by E. F. Benson
“Well, luckily there is no harm done. The thing didn’t catch on. But the point is to avoid other dangers. And for the present I am dangerous to you, Jack. People won’t begin talking again unless they get fresh cause. Do not let us give them fresh cause.”
“I quite agree with you,” said he.
Mildred liked this less and less. She had imagined that he would want a lot of talking round and reasoning with, and it did not flatter her at all to find him so placidly in accord with her. Yet she had no tangible ground of complaint.
“So that is all right,” she said. “Ah, here is Marie. Marie, whenever I see you in that pink dress, I think it is morning.”
“It is nearly,” said she. “Jack, I am going home. Are you stopping to play?”
He rose.
“No, I will come with you,” he said.
Marie looked a little surprised.
“Stop by all means if you feel inclined,” she said. “I will send the carriage back for you.”
Mildred laughed.
“Mutual confidence of the very first water,” she observed.
Again the cook motif sounded, setting his teeth on edge.
“No, I will come with you, Marie,” he repeated.
CHAPTER XIII
Maud Brereton was lying in a hammock underneath a big chestnut-tree in the garden of the house at Windsor. She had been here a fortnight alone, having been sent from London in disgrace by her mother after her refusal, in consequence of her interview with Marie Alston, to accept the riches and devotion of Anthony Maxwell. This fortnight she had spent in sublime inaction, surrounded as she was by all those things which to her made life lovable. Her dogs were here, her pony was here, the meadows were tall with hay, the river brimming, and the garden-beds presented every day some new miracle of unfolding colour. Each morning she had got up early and ridden in the park, while the day was still cool and dewy; she had read, not much; she had played the piano diligently; she had been the centre of an adoring crowd of dogs and gardeners; and for some days — not all this fortnight, indeed, but the bigger and earlier half of it — she had been completely happy in her own mild ruminative manner. It had been a source of great satisfaction to compare the rival merits of the two systems: London on the one hand; on the other, being in disgrace. For the sight of the hot square garden, she had here this cool, green lawn; for the riband of dull wood pavement up Grosvenor Street, the silver line of the Thames; for the companionship of languid and heated mankind, the eager dogs; and for the hopeless tedium of a ball, the cool vast night pouring in through the open windows of the drawing-room.
This idyllic attitude towards life in general had lasted ten days or so, but during the last four she no longer tried to conceal from herself her mind had changed. The weather, perhaps, became rather hotter, or she more languid; in any case, though she cared no less for the dogs and the riot of vegetable life, she missed something. And that something, she was beginning to be afraid, was people. Again and again she arrived at this same disheartening conclusion, and though, as many times, she went over in her mind the list of the people whom it was possible she might miss, and found none desirable, it was none the less true that she missed them en masse. Imagining them with her now, one by one, she would have wished each of them away, but with them all away there was something lacking. “Perhaps they are like a tonic,” she said to herself. “One doesn’t want to take it, but one is the better for it.”
She sat up in her hammock and surveyed her surroundings. The book she had brought out to read had fallen, crumple-edged, on the grass, and looking at the back, even the very title came as new to her. Dogs in various stages of exhaustion were stretched round her, and at the sound of her movement tails thumped the grass, but otherwise none stirred. Overhead, the chestnut with green five-fingered leaves drooped in the heat, and stars of wavering light fell through the interspaces of foliage on to her dress. To the right the hay, already tall and ripe to die, stood motionless in the dead calm; and the scent of clover and flowering grass, which in the morning had been wafted in flow and ebb of varying scent, hung heavy and stagnant in the air. Southwards the river was a sheet of glass; a centreboard, hopelessly becalmed, lay with flapping sail in the middle, and a splashed line of broken water showed the paddling efforts of its master. To this side lay the lawn; the croquet hoops were up, and leaning against the stick was a mallet; four balls in as uninteresting position lay immobilized here and there, the débris of a game, red versus blue, which Maud had begun that morning, but had found her honesty or her interest unable to cope with. Beyond was the house, bandaged as to the windows with green sun-blinds, and empty but for Maud’s maid, who was in love with the caretaker, who adored the kitchenmaid-cook, who adored nobody. There was also the caretaker’s wife, and nobody adored her.
