Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  But there is a limit set to human misery, and the end had nearly come.

  It was about a fortnight after Jack had gone. Maud and Mr. Spencer had gone too, but Mrs. Vivian was with them still. Dodo had more than once thought of telling her what had happened, but she could not manage it. When Mrs. Vivian had spoken of going, Dodo entreated her to stop, for she had a great fear of being left alone with Chesterford!

  They had been out hunting, and Dodo had got home first. It was about three in the afternoon, and it had begun to snow. She bad bad lunch, and was sitting in the morning-room in a drowsy frame of mind. She was wondering whether Chesterford had returned, and whether he would come up and see her, and whether she was not too lazy to exert herself. She heard a carriage come slowly up the drive, and did not feel interested enough to look out of the window. She was sitting with her shoes off warming her feet at the fire, with a novel in her lap, which she was not reading, and a cigarette in her hand. She heard the opening and shutting of doors, and slow steps on the stairs. Then the door opened and Mrs. Vivian came in.

  Dodo had seen that look in her face once before, when she was riding in the Park with Jack, and a fearful certainty came upon her.

  She got up and turned towards her.

  “Is he dead?” she asked.

  Mrs. Vivian drew her back into her seat.

  “I will tell you all,” she said. “He has had a dangerous fall hunting, and it is very serious. The doctors are with him. There is some internal injury, and he is to have an operation. It is the only chance of saving his life, and even then it is a very slender one. He is quite conscious, and asked me to tell you. You will not be able to see him for half an hour. The operation is going on now.”

  Dodo sat perfectly still. She did not speak a word; she scarcely even thought anything. Everything seemed to be a horrible blank to her.

  “Ah God, ah God!” she burst out at last. “Can’t I do anything to help? I would give my right hand to help him. It is all too horrible. To think that I—” She walked up and down the room, and then suddenly opened the door and went downstairs. She paced up and down the drawing-room, paused a moment, and went into his study. His papers were lying about in confusion on the table, but on the top was a guide-book to the Riviera. Dodo remembered his buying this at Mentone on their wedding-tour, and conscientiously walking about the town sight-seeing. She sat down in his chair and took it up. She remembered also that he had bought her that day a new volume of poems which had just come out, and had read to her out of it. There was in it a poem called “Paris and Helen.” He had read that among others, and had said to her, as they were being rowed back to the yacht again that evening, “That is you and I, Dodo, going home.”

  On the fly-leaf of the guide-book he had written it out, and, as she sat there now, Dodo read it.

  As o’er the swelling tides we slip

  That know not wave nor foam,

  Behold the helmsman of our ship,

  Love leads us safely home.

  His ministers around us move

  To aid the westering breeze,

  He leads us softly home, my love,

  Across the shining seas.

  My golden Helen, day and night

  Love’s light is o’er us flung,

  Each hour for us is infinite,

  And all the world is young.

  There is none else but thou and I

  Beneath the heaven’s high dome,

  Love’s ministers around us fly,

  Love leads us safely home.

  Dodo buried her face in her hands with a low cry. “I have been cruel and wicked,” she sobbed to herself. “I have despised the best that any man could ever give me, and I can never make him amends. I will tell him all. I will ask him to forgive me. Oh, poor Chesterford, poor Chesterford!”

  She sat there sobbing in complete misery. She saw, as she had never seen before, the greatness of his love for her, and her wretched, miserable return for his gift.

  “It is all over; I know he will die,” she sobbed. “Supposing he does not know me — supposing he dies before I can tell him. Oh, my husband, my husband, live to forgive me!”

  She was roused by a touch on her shoulder. Mrs. Vivian stood by her.

  “You must be quick, Dodo,” she said. “There is not much time.”

  Dodo did not answer her, but went upstairs. Before the bedroom door she stopped.

  “I must speak to him alone,” she said. “Send them all out.”

  “They have gone into the dressing-room,” said Mrs. Vivian; “he is alone.”

