Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  There was risk on both sides. Alington knew that to convict the man, if he was so insane as to try to escape, meant exposure of his own side of the bargain and good-bye to the dual control. In his heart of hearts, indeed, he had hardly determined what to do should Chavasse make so deplorable a blunder. No doubt he could be caught, no doubt his identity could be proved, and he could be landed in the place of tread-mills and oakum-picking, but there would be other revelations as well, not all touching Chavasse. However, he never seriously contemplated such possibilities, for he did not believe that the man would ever try to escape. He was comfortable where he was, and comfortable people will think twice before they risk a prosecution for burglary. Alington was far too acute to think of frightening him or keeping him continually cowering; exasperation might drive him to this undesirable ruin. Instead, he gave him a very fair allowance, and complaints as to the length of his cigar-bill were few. Indeed, he had gauged the immediate intentions of his ex-valet very correctly. Mr. Richard Chavasse had no present thoughts of attempting to liberate himself from his extremely tolerable servitude, and probably get in exchange something far less soft, while that confession of his lay at the bank. He had the dislike of risks common to men who have been detected once. If, however, he could by any plan, not yet formulated, manage to remove those risks, his conscience, he felt, would not tell him that he was bound in gratitude to Mr. Alington never to do anything for himself.

  This morning, as Alington sat working in his well-lighted room, or looked out with kind and absent gaze into the snowy, sordid street, or laughed with pleasure at the thought of Mr. Richard Chavasse, he felt extremely secure, and humbly thankful to the Providence which had so guided his feet into the ways of respectability and wealth. Without being a miser in the ordinary usage of the word, he had that inordinate passion (in his case for money) which marks the monomaniac. Yet he remained extremely sane; his willingness to provide himself not only with the necessaries but also the luxuries which money will buy, remained, in spite of his passion for it, unimpaired. He was not extravagant, for extravagance, like other excess, was foreign to his mild and well-regulated nature, and had not been induced by the possession of wealth, but a scarce print he seldom left unpurchased. He gave, moreover, largely to charitable institutions, and the giving of money to deserving objects was a genuine pleasure to him, quite apart from the satisfaction he undoubtedly felt at seeing his name head a subscription list. In addition to his own great passion also, he had a thousand tastes and interests, a gift that even genius itself often lacks, and it may have been these on the one hand pulling against the lust for money on the other that kept him so well-balanced, just as the telegraph post is kept straight by the strain on both sides. As well as the one great thing, the world held for him hundreds of desirable objects, and the hours in which he was not devoted to his business were not, as they are to so many, a blank and a pause. He closed his ledger and opened the passion music; he shut his piano and untied his portfolio of prints, and his sleek, respectable face would glow with inward delight at each. A certain kindliness of disposition, which was part of his nature, it must be confessed, he kept apart when he was engaged in business. This lived in an attic and never descended the stairs if he was at his desk. To give an instance, he had not the slightest impulse to help Kit in her difficulty, though a word from him would have shown her how in the next few months to make good her losses. She had chosen to mix herself up in business, and he became a business man from head to heels. It even gave him a little pleasure to see her flounder in so stranded a fashion, for he had not effaced, and did not mean to efface, from his mind the very shabby thing she had chosen to do to him on the night of the baccarat affair. Being very wealthy, it did not really matter to him whether she cheated him of a hundred pounds or a threepenny-bit, but he quite distinctly objected to being cheated of either. Had the last trump summoned him on the moment to the open judgment-books, he might have sworn truthfully enough that he had forgiven her, for he did not ever intend to make her suffer for it, even if he had the opportunity of doing so. Certainly he forgave her; he would not ever attempt to revenge himself on her, and he had not told a soul about it.

  But her difficulties aroused no compassion in him, nor would they have done so even if she had never cheated him at baccarat. Business is business, and a statue of sentiment has no niche hewn in the mining market. One can do one’s kindnesses afterwards, he said to himself, and, to do him justice, he often did.

