Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Now, we’ll go on talking,”, said Jack, when he had recovered somewhat. “We were talking about that Austrian. What did you say to him?”

  “Oh, I’ve told you. I simply stopped him asking me by telling him I was going to marry someone else.”

  “What did he say then?” demanded Jack.

  “Oh, he asked me for sympathy,” said Dodo.

  “Which you gave him?”

  “Certainly,” she answered. “I was very sorry for him, and I told him so; but we did it very nicely and politely, without stating anything, but only hinting at it.”

  “A nasty, vicious, oily brute,” observed Jack.

  “Jack, you’re ridiculous,” said she; “he’s nothing of the sort. I’ve told him to come and see us when we’re in England, and you’ll have to be very polite and charming to him.”

  “Oh, he can come then,” said Jack, “but I don’t like him.”

  They strolled down the street towards the church, and Dodo insisted on buying several entirely useless brackets, with chamois horns stuck aimlessly about them.

  “I haven’t got any money,” she observed. “Fork up, Jack. Seven and eight are fifteen and seven are twenty-two. Thanks.”

  Dodo was dissatisfied with one of her brackets before they reached the hotel again, and presented it to Jack.

  “It’s awfully good of you,” said he; “do you mean that you only owe me fifteen?”

  “Only fourteen,” said Dodo; “this was eight francs. It will be very useful to you, and when you look at it, you can think of me,” she observed with feeling.

  “I’d sooner have my eight francs.”

  “Then you just won’t get them,” said Dodo, with finality; “and you sha’n’t have that unless you say, ‘Thank you.’”

  The verandah was empty, as lunch had begun; so Jack said, “Thank you.”

  The news of their engagement soon got about the hotel, and caused a much more favourable view to be taken of Dodo’s behaviour to Jack, in the minds of the hostile camp. “Of course, if she was engaged to Lord Chesterford all along,” said the enemy, “it puts her conduct in an entirely different light. They say he’s immensely rich, and we hope we shall meet them in London. Her acting the other night was really extremely clever.”

  Mrs. Vane gave quite a number of select little teas on the verandah to the penitent, and showed her teeth most graciously. “Darling Dodo, of course it’s a great happiness to me,” she would say, “and the Marquis is such a very old friend of ours. So charming, isn’t he? Yes. And they are simply devoted to each other.” — The speeches seemed quite familiar still to her.

  Dodo regarded the sudden change in the minds of the “shocked section” with much amusement. “It appears I’m quite proper after all,” she thought. “That’s a blessing anyhow. The colonial bishop will certainly ask me to share his mitre, now he knows I’m a good girl.”

  “Jack,” she called out to him as he passed, “you said the salon smelled like a church this morning. Well, it’s only me. I diffuse an odour of sanctity, I find.”

  The Princess expressed her opinions on the engagement.

  “I’m sorry that you can’t marry my brother,” she said. “You would have suited him admirably, and it would have been only natural for you to stay with your brother-in-law. What shall I give you for a wedding present? There’s the bear-skin prayer-book, if you like. Waldenech is very cross about it. He says you told him he mightn’t go away, so he has to stop. Are you going out on the picnic? Waldenech’s getting up a picnic. He’s ordered champagne. Do you think it will be amusing? They will drink the health of you and Lord Chesterford. If you’ll promise to reply in suitable terms I’ll come. Why didn’t you come and see me this morning? I suppose you were engaged. Of course my brother was proposing to you after breakfast, and then you had to go and talk to your young man. Come to the picnic, Dodo. You shall show me how to throw stones.”

  They were going to walk up to a sufficiently remote spot in the rising ground to the east of Zermatt, and find their lunch ready for them. The Prince had no sympathy with meat sandwiches and a little sherry out of a flask, and his sister had expressed her antipathy to fresh eggs; so he had told the hotel-keeper that lunch would be wanted, and that there were to be no hard-boiled eggs and no sandwiches, and plenty of deck-chairs.