  Dodo stayed no longer, but went in.

  He was lying facing the door, and the shadow of death was on his face. But he recognised Dodo, and smiled and held out his hand.

  Dodo ran to the bedside and knelt by it.

  “Oh, Chesterford,” she sobbed, “I have wronged you cruelly, and I can never make it up. I will tell you all.”

  “There is no need,” said he; “I knew it all along.”

  Dodo raised her head. “You knew it all?” she asked.

  “Yes, dear,” he said; “it was by accident that I knew it.”

  “And you behaved to me as usual,” said Dodo.

  “Yes, my darling,” said he; “you wouldn’t have had me beat you, would you? Don’t speak of it — there is not much time.”

  “Ah, forgive me, forgive me!” she cried. “How could I have done it?”

  “It was not a case of forgiving,” he said. “You are you, you are Dodo. My darling, there is not time to say much. You have been very good to me, and have given me more happiness than I ever thought I could have had.”

  “Chesterford! Chesterford!” cried Dodo pleadingly.

  “Yes, darling,” he answered; “my own wife. Dodo, I shall see the boy soon, and we will wait for you together. You will be mine again then. There shall be no more parting.”

  Dodo could not answer him. She could only press his hand and kiss his lips, which were growing very white.

  It was becoming a fearful effort for him to speak. The words came slowly with long pauses.

  “There is one more thing,” he said. “You must marry Jack. You must make him very happy — as you have made me.”

  “Ah, don’t say that,” said Dodo brokenly; “don’t cut me to the heart.”

  “My darling,” he said, “my sweet own wife, I am so glad you told me. It has cleared up the only cloud. I wondered whether you would tell me. I prayed God you might, and He has granted it me. Good-bye, my own darling, good-bye.”

  Dodo lay in his arms, and kissed him passionately.

  “Good-bye, dear,” she sobbed.

  He half raised himself in bed.

  “Ah, my Dodo, my sweet wife,” he said.

  Then he fell back and lay very still.

  How long Dodo remained there she did not know. She remembered Mrs. Vivian coming in and raising her gently, and they left the darkened room together.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

  Picture to yourself, or let me try to picture for you, a long, low, rambling house, covering a quite unnecessary area of ground, with many gables, tall, red-brick chimneys, unexpected corners, and little bow windows looking out from narrow turrets-a house that looks as if it had grown, rather than been designed and built. It began obviously with that little grey stone section, which seems to consist of small rooms with mullion windows, over which the ivy has asserted so supreme a dominion. The next occupant had been a man who knew how to make himself comfortable, but did not care in the least what sort of appearance his additions would wear to the world at large; to him we may assign that uncompromising straight wing which projects to the right of the little core of grey stone. Then came a series of attempts to screen the puritanical ugliness of the offending block. Some one ran up two little turrets at one end, and a clock tower in the middle; one side of it was made the main entrance of the house, and two red-tiled lines of building were built at right angles to it to form a three-sided quadrangle, and the carriage drive was
brought up in a wide sweep to the door, and a sun-dial was planted down in the grass plot in the middle, in such a way that the sun could only peep at it for an hour or two every day, owing to the line of building which sheltered it on every side except the north. So the old house went on growing, and got more incongruous and more delightful with every addition.

