Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  He looked doubtfully at his cigar, after shaking hands with Maud. The class qui m’ennuie were not so tolerant. Maud caught the glance.

  “Not on my account, please,” said she. “I don’t mind it in the least.”

  “Well, on my account, then,” said Tom. “He smokes curly Italian weeds, Miss Wrexham. They smell of goat’s cheese.”

  “My dear fellow,” said Manvers, “you are in the Havannah stage with all your tastes.”

  “Isn’t that rather a good stage to be in?” asked Miss Wrexham.

  “Quite delightful for yourself, but it makes you a little intolerant of other people. Tom dislikes my statuettes as much as he dislikes my cigars.”

  “I dislike them very much more,” said Tom fervently.

  “There, you see — you may judge how much he loathes them.”

  “Bring one out,” said Tom, “and see if Miss Wrexham doesn’t agree with me.”

  “I don’t carry my own statuettes about with me,” said Manvers; “one’s own works are very bad company. When you have begun on your life-size Apollo, you will know why.”

  “Apollo shall dine with me every night.”

  “My dear fellow, how you will bore each other!” said Manvers.

  Maud Wrexham began to laugh.

  “You mustn’t pea-shoot each other in public,” she said. “When doctors disagree, they must do so out of hearing of their patient.”

  “Are you a patient?” asked Manvers.

  “Yes, under treatment. I have been on the Acropolis all the morning, with my brother and Mr. Carlingford. You’re not a patient, are you, Arthur?”

  “It struck me I was very patient,” said he.

  Maud reflected a moment.

  “No, it’s not at all a good joke, dear; it’s not either good enough or bad enough to be good.”

  “Extremes meet, you know,” explained Tom. “That’s why you and Mr. Manvers come and stay at the same hotel, I suppose,” said she.

  “We don’t often meet,” remarked Manvers. “Tom goes to the Acropolis, and I sit on the balcony.”

  “Then why did you come to Athens?” asked Maud; “surely there are better balconies elsewhere.”

  “He’s really becoming a convert,” said Tom; “he’s not so black as he paints himself.”

  “My dear Tom, I never paint myself, it is you who paint me; and to do you justice, you paint me as black as you can.”

  Poor Arthur Wrexham looked appealingly at the company.

  “I think I shall go for a little stroll,” he said. “When are you likely to be ready, Maud?”

  Maud finished her coffee.

  “I’m coming now,” she said. “Don’t forget tomorrow, Mr. Carlingford — you call for us at nine.”

  “They’re going up Pentelicus,” said Arthur plaintively; “I’m going too.”

  Tom looked at him severely.

  “Yes, it’s the one you told me was Hymettus,” he said. “It’s time you went. You won’t confuse them again.”

  “I didn’t confuse them before,” said Arthur. “You can’t confuse two things, unless you know them both, and then mix them up. I didn’t know either.”

  “Well, you’ll know one after to-morrow,” said Maud encouragingly, “and then you can get at the other by an exhaustive process.”

  CHAPTER VII.

  MEANWHILE the “sheltered life” had gone on as usual at Mr. Markham’s. The delight in Ted’s success had moved away into its appointed background, in front of which the slow, happy days passed on as uneventfully as ever. But about November a change took place. The Lord Chancellor appeared to have been suddenly struck by Mr. Markham’s admirable editions of school classics, or perhaps the fame of the neat covers of the books May stitched for the parish library had reached him, and he offered him the living of Applethorpe, which had just become vacant. Mr. Markham was unwilling to leave his old parish, and May even more so, but the offer was not one to be refused. Applethorpe was a large country parish, and, what was a distinct advantage, a richer one than Chesterford; old Mr. Carlingford, in particular, though careful to avoid in his own person direct means of grace, being always ready to supply funds whereby it might be administered to others.