  The Princess firmly refused to walk as far, and ordered what she said “was less unlike a horse than the others”; and asked Dodo to wait for her, as she knew she wouldn’t be in time. She was one of those people who find it quite impossible to be punctual at whatever time she had an engagement. She was always twenty minutes late, but, as Dodo remarked, “That’s the same thing as being punctual when people know you. I think punctuality is a necessity,” she added, “more than a virtue.”

  “Haven’t you got a proverb about making a virtue of necessity?” said the Princess vaguely. “That’s what I do on the rare occasions on which I am punctual. All my virtues are the result of necessity, which is another word for inclination.”

  “Yes, inclination is necessity when it’s sufficiently strong,” said Dodo; “consequently, even when it’s weak, it’s still got a touch of necessity about it. That really is a comfortable doctrine. I shall remember that next time I want not to go to church.”

  “My husband is a very devout Roman Catholic,” remarked the Princess. “He’s got an admirable plan of managing such things. First of all, he does what his conscience — he’s got a very fine conscience — tells him he shouldn’t. It must be very amusing to have a conscience. You need never feel lonely. Then he goes and confesses, which makes it all right, and to make himself quite safe he gives a hundred roubles to the poor. He’s very rich, you know; it doesn’t matter to him a bit. That gets him an indulgence. I fancy he’s minus about six weeks’ purgatory. He’s got a balance. I expect he’ll give it me. You have to be very rich to have a balance. He pays for his pleasures down in hard cash, you see; it’s much better than running up a bill. He is very anxious about my spiritual welfare sometimes.”

  “Does he really believe all that?” asked Dodo.

  “Dear me, yes,” said the Princess. “He has a most childlike faith. If the priest told him there was an eligible building site in heaven going cheap, he’d buy it at once. Personally I don’t believe all those things. They don’t seem to me in the least probable.”

  “What do you believe?” asked Dodo.

  “Oh, I’ve got plenty of beliefs,” said the Princess. “I believe it’s wiser being good than bad, and fitter being sane than mad. I don’t do obviously low things, I am sorry for the poor devils of this world, I’m not mean, I’m not coarse, I don’t care about taking an unfair advantage of other people. My taste revolts against immorality; I should as soon think of going about with dirty nails. If I believed what the priests tell me I should be a very good woman, according to their lights. As it is, though my conduct in all matters of right and wrong is identical with what it would be, I’m one of the lost.”

  “English people are just as irrational in their way,” said Dodo, “only they don’t do such things in cold blood. They appeal to little morbid emotions, excited by Sunday evening and slow tunes in four sharps. I went to a country church once, on a lovely summer evening, and we all sang, ‘Hark, hark, my soul!’ at the tops of our voices, and I walked home with my husband, feeling that I’d never do anything naughty any more, and Maud and her husband, and he and I, sang hymns after dinner. It was simply delicious. The world was going to be a different place ever afterwards, and I expected to die in the night. But I didn’t, you know, and next morning all the difference was that I’d caught a cold sitting in a hayfield — and that was the end.”

  “No, it’s no use,” said the Princess. “But I envy those who have ‘the religion,’ as they say in our country. It makes things so much easier.”

  “What I couldn’t help wondering,” said Dodo, “was whether I should be any better if I had kept up the feeling of that Sunday night. I should have stopped
at home singing hymns, I suppose, instead of going out to dinner; but what then? Should I have been less objectionable when things went wrong? Should I have been any kinder to — to anybody? I don’t believe it.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” said the Princess. “You go about it the wrong way. We neither of us can help it, because we’re not made like that. It would be as sensible to cultivate eccentricity in order to become a genius. People who have ‘the religion’ like singing hymns, but they didn’t get the religion by singing hymns. They sing hymns because they’ve got it. What is so absurd is to suppose, as my husband does, that a hundred roubles at stated intervals produces salvation. That’s his form of singing hymns, and the priests encourage him. I gave it up long ago. If I thought singing hymns or encouraging priests would do any good, I’d sell my diamonds and buy a harmonium, and give the rest away. But I don’t think anything so absurd.”

