Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Chesterford, meanwhile, was standing in the hall, feeling helpless and bewildered. This sort of thing was always happening now, do what he could; and the intervals were not much better. Dodo treated him with a passive tolerance that was very hard to bear. Even her frank determination to keep on good terms with her husband had undergone considerable modification. She was silent and indifferent. Now and then when he came into her room he heard, as he passed down the passage, the sound of her piano or her voice, but when he entered Dodo would break off and ask him what he wanted. He half wished that he did not love her, but he found himself sickening and longing for Dodo to behave to him as she used. It would have been something to know that his presence was not positively distasteful to her. Dodo no longer “kept it up,” as Jack said. She did not pat his hand, or call him a silly old dear, or pull his moustache, as once she did. He had once taken those little things as a sign of her love. He had found in them the pleasure that Dodo’s smallest action always had for him; but now even they, the husk and shell of what had never existed, had gone from him, and he was left with that which was at once his greatest sorrow and his greatest joy, his own love for Dodo. And Dodo — God help him! he had learned it well enough now — Dodo did not love him, and never had loved him. He wondered what the end would be — whether his love, too, would die. In that case he foresaw that they would very likely go on living together as fifty other people lived — being polite to each other, and gracefully tolerant of each other’s presence; that nobody would know, and the world would say, “What a model and excellent couple.”

  So he stood there, biting the ends of his long moustache. Then he said to himself, “I was beastly to her. What the devil made me say all those things.”

  He went back to the dining-room, and found Dodo as he had left her.

  “Dodo, dear,” he said, “forgive me for being so cross. I said a lot of abominable things.”

  Dodo was rather amused. She knew this would happen.

  “Oh, yes,” she said; “it doesn’t signify. But are you determined about the coal mine?”

  Chesterford was disappointed and chilled. He turned on his heel and went out again. Dodo raised her eyebrows, shrugged her shoulders imperceptibly, and returned to her letter.

  If you had asked Dodo when this state of things began she could probably not have told you. She would have said, “Oh, it came on by degrees. It began by my being bored with him, and culminated when I no longer concealed it.” But Chesterford, to whom daily intercourse had become an awful struggle between his passionate love for Dodo and his bitter disappointment at what he would certainly have partly attributed to his own stupidity and inadequacy, could have named the day and hour when he first realised how far he was apart from his wife. It was when he returned by the earlier train and met Dodo in the hall going to her dance; that moment had thrown a dangerous clear light over the previous month. He argued to himself, with fatal correctness, that Dodo could not have stopped caring for him in a moment, and he was driven to the inevitable conclusion that she had been drifting away from him for a long time before that; indeed, had she ever been near him? But he was deeply grateful to those months when he had deceived himself, or she had deceived him, into believing that she cared for him. He knew well that they had been the happiest in his life, and though the subsequent disappointment was bitter, it had not embittered him. His love for Dodo had a sacredness for him that nothing could remove; it was something separate from the rest of his life, that had stooped from heaven and entered into it, and lo! it was glorified. That memory was his for ever, nothing could rob him of that.

  In August Dodo had left him. They had settled a series of visits in Scotland, after a fortnight at their own house, but after that Dodo had made arrangements apart from him. She had to go and see her mother, she had to go here and there, and half way through September, when Chesterford had returned to Harchester expecting her the same night, he found a postcard from her, saying she had to spend three days with someone else, and the three days lengthened into a week, and it was only yesterday that Dodo had come and people were arriving that very evening. There was only one conclusion to be drawn from all this, and not even he could help drawing it.

  Jack and Mr. Spencer and Maud, now Mrs. Spencer, arrived that evening. Maud had started a sort of small store of work, and the worsted and crochet went on with feverish rapidity. It had become a habit with her before her marriage, and the undeveloped possibilities, that no doubt lurked within it, had blossomed under her husband’s care. For there was a demand beyond the limits of supply for her woollen shawls and comforters. Mr. Spencer’s parish was already speckled with testimonies to his wife’s handiwork, and Maud’s dream of being some day useful to somebody was finding a glorious fulfilment.