  The garden has had to take care of itself under such circumstances, and if the house has been pushing it back in one place, it has wormed itself in at another, and queer little lawns with flower beds of old-fashioned, sweet-smelling plants have crept in where you least expect them. This particular garden has always seemed to me the ideal of what a garden should be. It is made to sit in, to smoke in, to think in, to do nothing in. A wavy, irregular lawn forbids the possibility of tennis, or any game that implies exertion or skill, and it is the home of sweet smells, bright colour, and chuckling birds. There are long borders of mignonette, wallflowers and hollyhocks, and many old-fashioned flowers, which are going the way of all old fashions. London pride, with its delicate spirals and star-like blossoms, and the red drooping velvet of love-lies-a-bleeding. The thump of tennis balls, the flying horrors of ring-goal, even the clash of croquet is tabooed in this sacred spot. Down below, indeed, beyond that thick privet hedge, you may find, if you wish, a smooth, well-kept piece of grass, where, even now — if we may judge from white figures that cross the little square, where a swinging iron gate seems to remonstrate hastily and ill-temperedly with those who leave these reflective shades for the glare and publicity of tennis — a game seems to be in progress. If you had exploring tendencies in your nature, and had happened to find yourself, on the afternoon of which I propose to speak, in this delightful garden, you would sooner or later have wandered into a low-lying grassy basin, shut in on three sides by banks of bushy rose-trees. The faint, delicate smell of their pale fragrance would have led you there, or, perhaps, the light trickling of a fountain, now nearly summer dry. Perhaps the exploring tendency would account for your discovery. There, lying back in a basket-chair, with a half-read letter in her hand, and an accusing tennis racquet by her side, you would have found Edith Staines. She had waited after lunch to get her letters, and going out, meaning to join the others, she had found something among them that interested her, and she was reading a certain letter through a second time when you broke in upon her. After a few minutes she folded it up, put it back in the envelope, and sat still, thinking. “So she’s going to marry him,” she said half aloud, and she took up her racquet and went down to the tennis courts.

  Ten days ago she had come down to stay with Miss Grantham, at the end of the London season. Miss Grantham’s father was a somewhat florid baronet of fifty years of age. He had six feet of height, a cheerful, high-coloured face, and a moustache, which he was just conscious had military suggestions about it — though he had never been in the army — which was beginning to grow grey. His wife had been a lovely woman, half Spanish by birth, with that peculiarly crisp pronunciation that English people so seldom possess, and which is almost as charming to hear as a child’s first conscious grasp of new words. She dressed remarkably well; her reading chiefly consisted of the Morning Post, French novels, and small books of morbid poetry, which seemed to her very chic, and she was worldly to the tips of her delicate fingers. She had no accomplishments of any sort, except a great knowledge of foreign languages. She argued, with much reason, that you could get other people to do your accomplishments for you. “Why should I worry myself with playing scales?” she said. “I can hire some poor wretch” (she never could quite manage the English “r”) “to play to me by the hour. He will play much better than I ever should, and it is a form of charity as well.”

  Edith had made great friends with her, and disagreed with her on every topic under the sun. Lady Grantham admired Edith’s vivacity, though her own line was serene elegance, and respected her success. Success was the one accomplishment that she really looked up to (partly, perhaps, because she felt she had such a large measure of it herself), and no one could deny that Edith was successful. She had enough broadness of view to admire success in any line, and would have had a vague sense of satisfaction in accepting the arm of; the best crossing-sweeper in London to take her in to dinner. She lived in a leonine atmosphere, and if you did not happen to meet a particular lion at her house, it was because “he was here on Monday, or is coming on Wednesday”; at any rate, not because he had not been asked.

  Edith, however, felt thoroughly pleased with her quarters. She had hinted once that she had to go the day after to-morrow, but Nora Grantham had declined to argue the question. “You’re only going home to do your music,” she said. “We’ve got quite as good a piano here as you have, and, we leave you entirely to your own devices. Besides, you’re mother’s lion just now — isn’t she, mother? — and you’re not going to get out of the menagerie just yet. There is going to be a big feeding-time next week, and you will have to roar.” Edith’s remark about the necessity of going had been dictated only by a sense of duty, in order to give her hosts an opportunity of getting rid of her if they wished, and she was quite content to stop. She strolled down across the lawn to the tennis courts in a thoughtful frame of mind, and met Miss Grantham, who was coming to look for her.

  “Where have you been, Edith?” she said. “They’re all clamouring for you. Mother is sitting in the summer-house wondering why anybody wants to play tennis. She says none of them will ever be as good as Cracklin, and he’s a cad.”

