Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Reggie looked up in amazement.

  “Disgrace myself — bring dishonour on you—”

  “Has it never struck you that you are on the verge of doing that?” said Mrs. Davenport.

  It evidently had not, and Reggie received the possibility of it with deep perplexity. But the outcome was that he said wearily, —

  “Do as you like with me. Yes; I will go.”

  “Ah! but what is the use of going like that?” said his mother. “You must go, not because I wish you to, but because you realise it, and mean to act up to it. The fact of your going is only a symbol that you are not quite disloyal yet. You are to go as if your heart was still whole; you are going to meet Gerty, to meet her to whom you promised so much. You told me Eva said things which disgusted you. Think of them; sting yourself into hating her. Oh! it will not be easy. I do not expect you will enjoy yourself.”

  Reggie sat still a moment; then he exclaimed inconsequently, —

  “I am very tired. I shall go to bed. Yes, I want to see Gerty again very much.”

  Reggie, as he had said, had only that night realised how much Eva had entered into his life. It had not occurred to him before to put the case candidly to himself; not because he wished to shirk a conclusion, but because he regarded his feeling for Gertrude as sufficiently safe to warrant the assumption that things were all right. But when this sudden crash came — serious enough, at least, from his point of view, for he could not help regarding his words to Eva as a formal and complete rupture — he saw exactly where he stood. He was separated from Eva; but he was separated from Gertrude, not by any violent wrench, but by the gradual drift of the current, which he had not perceived till now. It had not occurred to him to be honest with himself before. Eva had been divinely kind to him, sympathetic, eager to share his confidence; it was no wonder that, in the blank which Gertrude’s absence made, he had found pleasure in giving it her, and that the aforesaid blank became gradually filled with new interests. If the thought ever had occurred to him that the image of Eva was becoming a sort of palimpsest to that of Gertrude, he would have denied the imputation stoutly, perhaps the more stoutly because he was aware that he had not been at pains to find out.

  Mrs. Davenport felt, when he had left her, that in a vague way she had expected all this. She had been quite aware that it is not possible for men to continue being boys indefinitely — that there is a time for everyone when they must ask themselves why they do a thing, or why they do not do it; and she knew that, for Reggie, that time had come. He was a boy no longer; that unconscious youth, which had moved Eva’s interest, then her love, had gone; he had awoke from his long, happy dream to the grey, convincing morning of reason and of claims. That he would be the better man for it, she did not doubt; that he could not have been a man without, she knew; and yet she was full of regret, full of those aching thoughts “for days that are no more,” which are even more poignant when we feel them for others than when we mourn over them for ourselves. Reggie had consented to go away — that was good; but was there not something left to be done? She knew from him that he had called Eva “a wicked woman,” and had left the box. What, then, was Eva’s feeling on the subject? If she was offended, so much the better; she might be induced to say so. If — worst chance of all — she cared for him, more than she cared for the hundred men who were dangling round her, was there still no possibility of making her say she was offended? All the mother’s pride and protectiveness revolted against the notion, but it was worth trying. Mrs. Davenport had so clearly in her mind the best solution of the problem — namely, the disenchantment of Reggie, by any means, or, failing that, the prolonged absence from Eva — that she put her pride in her pocket. She remembered perfectly well her talk with Percy; how he had felt uneasy at this engagement, because it resembled too much Reggie’s previous escapades: and surely, if he was right, Reggie’s very curtailed entanglement with Eva came under the same head. Let him only get away, with obvious discouragement from Eva, and let Gertrude reassert her previous relation, unconscious of any interruption.