  “David was so sensible,” said Dodo. “I’ve got a great affection for David. He told his people to sing praises with understanding. You see you’ve got to understand it first. I wonder if he would have understood ‘Hark, hark, my soul!’ I didn’t, but it made me feel good inside.”

  “Somebody said religion was morality touched with emotion,” said the Princess. “My husband hasn’t got any morality, and his emotions are those excited by killing bears. Yet the priests say he’s wonderfully religious.”

  “There’s something wrong somewhere,” said Dodo.

  The party were waiting for them when they came up. The Prince led Dodo to a place next him, and the Princess sat next Jack.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Dodo; “I’m afraid we’re dreadfully late.”

  “My sister is never in time,” said the Prince. “She kept the Emperor waiting half an hour once. His Imperial Majesty swore.”

  “Oh, you’re doing me an injustice,”, said she. “I was in time the other day.”

  “Let us do her justice,” said the Prince. “She was in time, but that was because she forgot what the time was.”

  “That’s the cause of my being unpunctual, dear,” remarked the Princess. “To-day it was also because the thing like a horse wouldn’t go, and Dodo and I talked a good deal.”

  Mrs. Vane was eating her chicken with great satisfaction. A picnic with a Prince was so much capital to her.

  “I can’t think why we don’t all go and live in the country always,” she said, “and have little picnics like this every day. Such a good idea of your Highness. So original — and such a charming day.”

  The Prince remarked that picnics were not his invention, and that the credit for the weather was due elsewhere.

  “Oh, but you said last night you were sure it was going to be fine,” said Mrs. Vane, floundering a little. “Dodo, dear, didn’t you hear the Prince say so?”

  “Here’s to the health of our Zadkiel,” said Dodo, “may his shadow, etc: Drink to old Zadkiel, Jack, the founder of the feast, who stands us champagne. I’ll stand you a drink when you come to see us in England. His Serenity,” she said, emptying her glass.

  “What a lot of things I am,” murmured the Prince. “Don’t forget I’m a poor devil whom you pity as well.”

  “Do you find pity a satisfactory diet?” asked Dodo saucily.

  She was determined not to be frightened of him any more.

  The Prince decided on a bold stroke.

  “Pity is akin to love,” he said below his breath.

  But he had found his match, for the time being, at any rate.

  “Don’t mistake it for it’s cousin, then,” laughed Dodo.

  The conversation became more general. The Princess said the mountains were too high and large, and she didn’t like them. Jack remarked that it was purely a matter of degree, and the Princess explained that it was exactly what she meant, they were so much bigger than she was. Mr. Spencer plunged violently into the conversation, and said that Mount Everest was twice as high as the Matterhorn, and you never saw the top. The Princess said, “Oh,” and Jack asked how they knew how high it was, if the top was never seen, and Mr. Spencer explained vaguely that they did it with sextants. Maud said she thought he meant theodolites, and Dodo asked a bad riddle about sextons. On the whole the picnic went off as well as could be expected, and Dodo determined to have lunch out of doors every day for the rest of her natural life.

  After lunch Mr. Spencer and Maud wandered away to pick flowers, presumably. Mrs. Vane moved her chair into the shade, in such a position that she could command a view of the mountain, and fell asleep. Jack smoked a short black pipe, chiefly because the Prince offered him a cigar, and Dodo smoked cigarettes and ate cherries backwards, beginning with the stalk, and induced the Princess to do the same, receiving two seconds’ start. “It’s a form of throwing stones,” Dodo explained. The “most distressin’” old gentleman was sighted under a large white umbrella, moving slowly up the path a little below them, and Dodo insisted on inviting him to lunch, as it was certain that he had just left the table d’hôte. “He thought it simply charming of me,” she said, as she came back. “He’s quite forgiven Jack for shouting. Besides, I took him the Princess’s compliments. He’s English, you know.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

  Edith had stayed on with the Granthams till nearly the end of August. She declined to have breakfast with the family, after she had been there about a week, because she said it spoiled her mornings, and used to breakfast by herself at seven or half-past, which gave her extra’ two hours at her music; and Lady Grantham complained of being wakened in the middle of the night by funeral marches. So Edith promised to play with the soft pedal down, which she never did.