  Ted was delighted with the change; his roots had been transplanted so often in school and university life that they never struck very deeply in the soil of Chesterford. The close neighbourhood of Tom’s house weighed heavily in favour of Applethorpe, and the accessibility of Lord Ramsden’s library, which contained many dust-ridden old volumes, among which he had visions, as every book-lover has, of finding undiscovered treasures in the way of twelfth-century missals, was not without its effect. May alone did not like it. It seemed to her that she was going out into new and more elaborate places, which might prove perplexingly different from the green fields and country lanes she knew so well. Things were going to be on a bigger scale; they would keep one curate, perhaps two; London itself loomed on the horizon, and when her father had gone to see the place, he came back saying that it looked a pretty country but there had been a London fog, which had drifted down from town.

  However, she quite acquiesced in her father’s decision, and before Christmas they had moved.

  Their house stood at one end of the long straggling village, a typical rectory of the older class, with a tennis lawn in front and a stable-yard behind, a hall paved with red tiles, and far too much ivy and Virginia creeper on the walls. Ted arrived soon after from Cambridge, with a large square box full of books, which could only just get through the front door.

  He and May had gone a long exploring walk in the country one afternoon, and were returning home along the clean frozen road through the village. They had been talking about the place.

  “It’s so big, Ted,” May had said, “it almost frightens me, as I told you once a big place would do. It is so hard to get hold of a lot of people like this.”

  “Well, there will be a curate, won’t there?” said Ted. “Of course it’s too large for father alone.”

  “Yes, I know there will; but you don’t understand. I must get hold of them myself. I must do all I did at Chesterford, and more.”

  Ted looked at her kindly.

  “Yes, I know how you feel about it It’s the personal relation you want, isn’t it?”

  “No, I don’t care about their personal relation to me. They might all hate me if they liked. But the quickest way to get at people’s hearts for any purpose is to make them like one.”

  “Don’t be worried, May,” said he. “You will soon get to know them all, unless I’m very much mistaken.”

  “Ah, but just think of the state things are in! I went to see an old woman yesterday. She couldn’t understand at first why I came. I told her I was the new vicar’s daughter, and she asked me what I wanted. The late vicar used never to visit anybody, she said.”

  “Yes, it will be hard work.”

  “I wish you could come here after you were ordained,” said May, “as father’s curate.”

  “I must stop at Cambridge,” said Ted. “You wouldn’t wish me to give that up?”

  “No, I suppose not,” said May; “and yet, I don’t know. I think parish work is the highest in the world.”

  “There is plenty of that to do in Cambridge,” said Ted, “for that matter; but I am not the man to do it. I can’t do it as you can — and father,” he added.

  “Ah, but what is good work in other lines compared to any work in that?” said May, earnestly—” especially for a man who means to be a clergyman.”

  “Yes, but other things can’t be neglected. You have no business to leave alone what you think you can do, for anything else. One’s talents, whatever they are, are given one to use.”

  “But is there not ‘that good part ‘?” asked May. Ted walked on in silence a little way.

  “I did not know you thought of it like that,” he said at length. “Do you admit no call but that of saving souls directly by your means?”

  “I didn’t know I f
elt it myself, till we came here,” said May; “until I saw this place so absolutely uncared for. Look at the rich people, too. Old Mr. Carlingford is very liberal, because he is very rich; but he never comes to church.”

  “Ah, that reminds me,” said Ted. “Tom is coming home soon, in about a fortnight, he said.”

  May paused on the doorstep.

  “I suppose he will come here, won’t he? I didn’t know he was coming back so early.”

  And she turned rather quickly, and went into the house.

  The new curate soon came, and fulfilled to the utmost all the admirable accounts of himself which had led to his engagement He was strong and vigorous, and exerted all his vigour and strength in the work to which he had been called. He was even bold enough to pay a visit to Mr. Carlingford single-handed, and the latter gentleman conversed to him very fluently and agreeably for half an hour on the coal-strike, and the lamentable weakness of the English fleet in the Mediterranean, offered to draw a cheque then and there to supply coal for villagers who were unable to have fires in this very nipping weather, and courteously declined to interest himself any further.

  He was walking back through the village, and met May there, who had been visiting.

  “I have just been to see Mr. Carlingford,” he said.

  May looked up quickly.

