Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Such, at any rate, was their love at present, yet nothing is safe in this uncertain world. An earthquake may rend the pleasant garden, an east wind may wither its flowers, drought may drink up its melodious stream. But now it was the June of love, and the garden was very fair.

  It was nearly luncheon time, and Reggie, in spite of the woodcock, looked on to the cottage, where a thin, blue smoke rose, on a hill above the trees, wondering whether Gertrude had come yet. The beat lay over uneven ground, with some thick cover, interspersed with heathery, open places, on the edges of which many woodcock rose in silent and ghostly flight for the last time. Reggie was an excellent shot, and was having a match with Percy — a shilling a woodcock — which promised to be an investment with good security, and quick returns. He was just arguing a disputed point, in which Percy stoutly upheld that a certain bird, at which they had fired simultaneously, was his own, not Reggie’s, and that Reggie ought never to have shot at it, as it did not rise to him, when Gertrude appeared on the scene.

  She had seen the party approaching from the cottage, and, as it was cold, she had walked on to meet them.

  Percy felt much evil satisfaction at her appearance. The ways of women at shooting parties were known to him. Reggie was looking about in a bush, with the keepers, for a bird he had killed, and Gertrude stopped with him. She fully justified Percy’s expectations.

  “Oh! Reggie, what a pretty bird. It’s an awful shame to shoot them. Poor dear! Oh! I am sure I saw it flap its wings. It can’t be dead. Oh! do kill it quick. I think you’re perfectly brutal. Now, you’ve killed it,” she added with reproach, as if the object of shooting woodcock was to render them immortal.

  They soon caught up the others, and Percy’s wicked wish was fulfilled. No man in the world can shoot when his affianced is walking by him, making remarks on the weather, and on his homespun stockings, and telling him that she was sure he didn’t hold his gun straight that time. But Reggie did not feel as if he had lost very much, when he handed Percy one-and-ninepence at lunch, which was the nearest equivalent he had for two shillings.

  Mrs. Davenport was sitting by the fire when they came in, preferring to get warm passively, rather than actively.

  “Well, boys,” she said, “have you had good sport? Fifteen woodcock? How jolly!”

  “And we should have got four more if Gertrude hadn’t joined us,” said Reggie. “Why did you let her come, mother?”

  Gertrude looked at him in genuine, wide-eyed astonishment.

  “What have I done, you stupid boy?” she exclaimed. “I only told you to hold your gun straighter; you were aiming at least five feet from the bird. Besides, it’s horrid to kill woodcock; they’re such jolly little beasts — birds, I mean.”

  “Then why did you tell me to aim straighter?” asked Reggie, with reason.

  “Oh, I thought it would please you to kill them, my lord,” she said. “At least, that’s why you went out, wasn’t it?”

  Reggie was emptying his pockets of cartridges in the porch, and Gertrude was standing in the doorway, so that they were in comparative privacy.

  “Would you rather please me than save the woodcock?” he asked softly.

  “Reggie, I know those cartridges will go off if you drop them about so. Yes, oh the whole, I would. How dirty your hands are. Oh! is that blood on them?”

  “No, dear, it’s red paint, like what the Indians put on when they go out hunting.”

  “You extremely silly boy. Go and wash them, and then come to lunch. I’ll come with you to the little pump round the corner. You can’t be trusted alone.”

  “You’ll catch cold standing about,” said Reggie, not without a purpose.

  “No more than you will. Besides, I want to talk to you.”

  “Talk away, I’m listening.”

  “Oh, well, it’s nothing, really. I only meant to chat.”

  “Let’s chat, then.”

  “Well, stoop down, while I pump on your hands. Do you know, I’m rather happy.”

  “What a funny coincidence; so am I.”

  And they went back to the house, feeling that they had had quite a successful conversation. But that was all they said.

  Mr. Davenport was to join them after lunch, and go on shooting with Percy, and they had nearly finished when he entered. He was a stout, hearty-looking man of fifty, and inexpressible satisfaction was his normal expression.