  At lunch Sir Robert used to make a point of asking her how she had got on, and described to her the admirable band in the Casino at Monte Carlo. He was always extremely genial to her, and, when she played to them in the evening, he would beat time with one hand. Now and then he even told her that she was not playing staccato enough, or that he heard it taken rather quicker at Bayreuth.

  Dodo had written to Edith saying that she was coming to stay with her in September, and that Edith must be at home by the second, because she would probably come that day or the third. Edith happened to mention this one night in the hearing of Lady Grantham, who had been firing off home-truths at her husband and son like a minute gun, in a low, scornful voice. This habit of hers was rather embarrassing at times. At dinner, for instance, that evening, when he had been airing his musical views to Edith as usual, she had suddenly said, —

  “You don’t know how silly you’re making yourself, Bob. Everyone knows that you can’t distinguish one note from another!”

  Though Edith felt on fairly intimate terms with the family, there were occasions when she didn’t quite know how to behave. She attempted to continue her conversation with the Baronet, but Lady Grantham would not allow it.

  “Edith, you know he doesn’t know ‘God save the Queen’ when he hears it. You’ll only make him conceited.”

  “She’s only like this when she’s here, Miss Staines,” remarked Frank, alluding to his mother in the third person. “She’s awfully polite when she’s in London; she was to you the first week you were here, you know, but she can’t keep it up. She’s had a bad education. Poor dear!”

  “Oh, you are a queer family,” said Edith sometimes. “You really ought to have no faults left, any of you, you are so wonderfully candid to each other.”

  “Some people think mother so charming,” continued Frank. “I never yet found out what her particular charm is.”

  On this occasion, when Edith mentioned that Dodo was coming to stay with her, Lady Grantham sounded truce at once, and left her unnatural offspring alone.

  “I wish you’d ask me to come and stay with you, too,” said she presently. “Bob and Frank will be going off partridge shooting all day, and Nora and I will be all alone, and they’ll be sleepy in the evening, and snore in the drawing-room.”

  “I’d make her promise to be polite, Miss Staines,” re
marked Frank.

  “I want to meet Lady Chesterford very much,” she continued. “I hear she is so charming. She’s a friend of yours; isn’t she, Nora? Why have you never asked her to stay here? What’s the good of having friends if you don’t trot them out?”

  “Oh, I’ve asked her more than once, mother,” said Miss Grantham, “but she couldn’t ever come.”

  “She’s heard about ma at home,” said Frank.

  “I’m backing you, Frank,” remarked the Baronet, who was still rather sore after his recent drubbing. “Go in and win, my boy.”

  “Bob, you shouldn’t encourage Frank to be rude,” said Lady Grantham. “He’s bad enough without that.”

  “That’s what comes of having a mamma with foreign manners. There’s no word for ‘thank you’ in Spanish, is there, mother? Were you here with Charlie Broxton, Miss Staines? She told him he didn’t brush his hair, or his teeth, and she hated little men. Charlie’s five feet three. He was here as my friend.”

  “Do come,” said Edith, when this skirmishing was over. “Nora will come with you, of course. We shall be only four. I don’t suppose there will be anyone else at home.”

  “Hurrah,” said Frank, “we’ll have a real good time, father. No nagging in the evenings. We won’t dress, and we’ll smoke in the drawing-room.”

  “I long to see Dodo again,” remarked Miss Grantham. “She’s one of the few people I never get at all tired of.”

  “I know her by sight,” said Lady Grantham. “She was talking very loud to Prince Waldenech when I saw her. It was at the Brettons’.”

  “Dodo can talk loud when she wants,” remarked Miss Grantham. “Did you see her dance that night, mother? I believe she was splendid.”

  “She was doing nothing else,” replied Lady Grantham.

  “Oh, but by herself,” said Edith. “She took a select party away, and tucked up her skirts and sent them all into raptures.”

  “That’s so like Dodo,” said Miss Grantham. “She never does anything badly. If she does it at all, it’s good of its kind.”