  Dodo, I am sorry to say, found her sister more unsatisfactory than ever. Maud had a sort of confused idea that it helped the poor if she dressed untidily, and this was a ministry that came without effort. Dodo took her in hand as soon as she arrived, and made her presentable. “Because you are a clergy-man’s wife, there is no reason that you shouldn’t wear a tucker or something round your neck,” said she. “Your sister is a marchioness, and when you stay with her you must behave as if you were an honourable. There will be time to sit in the gutter when you get back to Gloucester.”

  Dodo also did her duty by Mr. Spencer. She called him Algernon in the friendliest way, and gave him several lessons at billiards. This done, she turned to Jack.

  The three had been there several days, and Dodo was getting impatient. Jack and Chesterford went out shooting, and she was left to entertain the other two. Mr. Spencer’s reluctance to shoot was attributable not so much to his aversion to killing live animals, as his inability to slay. But when Dodo urged on him that he would soon learn, he claimed the higher motive. She was rather silent, for she was thinking about something important.

  Dodo was surprised at the eagerness with which she looked forward to Jack’s coming. Somehow, in a dim kind of way, she regarded him as the solution of her difficulties. She felt pretty certain Jack would do as he was asked, and she had made up her mind that when Jack went away she would go with him to see friends at other houses to which he was going. And Chesterford? Dodo’s scheme did not seem to take in Chesterford. She had painted a charming little picture in her own mind as to where she should go, and whom she would see, but she certainly was aware that Chesterford did not seem to come in. It would spoil the composition, she thought, to introduce another figure. That would be a respite, anyhow. But after that, what then? Dodo had found it bad enough coming back this September, and she could not contemplate renewing this tête-à-tête that went on for months. And by degrees another picture took its place — a dim one, for the details were not worked out — but in that picture there were only two figures. The days went on and Dodo could bear it no longer.

  One evening she went into the smoking-room after tea. Chesterford was writing letters, and Maud and her husband were sitting in the drawing-room. It may be presumed that Maud was doing crochet. Jack looked up with a smile as Dodo entered.

  “Hurrah,” he said, “I haven’t had a word with you since we came. Come and talk, Dodo.”

  But Dodo did not smile.

  “How have you been getting on?” continued Jack, looking at the fire. “You see I haven’t lost my interest in you.”

  “Jack,” said Dodo solemnly, “you are right, and I was wrong. And I can’t bear it any longer.”

  Jack did not need explanations.

  “Ah!” — then after a moment, “poor Chesterford!”

  “I don’t see why ‘poor Chesterford,’” said Dodo, “any more than ‘poor me.’ He was quite satisfied, anyhow, for some months, for a year in fact, more or less, and I was never satisfied at all. I haven’t got a particle of pride left in me, or else I shouldn’t be telling you. I can’t bear it. If you only knew what I have been through you would pity me as well. It has been a continual effort with me; surely that is something to pity. And
one day I broke down; I forget when, it is immaterial. Oh, why couldn’t I love him! I thought I was going to, and it was all a wretched mistake.”

  Dodo sat with her hands clasped before her, with something like tears in her eyes.

  “I am not all selfish,” she went on; “I am sorry for him, too, but I am so annoyed with him that I lose my sorrow whenever I see him. Why couldn’t he have accepted the position sooner? We might have been excellent friends then, but now that is impossible. I have got past that. I cannot even be good friends with him. Oh, it isn’t my fault; you know I tried to behave well.”

  Jack felt intensely uncomfortable.

  “I can’t help you, Dodo,” he said. “It is useless for me to say I am sincerely sorry. That is no word between you and me.”

  Dodo, for once in her life, seemed to have something to say, and not be able to say it.

  At last it came out with an effort.