  “Well, you people look pretty comfortable,” he said. “What sport, Reggie?”

  “Oh! rabbits, lots of them, a few hares, ditto pheasants, and fifteen woodcock,” said Reggie, with his month full of bread and cheese, whose naturally healthy appetite had not been spoiled by love.

  “Reggie’s going to take Gertrude a drive after lunch,” said Mrs. Davenport; “and I shall walk home; I want a walk.”

  Gertrude and Reggie looked at each other, but acquiesced.

  “Reggie, dear, give Gertrude my furs. She will be cold driving, and I sha’n’t want them walking,” said Mrs. Davenport, as the two started to go.

  Reggie took them, and with those little attentions that a woman loves so much when they are offered by somebody, wrapped them closely round her.

  “Well, I’m sure I ought to be warm enough,” she said, as they left the door.

  “Reggie will take off his coat if you’re not, I daresay,” murmured Mrs. Davenport, as she watched them start. “Dear boy, how happy he is.”

  “He hasn’t got much to complain of,” said his father. “How old it makes one feel.”

  He stretched out his hand to his wife, and she took it silently. Parents feel old and young when they see the young birds mate.

  “Reggie was recommending me to fall in love as quickly as possible, last night,” remarked Percy. “He said there was nothing like it.”

  Mr. Davenport laughed.

  “Cheeky young brute,” he said. “He gives himself the airs of an old married man. He quite patronised his uncle the other day, because he was a bachelor. He and Gertrude together don’t make up more than forty-five years between them.”

  “Reggie’s only just twenty-four,” said Mrs. Davenport, “and she’s barely twenty. How dreadfully funny their first attempt at housekeeping will be. Reggie never knows what he’s eating, as long as there’s plenty of it, and I don’t think she does either.”

  “Ah! well, shoulder of mutton and love is a very good diet,” said his father. “Are you ready, Percy? If so, we’ll be off.”

  Mrs. Davenport sat a little longer over the fire before she set out on her homeward walk, and observed, with some annoyance, that it had begun to snow heavily, and half wished she had driven home with Reggie. The keeper’s wife wanted to send a boy with her, as the short cut across country, which she meant to take, was hardly more than a sheep-track, running across a flat stretch of bleak moorland.

  There is, perhaps, nothing so bewildering as a snow-storm. The thick net-work of falling flakes conceals all but the nearest objects; and the small, familiar landmarks of the path are soon lost under the white trouble. The consequence was that, half-an-hour after Mrs. Davenport had started, she was entirely at sea as to her position, and, after trying in vain to retrace her steps, she found herself, at the end of an hour’s tedious tramp, at a little cottage some six miles from home. She was known to the labourer who lived there, but, as she was too tired to continue walking through the snow that was already beginning to lie somewhat thickly on the path, he sent out a lad to the neighbouring village to procure any sort of conveyance. All this took time, and Mrs. Davenport was impatient, for the sake of those at home, to get off as soon as possible. Her husband, she knew, would be very anxious; and there were people coming to dinner.

  Meanwhile, Reggie and Gertrude had got safely home after a most satisfactory drive. In fact, they rather liked the snow, which compelled them to go slower, for the sake of that sense of extreme privacy — a sort of cutting off from the rest of the world — which it lent them. He had said once, “I am afraid mother will have a hor
rid walk,” and Gertrude was filled with an evanescent compunction for having taken her furs, but no more allusion was made to it.

  They reached home about half-past four, and, half-an-hour later, were joined by the shooters, who had given up when the snow began in earnest. They were sitting at tea in the dark, oak-panelled hall, by a splendid fire of logs when Mr. Davenport suddenly said —

  “I suppose your mother is changing her things upstairs, Reggie?”