  For the present there was a lull in the Carmel transaction, and after a very short spell at the ledgers Mr. Alington closed them with a sigh. There were several receipts lying on his table, and he took them up, read each, and docketed it. One was for a considerable sum of money paid to a political agency. He hesitated a moment before putting the docket on it, and finally wrote on the top left-hand corner:

  “Baronetcy.”

  CHAPTER III. LILY DRAWS A CHEQUE

  Toby was sitting after breakfast in the dining-room of his house in town reading the Times. It had been settled for him by Lily before their marriage that he was to have some sort of a profession, and, the choice being left to him, he had chosen politics. He was proposing to stand for a perfectly safe borough in about a month’s time, and though hitherto he had known nothing whatever about the public management of his country’s affairs, since he was going to take a hand in them himself, he now set himself, or had set for him, day by day to read the papers. He had just got through the political leaders in the Times with infinite labour, and had turned with a sigh of relief for a short interval to the far more human police reports, when Lily came in with a note in her hand.

  “Good boy,” she said approvingly, and Toby rustled quickly back to the leaders again.

  “A most important speech by the Screamer,” he announced, honouring by this name a prominent member of the Cabinet. “He seems to suggest an Anglo-Russo-Germanic-French-Italian-American alliance, and says with some justice that it ought to be a very fairly powerful combination. It is directed, as far as I can make out, against Mr. and Mrs. Kruger.”

  Lily looked over his shoulder for a moment, and saw the justice of the résumé.

  “Yes, read it all very carefully, very carefully indeed, Toby,” she said. “But just attend to me a moment first; I shan’t keep you.”

  Toby put down the paper with alacrity. The Sportsman tumbled out from underneath it, but he concealed this with the dexterity bred of practice.

  “What is it?” he asked, vexed at the interruption, you would have said, but patient of it.

  “Toby, speaking purely in the abstract, what do you do if a man wants to borrow money from you?” she asked.

  “In the abstract I am delighted to lend it to him,” he said. “In the concrete I tell him I haven’t got a penny, as a rule.”

  “I see,” said Lily; “but if you had, you would lend it him?”

  “Yes; for, supposing that it is the right sort of person who asks you for money, it is rather a compliment. It must be a difficult thing to do, and it implies a sort of intimacy.”

  “And if it is the wrong sort of person?” asked Lily.

  “The wrong sort of person has usually just that shred of self-respect that prevents him asking you.”

  Lily sighed, and pulled his hair gently, rather struck by his penetration, but not wishing to acknowledge it.

  “Door-mats — door-mats!” she observed.

  “All right; but why be personal? Who wants to borrow money from you, Lily?”

  “I didn’t say anyone did,” she replied, throwing the note of her envelope into the grate. “Don’t be inquisitive. I shall ask abstract questions if I like, and when I like, and how I like. Read the Screamer’s speech with great care, and be ready by twelve. You are going to take me to the Old Masters.”

  She went out of the room, leaving Toby to his politics. But he did not at once pick up the paper again, but looked abstractedly into the fire. He did not at all like the thought that someone was borrowing mone
y from his wife, for his brain involuntarily suggested to him the name of a possible borrower. Lily had held a note in her hand, he remembered, when she came into the room, and it was the envelope of it, no doubt, which she had thrown into the grate. For one moment he had a temptation to pick it up and see whether the handwriting confirmed his suspicions, the next he blushed hotly at the thought, and, picking up the crumpled fragment from the grate with the tongs, thrust it into the hottest core of the fire.