  “Jack, do you still love me?”

  Dodo did not look at him, but kept her eyes on the fire.

  Jack did not pause to think.

  “Before God, Dodo,”, he said, “I believe I love you more than anything in the world.”

  “Will you do what I ask you?”

  This time he did pause. He got up and stood before the fire. Still Dodo did not look at him.

  “Ah, Dodo,” he said, “what are you going to ask? There are some things I cannot do.”

  “It seems to me this love you talk of is a very weak thing,” said Dodo. “It always fails, or is in danger of failing, at the critical point. I believe I could do anything for the man I loved. I did not think so once. But I was wrong, as I have been in my marriage.”

  Dodo paused; but Jack said nothing; it seemed to him as if Dodo had not quite finished.

  “Yes,” she said; then paused again. “Yes, you are he.”

  There was a dead silence. For one moment time seemed to Jack to have stopped, and he could have believed that that moment lasted for years — for ever.

  “Oh, my God,” he murmured, “at last.”

  He was conscious of Dodo sitting there, with her eyes raised to his, and a smile on her lips. He felt himself bending forward towards her, and he thought she half rose in her chair to receive his embrace.

  But the next moment she put out her hand as if to stop him.

  “Stay,” she said. “Not yet, not yet. There is something first. I will tell you what I have done. I counted on this. I have ordered the carriage after dinner at half-past ten. You and I go in that, and leave by the train. Jack, I am yours — will you come?”

  Dodo had taken the plunge. She had been wavering on the brink of this for days. It had struck her suddenly that afternoon that Jack was going away next day, and she was aware she could not contemplate the indefinite to-morrow and to-morrow without him. Like all Dodo’s actions it came suddenly. The forces in her which had been drawing her on to this had gathered strength and sureness imperceptibly, and this evening they had suddenly burst through the very flimsy dam that Dodo had erected between the things she might do, and the things she might not, and their possession was complete. In a way it was inevitable. Dodo felt that her life was impossible. Chesterford, with infinite yearning and hunger at his heart, perhaps felt it too.

  Jack felt as if he was waking out of some blissful dream to a return of his ordinary everyday life, which, unfortunately, had certain moral obligations attached to it. If Dodo’s speech had been shorter, the result might have been different. He steadied himself for a moment, for the room seemed to reel and swim, and then he answered her.

  “No, Dodo,” he said hoarsely, “I cannot do it. Think of Chesterford! Think of anything! Don’t tempt me. You know I cannot. How dare you ask me?”

  Dodo’s face grew hard and white. She tried to laugh, but could not manage it.

  “Ah,” she said, “the old story, isn’t it? Potiphar’s wife again. I really do not understand what this love of yours is. And now I have debased and humbled myself before you, and there you stand in your immaculate virtue, not caring—”

  “Don’t, Dodo,” He said. “Be merciful to me, spare me. Not caring — you know it is not so. But I cannot do this. My Dodo, my darling.”

  The strain was too great for him. He knelt down beside her, and kissed her hand passionately.

  “I will do anything for you,” he whispered, “that is in my power to do; but this is impossible. I never yet did, with deliberate forethought, what seemed to me mean or low, and I can’t now. I don’t want credit for it, because I was made that way; I don’t happen to be a blackguard by nature. Don’t tempt me — I am too weak. But you mustn’t blame me for it. You know — you must know that I love you. I left England last autumn to cure myself of it, but it didn’t answer a bit. I don’t ask more than what you have just told me. That is something — isn’t it, Dodo? And, if you love me, that is something for you. Don’t let us degrade it, let it be a strength to us and not a weakness. You must feel it so.”