  Reggie was sitting on the floor, with his long legs drawn up, and a tea-cup balanced somewhat precariously on his knees. His back was supported against the head of the sofa, on which Gertrude was sitting. She had put on an amazing tea-gown, of some dark, mazarine stuff, trimmed with large bunches of lace, and was feeling intensely happy and rather languid after the day in the cold air. She had just asked Reggie some question, and he did not hear, or, at any rate, did not fully take in his father’s remark.

  Ten minutes passed, and Mr. Davenport rose to go.

  “You’d better ring the bell, Reggie,” he said, “and get your mother’s maid to take her some tea upstairs, or it will be getting cold. I am afraid she must have got very wet.”

  “I don’t think mother’s come in yet,” said Reggie, placidly.

  “Not in yet,” he said quickly. “Why didn’t you tell me? She must have lost her way over the High Croft.”

  The irrepressible satisfaction had died out of his face. He rang the bell sharply.

  “Tell two men to go at once, with lanterns, over the High Croft. Mrs. Davenport must have lost her way.”

  Gertrude got up.

  “You’re not anxious about her, are you?”

  “No, no, dear,” said he, “but it’s a horrid night. The snow may be lying very thick, and perhaps she has lost her path. There’s no anxiety.”

  Gertrude looked down with a little impatience at her long-limbed lover.

  “Reggie, you goose, why didn’t you remember she hadn’t come in?”

  Reggie looked up.

  “I thought nothing about it. There are lots of cottages about. It was stupid of me to forget. Can I do anything, father? Shall I go out with the men?”

  He was perfectly willing to do quite cheerfully all that was required of him, and he would have got back into his damp shooting clothes, and left this comfortable hall and Gertrude without a murmur.

  “No, never mind,” said he. “I think I shall go with them, because I couldn’t keep quiet at home. But I wish you’d remembered sooner.”

  Reggie had risen and was standing by the fireplace.

  “I wish you’d let me go, instead of you,” he said.

  “No; there’s no need whatever. I only go for my own sake.”

  Reggie was quite content. If he was not wanted to go, he was quite happy to stop. He was extremely fond of his mother, and the thought of her possible discomfort was most unpleasant to him, but what was the good of worrying? There was absolutely no danger. Mrs. Davenport was an eminently sensible person, and he could not lessen her discomfort by thinking about it. Let us be sensible by all means; let us take things as they come, without thinking about them when there is nothing to be done. Truly these boyish natures are a little irritating at times!

  Mr. Davenport left the hall, and Reggie resumed his place on the floor, and had another cup of tea.

  “Poor mother!” he said with sincerity; “how dreadfully wet and cold she will be.”

  Percy had retired to the smoking-room, and the two were alone.

  “Your father was rather vexed,” she said.

  “I’m afraid he was,” said Reggie. “I wish he’d let me go instead of him.”

  “Why don’t you go with him?”

  “That would do no good,” said Reggie. “He’s only going because he is anxious. I’m not the least anxious. Mother is sure to have turned in at some cottage to wait till the snow was over, or until she could get a carriage. If I could save her anything by going out, of course I’d go.”

  Gertrude was frowning at the fire.

  “I think I’ll ask him whether I may come with him,” she said.

  Reggie raised his eyebrows.

  “Oh, nonsense,” he said. “He wouldn’t let you, anyhow. Sit down, Gerty, and talk.”

  “Oh, well,” she said, “I suppose it’s all right.”

  There was no need, however, for Mr. Davenport to go out, for before he came down again with thick boots, and rough clothes on, his wife had arrived.

  Reggie sprang up and welcomed her with great eagerness and affection.

  “Dear mother,” he cried, “I am so glad you have come. Oh! how wet you are.”

  He led her to the fire, and poured out a cup of tea with almost feminine tenderness.

  “I hope you and Gerty weren’t anxious,” she said.

  “Oh, no,” said Reggie, frankly, “not a bit. I knew it would be all right. But I’ll run to tell father. He was going out with two men to look for you.”

