her sister and brother-in-law had been obliged to leave England for a month at Easter, and Dodo had insisted that Mrs. Vivian should spend it with them, and to-day was the first day that the doctor had let her come down, and she had written to Jack and Mrs. Vivian to come and have tea with her.

  A tap was heard at the door, and the nurse entered, bearing the three weeks’ old baby. Dodo was a little disappointed; she had seen a good deal of the baby, and she particularly wanted Mrs. Vivian. She stood with her hands behind her back, without offering to take it. The baby regarded her with large wide eyes, and crowed at the sight of the fire. Really it was rather attractive, after all.

  “Well, Lord Harchester,” remarked Dodo, “how is your lordship to-day? Did it ever enter your very pink head that you were a most important personage? Really you have very little sense of your dignity. Oh, you are rather, nice. Come here, baby.”

  She held out her arms to take it, but his lordship apparently did not approve of this change. He opened his mouth in preparation for a decent protest.

  “Ah, do you know, I don’t like you when you howl,” said Dodo; “you might be an Irish member instead of a piece of landed interest. Oh, do stop. Take him please, nurse; I’ve got a headache, and I don’t like that noise. There, you unfilial scoundrel, you’re quiet enough now.”

  Dodo nodded at the baby with the air of a slight acquaintance.

  “I wonder if you’ll be like your father,” she said; “you’ve got his big blue eyes. I rather wish your eyes were dark. Do a baby’s eyes change when he gets older? Ah, here’s your godmother. I am so glad to see you,” she went on to Mrs. Vivian. “You see his lordship has come down to say how do you do.”

  “Dear Dodo,” said Mrs. Vivian, “you are looking wonderfully better. Why don’t they let you go out this lovely day?”

  “Oh, I’ve got a cold,” said Dodo, “at least I’m told so. There — good-bye, my lord. You’d better take him upstairs again, nurse. I am so delighted to see you,” she continued; pouring out tea. “I’ve been rather dull all day. Don’t you know how, when you particularly want to see people; they never come. Edith looked in this morning, but she did nothing but whistle and drop things. I asked Jack to come, but he couldn’t.”

  “Ah,” said Mrs. Vivian softly, “he has come back, has he?”

  “Yes,” said Dodo, “and I wanted to see him. Did you ever hear of anything so ridiculous as his going off in that way. You know he left England directly after his visit to us in January, and he’s only just back. It’s too absurd for Jack to pretend he was ill. He swore his doctor had told him to leave England for three months. Of course that’s nonsense. It was very stupid of him.”

  Mrs. Vivian sipped her tea reflectively without answering.

  “Chesterford is perfectly silly about the baby,” Dodo went on. “He’s always afraid it’s going to be ill, and he goes up on tiptoe to the nursery, to see if it’s all right. Last night he woke me up about half-past ten, to say that he heard it cough several times, and did I think it was the whooping cough.”

  Mrs. Vivian did not seem to be listening.

  “I heard from Mr. Broxton once,” she said; “he wrote from Moscow, and asked how you were, and three weeks ago he telegraphed, when he heard of the birth of the baby.”

  “I don’t know what’s the matter with Jack,” said Dodo, rather petulantly. “He wrote to me once, the silliest letter you ever saw, describing the Kremlin, and Trèves Cathedral, and the falls of the Rhine. The sort of letter one writes to one’s great-aunt. Now I’m not Jack’s great-aunt at all.”

  There was another tap at the door.

  “That’s Chesterford,” remarked Dodo, “he always raps now, and if I don’t answer he thinks I’m asleep, and then he goes away. You just see.”

  The tap came again, and after a moment’s interval the door opened.

  “Jack!” exclaimed Dodo.

  She got up from her chair and went quickly towards him. Jack was pale, and his breath came rather short, as if he had been running.

  “Why, Dodo,” he cried, “I thought I couldn’t come, and then I thought I could, so I did.”

  He broke off rather lamely, and greeted Mrs. Vivian.

  “Dear old Jack,” said Dodo, “it does me good to see you. Your face is so nice and familiar, and I’ve wanted you awfully. Jack, what do you mean by writing me such a stupid letter? especially when I’d written to you so nicely. Really, I’m not your grand-mother yet, though I am a mother. Have you seen the baby? It isn’t particularly interesting at present, though of course it’s rather nice to think that that wretched little morsel of flesh and bones is going to be one of our landed proprietors. He’ll be much more important than you will ever be, Jack. Aren’t you jealous?”