  Lady Hayes had not passed a very good night. She was on the verge of doing a very difficult thing; that is to say, doing something directly opposed to her inclinations. In fact, she was, as she had told her husband, in love with Reggie Davenport, and such an experience was new to her. But this very simple and every-day phenomenon was curiously complicated in her case. She happened to be another man’s wife, and the man with whom she was in love was about to be another girl’s husband. She thought with some impatience of the hundred-and-one stories which are called realistic because they are improbable, in which the woman and man cast everything to the winds and say they obey the dictates of the divine mother of things, because that solution was very far from satisfying her. There is a book that says that love seeketh not its own, and, curiously enough, Eva found her thoughts straying to that short text, which has been abandoned as untrue by the apostles of evolution and modern life, who say that that particular gospel has served its time, that we now know a more excellent way. She had probably never devoted much thought as to whether she was modern or not, but she was surprised to find that so ancient a text seemed to represent her mood more clearly than less antique and hall-marked utterances.

  She had had breakfast and was still sitting in the dining-room with her husband, when a footman came in bearing a card. Eva looked at it and pondered. Then, —

  “Tell Mrs. Davenport I will see her; show her in here.”

  Eva got up from her place, and walked up and down the room. She was very pale, and she looked anxious and worn. But she stopped opposite the flower-stand in the corner, and put two orchids in the front of her dress.

  Mrs. Davenport was announced, and remarked that it was a beautiful morning, and Lord Hayes assented. She had seldom seen him before, and he was dressed with extreme care, but appeared wholly insignificant. She remembered his enormous wealth, and it seemed to her to be a sort of label to prevent his getting quite lost in this large world. He reminded her of an undelivered parcel, waiting for its owner to turn up.

  Lady Hayes sat silent for a few minutes, and then turned to her husband.

  “Perhaps you would be so good as to go away,” she said in a low, musical voice, “as I have things to talk over with my friend, or, if you like, we will go upstairs. Perhaps that would be better.”

  Lord Hayes got up with alacrity.

  “The fact is,” he said, “I was on the point of going. I have some business to do. I was wanting to talk to you some time later on, if it would be convenient.”

  “Certainly,” said Eva. “I will see you about it later.”

  She dropped her eyes as he addressed her, and sat looking at the ground till he had left the room. Then she said to Mrs. Davenport, —

  “What do you want with me?”

  Her tone belied the curtness of her words, and she waited eagerly for the answer. These few moments after she had said she would see Mrs. Davenport, were spent in an agony to control herself. She was hungering for more news from Reggie, but in her hand she held a note, which had come from him by the early post, which made her decision doubly difficult. It was a wild, absurd production, imploring pardon, entreating her to let him know that she had forgiven him — only half coherent — and Eva knew that he had really made his choice, or was willing to make his choice between her and Gertrude, if she would only say “Come.” “I am going to Aix to-day,” the note finished, “to see Gertrude. Cannot you send me one word, to say you forgive me? I behaved quite unpardonably.”

  Mrs. Davenport raised her eyes to Eva’s face, and answered her bravely.

  “I have come to talk to you about Reggie,” she said.

  Eva flushed, and unconsciously closed her hand on the note she held.

  “What about him?”

  “He is not very happy,” said Mrs. Davenport, gently, “and I think perhaps you can help me.”

  “Ah! I think I probably can,” said Eva. “I am glad you have come to see me.
I am afraid I have made mischief, and I am sorry. It is odd for me to be sorry; I suppose it’s a sign that I am growing old. You know for some time he has been seeing a good deal of me. That was my fault; I ought to have stopped it. And last night I gave him a sudden shock. He only knew one little bit of me, and I thought it was better—”

  Eva stopped, for her voice was trembling, and Mrs. Davenport waited.

  “It was better,” she continued, after a moment, “that he should know the rest of me. Then, when he knew, he called me a wicked woman, and went away straight from the opera. It was splendid. I admired him immensely. But it appears he is sorry he did so. I have just got a note from him imploring forgiveness.”

  “Ah! the foolish boy,” said Mrs. Davenport, half involuntarily.

  “Yes, I quite agree with you. You see it puts me in a difficulty. I like him very much — so much that I should be sorry to do him an injury. I should do him an injury if I allowed him to fall in love with me again. On the other hand, I like him well enough to be very sorry not to see him again, and I have to choose.”