  “I didn’t know—” she began. “Oh! old Mr.

  Carlingford. Yes. Did you get anything out of him?”

  “I got a cheque,” said Mr. Douglas.

  May laughed.

  “Yes, that’s not so difficult, though it’s something to be thankful for. These poor creatures are half frozen.”

  “Mr. Carlingford really is very generous. But is there no hope of getting hold of him really? He might do much more than he does.”

  “I wonder. Tom Carlingford is coming home this week. He might do something with his father. I’ll ask my brother about it. By the way, we are dining there to-night. Are you going?”

  “No, I’ve got my cheque,” said the young man. “That’s enough for one day. Besides, I have a boys’ meeting at Chipford Mills. I must leave you here I have to go up to Breigton cottages first.”

  May turned and shook hands with him.

  “It’s absurd for me to thank you for all you are doing,” she said. “You do all sorts of things which my father couldn’t possibly do, and which we have no right to expect.”

  “Surely that is a curate’s business,” he said, laughing, and taking off his hat.

  Mr. Markham was suffering from a slight cold, and he had not been out that day. He was sitting over the fire in the drawing-room, reading a comedy of Aristophanes, when May came in.

  “How cold you look!” he said. “I ordered tea as you were a little late.”

  “Yes; I couldn’t come before, father,” she said, “and even now I have only got through half the things I wanted to do.”

  “Never mind, dear; but you should make an effort to be punctual; and charity begins at home, eh, May?”

  May turned from the fire, where she had been warming her hands, and poured out a cup of tea. Her father, seeing he got no answer, continued somewhat reproachfully —

  “My cold is rather worse this evening, and I can’t think what you did with that medicine. I couldn’t find it anywhere.”

  “I put it on the table in your study.”

  “No, dear. I think not. I looked for it there.” May went out of the room and brought back the bottle.

  “Yes, it was there. You had put some of your papers on to it.”

  “Thanks very much. I hope you took care not to disturb the papers.”

  “No, I disturbed nothing. Will you have some now?”

  “No, I’ve just had my tea. I was wanting it before tea. I always take it before meals, you know.” —

  May sat down in a chair and stirred her tea.

  “Mr. Carlingford has given Mr. Douglas a cheque to get coals for the people. It’s fearfully cold, and, poor things, many of them can’t afford coals.”

  “A good fellow, Douglas,” murmured Mr. Markham, as he smiled appreciatively at Aristophanes.

  “I was wondering if we couldn’t let them have some wood,” said May. “There are stacks of it in the yard.”

  Mr. Markham put his finger in his place.

  “Yes, I will see about it. Who want it?”

  “Oh, half a dozen of the cottages down here, and more at the mills.”

  “Well, dear, hadn’t you better make a little list? It would save me some trouble. Dear me, the fire wants mending. And then, if you would let me have it in about an hour, I could just finish this play.”

  “We dine at Mr. Carlingford’s to-night,” said May. “Yes, dear, I know. Ah, δίκαιος λόγος. How admirable that is!”

  Mr. Carlingford felt that he was doing his duty beautifully that evening. He had given a cheque to the curate in the afternoon, and he was having his vicar to dinner in the evening. His definition of duty was vague and comprehensive. It meant doing those things which he either did not wish to do or felt no desire to do. He had no desire to give Mr. Douglas a cheque, and he did not wish to have his vicar to dinner. The latter was therefore more clearly his duty than the former, since the essential character of such acts varied in exact ratio to their unpleasantness.

  An evening, he reflected, as he dressed for dinner, should be spent alone in a warm room, after a light meal, and be conveyed to the senses through the medium of several glasses of good port. Clergymen were often teetotalers, and it gave him a positive sense of discomfort to see people drinking water. Water was meant to wash in.’

  To him, in this state of mind, Mr. Markham was a pleasant surprise. He showed no inclination to talk about mutton broth and district visiting, he seemed to be well up in current topics of interest, and he was no teetotaler. In fact, he made some rather knowing remarks on the subject of cellars, and the depreciated nature of corks nowadays. And May I really was an admirable girl. “Why didn’t that fool Tom fall in love with her, instead of heathen goddesses?” was his mental comment as she came in.