  Dodo was conscious of quite a fresh tide of interest in her life. Her intellectual faculties, she felt, had been neglected. She could not conceive why, because she had a husband and baby, she should be supposed not to care for other interests as well. Chesterford was an excellent husband, with a magnificent heart; but Dodo had told herself so often that he was not very clever, that she had ceased trying to take an intellectual pleasure in his society, and the baby could not be called intellectual by the fondest parent at present. There were a quantity of women who were content to pore on their baby’s face for hour after hour, with no further occupation than saying “Didums” occasionally. Dodo had given what she considered a fair trial to this treatment, and she found it bored her to say “Didums” for an indefinite period, and she did not believe it amused the baby. She had a certain pride in having given birth to the son and heir of one of the largest English properties, and she was extremely glad to have done so, and felt a certain pleased sort of proprietorship in the little pink morsel, but she certainly had experienced none of the absorbing pleasures of maternity. She had got used to not being in love with her husband, and she accepted as part of this same deficiency the absence of absorbing pleasure in the baby. Not that she considered it a deficiency, it was merely another type turned out of Nature’s workshop. Dodo laid all the blame on Nature. She shrugged her shoulders and said: “You made me so without consulting me. It isn’t my fault!” But Dodo was aware that Nature had given her a brain, and she found a very decided pleasure in the company of clever people. Perhaps it was the greatest pleasure of her life to be admired and amused by clever people. Of course Chesterford always admired her, but he was in love with her, and he was not clever. Dodo had felt some difficulty before her marriage in dealing with this perplexing unknown quantity, and she had to confess it puzzled her still. The result was, that when it occurred, she had to admit her inability to tackle it, and as soon as possible to turn to another page in this algebra of life.

  But she still felt that her marriage had been a great success. Chesterford had entirely fulfilled what she expected of him: he was immensely rich, he let her do as she liked, he adored her. Dodo quite felt that it was better that he should adore her. As long as that lasted, he would be blind to any fault of hers, and she acknowledged that, to a man of Chesterford’s character, she must seem far from faultless, if he contemplated her calmly. But he was quite unable to contemplate her calmly. For him she walked in a golden cloud that dazzled and entranced him. Dodo was duly grateful to the golden cloud.

  But she felt that the element which Jack, and Mrs. Vivian, and other friends of hers brought, had been conspicuously absent, and she welcomed its return with eagerness.

  “You know we haven’t been leading a very intellectual life lately,” Dodo continued. “Chesterford is divinely kind to me, but he is careful not
to excite me. So he talks chiefly about the baby, and how he lost his umbrella at the club; it is very soothing, but I have got past that now. I want stimulating. Sometimes I go to sleep, and then he sits as still as a mouse till I wake again. Pity me, Jack, I have had a dull fortnight; and that is worse than anything else. I really never remember being bored before!”

  Dodo let her arms drop beside her with a little hopeless gesture.

  “I know one’s got no business to be bored, and it’s one’s own fault as a rule if one is,” she went on. “For instance, that woman in the moated Grange ought to have swept away the blue fly that buzzed in the pane, and set a mouse-trap for the mouse that shrieked, and got the carpenter to repair the mouldering wainscot, and written to the Psychical Research, how she had heard her own sad name in corners cried, and it couldn’t have been the cat, or she would have caught the shrieking mouse. Oh, there were a hundred things she might have done, before she sat down and said, ‘He cometh not,’ But I have had a period of enforced idleness. If I had set a trap for the mouse, the doctor would have told me not to exert myself so much.’ I used to play Halma with Chesterford, only I always beat him; and then nobody ever cried my name in sad corners, that I remember; it would have been quite interesting.”

  Jack laughed.

  “What a miserable story, Dodo,” he said. “I always said — you had none of the domestic virtues, and I am right, it seems.”

  “Oh, it isn’t that,” said Dodo, “but I happen to have a brain as well, and if I don’t use it, it decays, and when it decays, it breeds maggots. I’ve got a big maggot in my head now, and that is, that the ineffable joys of maternity are much exaggerated. Don’t look shocked, Geraldine. I know it’s a maggot, and simply means that I haven’t personally experienced them, but the maggot says, ‘You are a woman, and if you don’t experience them, either they don’t exist, or you are abnormal.’ Well, the maggot lies, I know it, I believe they do exist, and I am sure I am not abnormal. Ah, this is unprofitable, isn’t it. You two have come to drive the maggot out.”