  Eva stopped again, and Mrs. Davenport laid a hand on hers.

  “Yes, yes,” she said eagerly.

  Eva was gradually regaining her control over herself.

  “I want him to be very happy,” she said, “and his best chance of happiness, I am sure, is with that girl; I forget her name. I have never seen her, but Reggie has spoken of her to me. He ought to go to Herefordshire, or wherever it is, and live among the daisies with his beloved. He is not made for this sort of thing; he is too good. I don’t at all wish to spoil his life or the girl’s life.”

  Mrs. Davenport bent forward again in her chair.

  “Ah! Eva, you will do it, won’t you? I am sure you are right. He will be very happy with her. Do write to him, and say you are offended; make him angry, touch his pride, be as brutal as possible.”

  “But I don’t feel brutal,” said Eva. “It is rather hard on me. Oh! I can’t, I can’t,” she exclaimed suddenly.

  Mrs. Davenport saw how matters stood at once, and she paused. She had not expected this complication.

  Eva started up as she made this self-betrayal, and stood with the colour rising in her cheeks, furiously angry with herself, and wondering how Mrs. Davenport would interpret it. She blamed herself for ever having seen her; she had passed a sleepless night and her nerves were disordered. But the other lady spoke again, almost at once. She saw that it made it harder for Eva, but she saw that the only thing to be done was to pretend to have noticed nothing. So, before the silence grew portentous, she went on, but with more tenderness in her voice, —

  “Yes, of course it is hard for you,” she said. “It is very hard to be unselfish in this weary world. But it is worth an effort, is it not? And that you are fond of Reggie ought to make it easier. You don’t wish to spoil his life, as you say.”

  “How did he behave last night when he came home?” asked Eva, suddenly.

  “He is changed,” said Mrs. Davenport. “I think you would see it. Somehow, he is a boy no longer; he has become a man, and he finds it not pleasant.”

  “Ah! that is so, is it?” said Eva. “It was horribly stupid of me. But it makes it easier for me. He was so young, somehow — which I have never been. Are you sure you are right?”

  “Yes, quite sure.”

  “That makes it easier for me, and perhaps for him. Does he take things hard?”

  “I don’t think Reggie has known anything before which he could take hard. He has been very happy.”

  “You mean he will be less happy now.”

  “For the time, yes,” said Mrs. Davenport; “but I feel sure it will be for the best. He is one of those people who are made to be happy, and I am sure he will have less unhappiness this way than if you took any other course.”

  “I must think about it,” said Eva, turning and walking up and down the room. But even as she spoke she tore Reggie’s letter in half, and threw the pieces into the grate. “It is hard for me, is it not?” said she, stopping in front of Mrs. Davenport, “but it appears I am to be the victim.”

  “Reggie looked very like another victim last night,” said the other.

  Eva looked away.

  “Did he — was he very unhappy about it?” she asked.

  “Not too unhappy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “From what I know of him,” said Mrs. Davenport, “especially since this sudden change has come, if you speak now, you may make the whole difference to him. Make him angry and sore, and then let him go off to Aix, and I think Gertrude will do the rest. I wonder if she will guess what has happened. I hope not.”

  “How she will hate me!” murmured Eva, “and so will Reggie. It is really hard to see what I am to gain by the arrangement.”

  “Ah! don’t go back now,” entreated Mrs. Davenport. “See, I have no pride left. I implore you to do what I ask. You are very powerful; I know your power too well, and so does Reggie, God help him!”

  “I wonder if it is really better to be unselfish than selfish,” mused Eva, more to herself than to Mrs. Davenport, “or to try to do good at all. We are so very short sighted that we may be doing the worst thing possible. Who were those very ingenious people who did harm when they wanted to, in order that good might follow? Anyhow, if I do this, I shall not have chosen the selfish course. I suppose there will be an imperishable reward for me somewhere. Even so, perhaps I am really doing the selfish thing by doing as you ask me; it all depends, doesn’t it, on how much I like him? whether I like him enough to be unselfish; whether the burden of being selfish wouldn’t be harder to bear than the burden of being unselfish.”