  But the interruption had effectually destroyed his power of interesting himself in this world-wide combination against Mr. and Mrs. Kruger. There was trouble in the air; what trouble he did not know, but he had been conscious of it ever since he had gone down one day late in last December to stay with Kit and Jack at Goring, and they had been blocked by the snow a couple of stations up the line. He had noticed then, and ever since, that there was something wrong between Kit and his brother. Kit had been unwell when they were there: she had hardly appeared at all during those few days, except in the evenings. Then, it is true, she had usually eaten and drank freely, screamed with laughter, and played baccarat till the small hours grew sensibly larger. But underneath it all lay an obvious sense of effort and the thundery, oppressive feeling of trouble — something impossible to define, but impossible not to perceive. In a way, supposing it was Kit who wanted to borrow money from his wife, it would have been a relief to Toby; he would have been glad to know that cash alone was at the bottom of it all. He feared — he hardly knew what he feared — but something worse than a want of money.

  He sat looking at the fire for a few minutes longer, and then, getting up, went to his wife’s room. She was seated at the table, writing a note, and Toby noticed that her cheque-book was lying by her hand. He abstained carefully from looking even in the direction of the note she was writing, and stood by the window with his broad back to the room.

  “Lily,” he said, “will you not tell me who it is who wants to borrow money from you? For I think I know.”

  Lily put down her pen.

  “Toby, you are simply odious,” she said. “It is not fair of you to say that.”

  Toby turned round quickly.

  “I am not a bit odious,” he said. “If I had wanted not to play fair, I could have looked at the envelope you left in the dining-room grate. Of course, I burnt it without looking at it. But I thought of looking at it. I didn’t; that is all.”

  Lily received this in silence. For all his freckles, she admired Toby too much to tell him so. And this simple act, necessitated by the crudest code of honour, impressed her.

  “That is true,” she said. “All the same, I don’t think it is quite fair of you to ask me who it was.”

  Toby came across the room, and sat down by the fire. The suspicion had become a certainty.

  “Lily, if it is the person I mean,” he said, “it will be a positive relief to me to know it. Why, I can’t tell you. I haven’t spoken to you before about the whole thing; but since we went down to Goring on that snowy day I have had a horrible feeling that something is wrong. Don’t ask me what: I don’t know — I honestly don’t know. But if it is only money I shall be glad.”

  Lily directed an envelope and closed it.

  “Yes, it is Kit,” she said at length.

  “Ah, what have you done?”

  “I have done what she asked.”

  “How much?” The moment after he was ashamed of the question; it was immaterial.

  “That is my own affair, Toby,” she said.

  Toby poked the fire aimlessly, and a dismal, impotent anger against Kit burned in his heart.

  “Borrowing! Kit borrowing!” he said at length.

  “Of course, I haven’t let her borrow,” said Lily quietly, sealing the note.

  “You have made her a present of it?”

  “Oh, Toby, how you dot your i’s this morning!” she said. “Shall I unseal what I have written, and put a postscript saying you wish it to be understood that so much interest is charged on a loan? No, I am talking nonsense. Come, it is time to go out. Kit is coming to see me this afternoon, soon after lunch, so we must be back before two.”

  “Kit coming to see you? What for?”

  “She asked me if I would be in at three. I know no more. Oh, my good child, why look like a boiled owl?”

  The boiled owl got up.

  “It is a disgrace,” he said; “I’ve a good mind to tell Jack.”

  “If you do,” remarked Lily, “I shall get a divorce — that’s all!”

  “I’m not certain about the law in England,” said Toby, with emphasis, “but I don’t believe for a moment that they’d give it you for such a reason. But make the attempt. Try — do try.”

  “Certainly I should,” said she. “But, seriously, Toby, you mustn’t think of telling Jack. He and Kit have had a row, so I believe, and she doesn’t like to ask him for money. I come next: I do really, because you haven’t got any. Besides, you said it was rather a compliment being asked; I agree with you. But to tell Jack — preposterous!”

  She stood in front of him, drawing on her long gloves, her eyes fixed on her hands. Then she looked up.

  “Preposterous!” she said again.

  Toby took one of the gloved hands in his.

  “I love and honour you,” he said simply.

  “Thank you, Toby. And how dear it is to me to hear you say that, you know. So you’ll be good, and let me manage my own affairs my own way?”