  There was a long silence, and in that silence the great drama of love and life; and good and evil, which has been played every day of every year since the beginning of this world, and which will never cease till all mankind are saints or sexless, filled the stage. Dodo thought, at any rate, that she loved him, and that knowledge made her feel less abased before him. All love — the love for children, for parents, for husband, for wife, for lover, for mistress — has something divine about it, or else it is not love. The love Jack felt for her was divine enough not to seek its own, to sacrifice itself on the altar of duty and loyalty and the pure cold gods, and in its tumultuous happiness it could think of others. And Dodo’s love was touched, though ever so faintly, with the same divine spark, a something so human that it touched heaven.

  Now it had so happened that, exactly three minutes before this, Maud had found that she had left a particularly precious skein of wool in another room. About ten seconds’ reflection made her remember she had left it in the smoking-room, where she had sat with Dodo after lunch, who had smoked cigarettes, and lectured her on her appearance. The smoking-room had two doors, about eight yards apart, forming a little passage lighted with a skylight. The first of those doors was of wood, the second, which led into the smoking-room, of baize. The first door was opened in the ordinary manner, the second with a silent push. Maud had made this silent push at the moment when Jack was kneeling by Dodo’s side, kissing her hand. Maud was not versed in the wickedness of this present world, but she realised that this was a peculiar thing for Jack to do, and she let the door swing quietly back, and ran downstairs, intending to ask her husband’s advice. Chesterford’s study opened into the drawing-room. During the time that Maud had been upstairs he had gone in to fetch Dodo, and seeing she was not there he went back, but did not close the door behind him. A moment afterwards Maud rushed into the drawing-room from the hall, and carefully shutting the door behind her, lest anyone should hear, exclaimed: —

  “Algy, I’ve seen something awful! I went into the smoking-room to fetch my wool, and I saw Jack kissing Dodo’s hand. What am I to do?”

  Algernon was suitably horrified. He remarked, with much reason, that it was no use telling Dodo and Jack, because they knew already.

  At this moment the door of Lord Chesterford’s study was closed quietly. He did not wish to hear any more just yet. But they neither of them noticed it.

  He had overheard something which was not meant for his ears, related by a person who had overseen what she was not meant to see; he hated learning anything that was not his own affair, but he had learned it, and it turned out to be unpleasantly closely connected with him.

  His first impulse was to think that Jack had behaved in a treacherous and blackguardly manner, and this conclusion surprised him so much that he set to ponder over it. The more he thought of it, the more unlikely it appeared to him. Jack making love to his wife under cover of his own roof was too preposterous an idea to be entertained. He held a very high opinion of Jack, and it did not at all see
m to fit in with this. Was there any other possibility? It came upon him with a sense of sickening probability that there was. He remembered the long loveless months; he remembered Dodo’s indifference to him, then her neglect, then her dislike. Had Jack been hideously tempted and not been able to resist? Chesterford almost felt a friendly feeling for not being able to resist Dodo. What did all this imply? How long had it been going on? How did it begin? Where would it stop? He felt he had a right to ask these questions, and he meant to ask them of the proper person. But not yet. He would wait; he would see what happened. He was afraid of judging both too harshly. Maud’s account might have been incorrect; anyhow it was not meant for him. His thoughts wandered on dismally and vaguely. But the outcome was, that he said to himself, “Poor Dodo, God forgive her.”

  He had been so long used to the altered state of things that this blow seemed to him only a natural sequence. But he had been used to feed his starved heart with promises that Dodo would care for him again; that those months when they were first married were only the bud of a flower that would some day blossom. It was this feeble hope that what he had heard destroyed. If things had gone as far as that it was hopeless.

  “Yes,” he repeated, “it is all gone.”

  If anything could have killed his love for Dodo he felt that it would have been this. But, as he sat there, he said to himself, “She shall never know that I know of it.” That was his final determination. Dodo had wronged him cruelly; his only revenge was to continue as if she had been a faithful wife, for she would not let him love her.

  Dodo should never know, she should not even suspect. He would go on behaving to her as before, as far as lay in his power. He would do his utmost to make her contented, to make her less sorry — yes, less sorry — she married him.