  “I heard from my prodigal son to-day,” he said, as they were sitting at dinner; “he has decided to continue his prodigality for another month. The fatted calf may get fatter still. Poor boy! he is quite mad, and he means to fill the house with statues. Statues always give me the shivers. They really lower the temperature of the room. It is impossible to see too little of them.”

  “They’ll have to go in the kitchen,” said Mr. Markham.

  “An excellent suggestion, my dear Mr. Markham, but think of the soup! However, Tom is so dreadfully energetic, he always makes me feel hot. The statues shall be wheeled about with him, and that will preserve the equability of the temperature.”

  “He wrote to my brother saying he was coming back at once,” said May.

  “He does not deserve that you should remember that,” said Mr. Carlingford, urbanely. “But I shall be so glad to see him that I will tell him.”

  “Oh, you needn’t do that,” said May, laughing.

  Mr. Carlingford looked up at her a moment, and smiled to himself. That slight flush on May’s face might only have been the effect of coming out of the cold night air into warm rooms, but the other explanation pleased him more.

  “You and Tom will have great talks about Greek sculpture and Greek literature, Mr. Markham,” said Mr. Carlingford, still adapting himself. “I hear you are a wonderful scholar.”

  “I have so little time for anything but my parish duties,” said Mr. Markham, “that I never get the chance of working at classics. We are very busy here, eh, May?”

  “Well, it’s an ill wind that blows no one any good,” said Mr. Carlingford, “and the parish is the gainer.” The two gentlemen sat on in the dining-room afterwards, while May spent a lonely but pleasant quarter of an hour in the drawing-room. She was tired, for she had been out all day, and a low chair in front of the fire suited her mood exactly. She never read much, and the books on the table,
chiefly by French authors of whom she had never heard, did not excite her interest. So she fed on her own thoughts, and made quiet uneventful plans for the future. When one is young, difficulties produce a quickening of the hand and pulse, not a tendency to give up, to be content with what is done. The powers of the mind and soul, like the muscles of the body, grow only through their active employment, and the harder the work the fitter they become. It is only when the capability of growth ceases that exertion is labour. Her thoughts ran on the events of the day, on the material as well as the spiritual needs of those clustered cottagers, on the want, the suffering.... There was one girl who lived alone in a tiny room in one of the poorer cottages with her week-old baby. It was the common story; she was weak and ill, and unable to work. Yet to such as her the promise had been made. The baby too; surely the words “How much more shall He feed you” did not mean the workhouse? She must consult her father about them. She had already started a Sunday afternoon class for children. Poor mites, they did not need theology yet; it was better to teach them to be clean, to show them pictures that would amuse them, to let them spend a happy hour in a warm bright room, with playthings and wooden bricks to build with.

  And for herself, what? She neither wanted nor contemplated any change. The work that lay before her was so inevitably hers, that any possible change would be to neglect the whole purpose of her life.

  She was her father’s daughter, and he was a parish priest What other call could there be for her which could be clearer than that? She rose from her chair and walked once or twice up and down the room, and stopped at length before a long mirror set in the wall. There was a lamp on either side standing on the top of two chiffoniers, and her image was reflected in bright light. She gazed a few seconds at herself without thinking what she was doing, and then drew in her breath with a sudden start, for she saw in the mirror a reflection, not of what she was used to think herself, but the reflection of a woman, and she was that woman. The whole thing flashed on to and off her brain in a moment, but it had been there.

  Meanwhile Mr. Carlingford and his vicar were having a comfortable glass of port over the fire. The vicar liked everything to be good of its sort; his terriers were all in the kennel stud-book, his Walter Scott was an édition de luxe, and he had a beautiful Romney in his dining-room. And all Mr. Carlingford offered him was first-rate; the dinner had been excellent, the fire was of that superlative mixture, cedar logs and coal, and the port was certainly above criticism. He regretted profoundly that his slight cold had taken the edge off his sense of taste.