  “For this time. Never again.”

  “As often as I wish, dear. Oh, am I a fool? You seem to think so.”

  “It’s not that — oh, it’s not that,” said Toby. “Money — who cares? I don’t care a damn — sorry — what you do with it. It doesn’t interest me. But that Kit should ask you for money — oh, it beats me!”

  “I think you are hard on her, Toby.”

  “You don’t understand Kit,” he said. “She is as thoughtless as a child in many things — I know that — but being thoughtless is not the same as being upscrupulous. And about money she is unscrupulous. Pray God it is only — —” and he paused, “well, it is time for us to go out, if we want to see the Old Masters. Personally I don’t; but you are a wilful woman. And I haven’t even thanked you.”

  “I should advise you not,” remarked Lily.

  “Why? What would you do?” said the practical Toby.

  “I should call you Evelyn for a month.”

  Toby was sent to a political meeting directly after lunch, and Lily was alone when Kit arrived. Fresh-faced as a child, and dressed with an exquisite simplicity, she rustled across the room, just as she rustled at church, and in her eye there was a certain soft pathos that was a marvel of art. A mournful smile held her mouth, and, giving a long sigh, she kissed Lily and sat down close beside her, retaining her hand. It is far more difficult to be a graceful recipient than a graceful donor in affairs of hard cash, and it must be acknowledged that Kit exhibited mastery in the precarious feat. With admirable grasp of the dramatic rights of the situation, for a long moment she said nothing, and only looked at Lily, and even the doubting Apostle might have gone bail that her feelings choked utterance. That she was very grateful for what Lily had done is true, if gratitude can be felt without generosity; but it was not her feelings that choked her utterance, so much as her desire to behave really beautifully, and express her feelings with the utmost possible charm. At last she spoke.

  “What can I say to you?” she said. “Oh, Lily, if you only knew! What can you have thought of me? But you must believe I loathe myself for asking. And you — and you — —”

  Real moisture stood in Kit’s eyes ready to fall. Lily was much moved and rather embarrassed. Passionate relief was in Kit’s voice, beautifully modulated.

  “Please say nothing more,” she said. “It gave me real pleasure — I am speaking quite seriously — to do what I did. So all is said.”

  Kit had dropped her eyes as Lily spoke, but here she raised them again, and the genuineness of the eye
s that met hers brought her more nearly to a sense of personal shame than anything had done for years; for even the most undulating poseur feels the force of genuineness when really brought into contact with it, for his own weapons crumple up before it like the paper lances and helmets with which children play. Kit’s life, her words, her works, were and had always been hollow. But Lily’s sincerity was dominant, compelling, and Kit’s careful calculated manner, a subject of so great preoccupation but two seconds ago, slipped suddenly from her.

  “Let me speak,” she said. “I want to speak. You cannot guess in what perplexities I am. In a hundred thousand ways I have been a wicked little fool; and, oh, how dearly one pays for folly in this world! — more dearly than for anything else, I think. I have been through hell — through hell, I tell you!”

  At last there was truth in Kit’s voice, a genuineness beyond question. Her carefully studied speech and silences were swept away, as if by a wet sponge from a slate, and her soul spoke. A sudden unexpected, but imperative, need to speak to someone was upon her, to someone who was good, and these past weeks of silence were an intolerable weight. Goodness, as a rule, was synonymous in Kit’s mind with dulness, but just now it had something infinitely restful and inviting about it. Her life with Jack had grown day by day more impossible; he, too, so Kit thought, knew that there was always with them some veiled Other Thing about which each was silent. Whether he knew what it was she did not even try to guess; but the small things of life, the eating and the drinking, the talk on indifferent subjects when the two were alone, became a ghastly proceeding in the invariable presence of the Other Thing. To Lily also that presence was instantly manifest, the trouble about which Toby had spoken that morning. It was there unmistakably, and she braced herself to hear Kit give bodily form to it, for she knew that was coming.