  “I know how little I matter to you personally,” said Mrs. Davenport, “but you will know at least that I think you have done a very noble thing, something of which not many are capable; something it was very hard for you to do.”

  “Ah! you don’t understand me a bit,” broke out Eva. “I assure you that no one’s opinion has an atom of weight with me. I fear evil report as little as I covet good. Let me think for a few moments.”

  Mrs. Davenport was silent; she hardly heard Eva’s last speech, for all her thoughts were on her possible decision. That she had not dismissed her at once, had not refused to see her, she felt was a favourable sign. Eva, she knew, was quite capable, in spite of a certain intimacy between them, of having sent a message that she saw no one in the morning. Mrs. Davenport feared her and her cold, hard power, as she feared nothing else in the world. She sat there pale, almost trembling, while Eva passed slowly up and down the room, for a few minutes. But at the end of one of these turns, when she was by the door, she passed out, and Mrs. Davenport heard her step ascending the stairs. She waited there while the minute hand crept round the dial of the great bronze clock on the mantelpiece, and it was half-an-hour before Eva appeared again, with a large, unsealed envelope in her hand. She looked very weary, but as faultlessly beautiful as ever.

  “I have not sealed it,” she said, “because I thought you might like to read it, and while I am about it I might as well do it handsomely. At the same time, I would sooner you did not read it, but I shall neither blame you nor try to dissuade you if you wish to. With it is Reggie’s photo — the one he gave me. You need not take them. Will you read it? No? Then I will send a man with it at once, as you don’t care to look at the letter. There is no reason why you should be turned into a penny post because your son has called me a wicked woman. He was quite right, by the way — perfectly right. I—”

  Eva stopped suddenly, for there was that tremor in her voice which had been there once before at this interview.

  “I will not betray myself,” she determined, biting her lip, in a splendid effort to keep command over herself.

  “There is just one thing that I should like to ask you,” she went on almost at once; “send me a line now and then, to tell me about Reggie, and whether it is all right between him and the girl. I liked him very much, you know, and I shall never
see him again, I suppose.”

  Mrs. Davenport was much moved. She had guessed, and guessed correctly, that Reggie would not be the only sufferer, and that Eva had behaved heroically, and tears partly of relief, but partly of gratitude and admiration, started to her eyes.

  “God bless you for what you have done!” she whispered. “I can say no more than that.”

  The tension broke.

  “Leave me quickly,” cried Eva, as the large, painful sobs began to break from her throat. “Go at once!”

  “Eva, Eva,” cried Mrs. Davenport, stretching out her hands to her.

  “Go — go at once!” cried the other.

  She turned rapidly from her, and Mrs. Davenport, without another word, left the room. She just saw Eva sink in the arm-chair she had been occupying before, and bury her face in her hands. Mrs. Davenport closed the door quietly and went out.

  She had left behind her, and she knew it, a sorrow greater and more desolate than Reggie’s weaker nature would ever know. She remembered Percy’s prediction, that some day Eva “would do something sublimely unselfish, and that would be when she fell in love.”

  It was still only about mid-day when she left the house, and she had purposely said “Good-bye” to Reggie before she went, for, presupposing the success of her expedition, of which Reggie knew nothing, her presence was unnecessary and undesirable. If, on the other hand, she was unsuccessful, she had determined to go to the station and meet her husband, and acquaint him with the state of things. She drove about for an hour or so, and then changed her mind, and determined to make an effort to see Reggie before he set off.

  She arrived home just as he was starting, and they met in the hall, and when she saw his face she drew a deep breath of satisfaction and relief. He was unmistakably angry.

  “You are just off, are you, dear?” she said quietly. “Give Gertrude my love, and — and be very brave and make an effort, dear boy. It will not be easy. God bless you, my darling?”