  “Grantie,” said Edith, “Dodo’s engaged.”

  “Oh, dear, yes,” said Miss Grantham. “I knew she would be. How delightful. Jack’s got his reward at last. May I tell everyone? How funny that she should marry a Lord Chesterford twice. It was so convenient that the first one shouldn’t have had any brothers, and Dodo won’t have to change her visiting cards; or have new handkerchiefs or anything. What a contrast, though!”

  “No, it’s private at present,” said Edith. “Dodo has just written to me; she told me I might tell you. Do you altogether like it?”

  “Of course I do,” said Miss Grantham. “Only I should like to marry Jack myself. I wonder if he asked Dodo, or if Dodo asked him.”

  “I suppose it was inevitable,” said Edith. “Dodo says that Chesterford’s last words to her were that she should marry Jack.”

  “That was so sweet of him,” murmured Miss Grantham. “He was very sweet and dear and remembering, wasn’t he?”

  Edith was still grave and doubtful.

  “I’m sure there was nearly a crash,” she said. “Do you remember the Brettons’ ball? Chesterford didn’t like that, and they quarrelled, I know, next morning.”

  “Oh, how interesting,” said Miss Grantham. “But Dodo was quite right to go, I think. She was dreadfully bored, and she will not stand being bored. She might have done something much worse.”

  “It seems to be imperatively necessary for Dodo to do something unexpected,” said Edith. “I wonder, oh, I wonder — Jack will be very happy for a time,” she added inconsequently.

  Edith’s coming was the signal for serious play to begin. She entirely declined to play except with people who considered it, for the time being, the most important thing in the world, and naturally she played well.

  A young man, of military appearance on a small scale, was sitting by Lady Grantham in the tent, and entertaining her with somewhat unfledged remarks.

  “Miss Staines does play so arfly well, doesn’t she?” he was saying. “Look at that stroke, perfectly rippin’ you know, what?”

  Mr. Featherstone had a habit of finishing all his sentences with “what?” He pronounced it to rhyme with heart.

  Lady Grantham was reading Loti’s book of pity and death. It answered the double purpose of being French and morbid.

  “What book have you got hold of there?” continued Featherstone. “It’s an awful bore reading books, dontcherthink, what? I wish one could get a feller to read them for me, and then tell one about them.”

&nb
sp; “I rather enjoy some books,” said Lady Grantham. “This, for instance, is a good one,” and she held the book towards him.

  “Oh, that’s French, isn’t it?” remarked Featherstone. “I did French at school; don’t know a word now. It’s an arful bore having to learn French, isn’t it? Couldn’t I get a feller to learn it for me?”

  Lady Grantham reflected.

  “I daresay you could,” she replied. “You might get your man — tiger — how do you call him? — to learn it. It’s capable of comprehension to the lowest intellect,” she added crisply.

  “Oh, come, Lady Grantham,” he replied, “you don’t think so badly of me as that, do you?”

  Lady Grantham was seized with a momentary desire to run her parasol through his body, provided it could be done languidly and without effort. Her daughter had come up, and sat down in a low chair by her. Featherstone was devoting the whole of his great mind to the end of his moustache.

  “Nora,” she said, quietly, “this little man must be taken away. I can’t quite manage him. Tell him to go and play about.”

  “Dear mother,” she replied, “bear him a little longer. He can’t play about by himself.”

  Lady Grantham got gently up from her chair, and thrust an exquisite little silver paper-knife between the leaves of her book.

  “I think I will ask you to take my chair across to that tree opposite,” she said to him, without looking at him.

  He followed her, dragging the chair after him. Halfway across the lawn they met a footman bringing tea down into the ground.

  “Take the chair,” she said. Then she turned to her little man. “Many thanks. I won’t detain you,” she said, with a sweet smile. “So good of you to have come here this afternoon.”