  “Reggie wanted to go instead of him,” said Gertrude, feeling that her lover’s conduct was capable of some slight justification.

  “Dear Reggie is never anxious,” said Mrs. Davenport, warming her hands. “It is a great comfort for him.”

  Gertrude was rather relieved. There was no need for her, apparently, to turn advocate.

  CHAPTER II.

  Theology, in theory, at any rate, teaches us that human beings are living things with souls; experience, on the other hand, which deals with facts capable of proof, insists that, whatever theological truth this statement may embody, for practical purposes, human beings are born without souls. The soul awakes, or, as experience says, is born at varying times. Some men and women reach maturity of body and mind without it, some, we cannot help thinking, reach death without it; some, on the other hand, are but children when that perplexing gift is handed over to their bewildered keeping. But the soulless human animal often has at its disposal and use a quantity of instincts which partake of the soul-like nature; the soul, at any rate, when it is born, takes them over entire. There is no need to adapt them, or to purify them, for they are already clean and pure; it hardly ever vitalises them, for they are already very living; it merely shows them their kinship to itself, and they are forthwith embodied in it.

  This birth of the soul, like all births, is the consummation of bitter pangs; it is brought forth in sorrow, through some rending asunder of the inmost fibre, not by any elegant musing on devotional books, nor in a flash of blinding ecstasy, but in silence, save, perhaps, for the bitter cry, in darkness, in solitary desolation, for the sufferer does not know what is happening until the end of his pain has come; the blind pangs get fiercer and fiercer, and are still unexplained till the light breaks.

  It would, perhaps, be an insult to the reader to state baldly the bearing of these remarks, for it will be already, we hope, obvious to him that, in this sense, Reggie, in spite of his frank charm, his susceptibility, his pretty face, his capacity for receiving and inspiring affection, was, at heart, soulless. His strong, hearty liking for his betrothed was of that genial, animal kind, which, however wholesome and satisfactory, has no more to do with the soul than his power of aiming straight at woodcock. Happily, or unhappily, for him, the abstruse side of life was scarcely less remote from Gertrude than it was from himself. She had at present no wish and no power to give anything but the same genial, hearty liking that she received, a thorough, wholesome affection in which the nature of both, as far as they were aware of their nature, shared to the full. Neither Reggie nor Gertrude had ever fallen in love with an idea, which is, perhaps, the most exacting lover that man or woman ever has, but which, being wholly abstract, is of an entirely different nature from the love of two young people who admire and like each other enormously, mind and body. This abstruser side of life was a complete puzzle to Reggie. To take a very small but wholly appropriate illustration; he could sympathise with his mother, who might, perhaps, be wandering on the High Croft in a snow-storm, with a good deal of feeling, but the i
nstinct that made his father put on his damp shooting clothes, and prepare to go out, not for any assistance he could give, but for the eminently unpractical reason that his wife was in the snow and he was having tea, seemed inexplicable to his son. If he could have done a jot or a tittle of good by standing in the water butt for five minutes, there is not the shadow of doubt that he would have done so, shiveringly but contentedly and without question; but it would have seemed absurd to him to put his nose outside the hall door, if nothing was to come of it.

  With a less sweet disposition, he would have been a profound egoist; but in his manliness was salt enough, as the phrase is, to keep him sweet. The egoist rates himself higher than he rates the rest of the world; he thinks more of himself, consciously or unconsciously, as he thinks less of others, whereas Reggie, though he was incapable of those intricacies of feeling, which, for all practical purposes, are different, not merely in complexity but in kind, from the simpler forms, and which make the spectacle of the human race so vastly interesting, and produce, it may be, love of the complex order, never contemplated himself at all, and, however little he knew of others, at any rate he knew nothing of himself. His mind resembled, it is true, a being of two dimensions, which is unable to contemplate the existence of a third, but in its two dimensions it moved very smoothly, and had a very charming smile for its own plane horizon.