The path which led from the lawn to the river was concealed by a lilac-bush from Maud’s hammock, and it was with a sudden quickening of the pulse that she heard a crisp step passing along it. It was a man’s tread, so much was certain; it was certain also that it did not belong to any of the gardeners, all of whose steps, Maud had noticed, were marked by a sort of drowsy cumbersomeness, like people who are walking about a dark room. Soon the crisp step paused and began to retrace itself, left the gravel for the grass, and in another moment Anthony Maxwell came round the lilac-bush.
Maud did not feel in the least surprised; her unconscious self had probably guessed who it was. She rose from her sitting position on the hammock, but gave him no word or gesture of greeting.
“I came down on my motor-car,” he said. “It was particularly hot. May I sit here a little while and get cool?”
“By all means,” said Maud. Then, after a pause, “Do you think it was right of you to come?” she said.
“I don’t think anything about it,” he said; “I had to.”
Maud hardened and retreated into herself.
“You mean, I suppose, that my mother insisted on it,” she said, with a cold resentment in her voice.
“Your mother does not know I have come,” said he. “I should have told her, but I thought she would probably have forbidden me.”
“Indeed she would not,” said Maud. “She would certainly have encouraged you.”
“That would have been just as bad,” said Anthony.
Suddenly Maud felt stimulated. During all this fortnight neither the gardeners nor the dogs had said anything so interesting. She sat down again.
“I should like you to explain that,” she said, without confessing to herself that explanation was unnecessary or that she wished to hear him explain.
“You are sure?” he said.
“Quite.”
“It is this, then,” said he— “we have both been put in a false position. We have been urged to marry each other, and you have refused me. It has not been fair on either of us. In spite of the pressure which has been put upon you, you have refused me; in spite of the pressure put upon me, I want nothing else in the world but that you should marry me. Mind, I quite sympathize with you, for if there is anything in the world which would make one wish never to see a person again, it is to have that person persistently hurled at one. I have been hurled at you. That is one of the reasons why I came here, to tell you that I sympathize with you. I am afraid people have made me an uncommon nuisance to you.”
Anthony paused, raised his eyes a moment, and saw that Maud was looking at him steadily, with grave consideration in her face. He felt, rightly, that never before had she given him such favourable attention.
“I am not such a coxcomb as to suppose that you would have given me a different answer if you had not quite naturally been ‘put off’ by the way in which you have been treated,” he continued; “but I do ask you to remember that I have scarcely had a fair chance. Please try to think that it has not been my fault.”
“No; it has been my mother’s,” said Maud.
“Yes, it has been her fault. I suppose she thought that continued perseverance would have some effect.
It may or may not have had the opposite effect to what she intended, but certainly not that.”
“It has had the opposite effect,” said Maud.
“Are you sure?”
“I am now.”
“Can you try and banish it from your mind?”
“I will try.”
Anthony, again looked at her, and his heart hammered against his ribs. But even though he scarcely felt master of himself, he did not lose his wisdom and press this point further.
“I do not hope to win you,” he said, “by making myself importunate, and perhaps, now I think of it, it was not wise of me to come. But I am not sorry I came; nor do I give up hope. Very likely that is presumptuous of me; but for myself, I am sure that I shall not change.”
He sat on the ground playing with the ear of one of the dogs, but as he said these last words his fingers made a sudden violent movement, and the dog whimpered. “There, there!” he said, and fell to stroking it again quietly.
“You said that this was one of the reasons why you came,” said Maud. “What was the other?”
“There was only one other. I wanted to see you. I was drawn by cords,” he said.
“Poor Mr. Anthony,” said she very quietly, and there was no shade of irony in her voice.
“Thank you for that,” he said.
Maud lifted her feet off the ground, and swung gently to and fro in the hammock. She was naturally very reserved, and in matters of the emotions still extraordinarily ignorant, and it would have puzzled her to say exactly what she felt now. It was no tearing or violent emotion, no storm, but rather the strong, serene press of a flowing tide. Hitherto the human race, whether considered individually or collectively, had not much occupied her, but something now within her quickened and stirred and moved, and she was certainly at this moment not indifferent to this plain young man who was so modest and so self-assured. There was more about him to be learned than she had known, and that book just opening promised to interest her. Of passion she felt no touch, but her “poor Mr. Anthony” had contained authentic pity.
“You are quite right,” she said. “Your various advantages have been constantly told me by my mother. All the things which seemed to her such excellent causes why I should marry you seemed to me to be very bad causes indeed; but they were represented to me as most urgent. I did not find them so.” She paused, and Anthony said nothing, feeling that some further word was on her lips. “I like you,” she said at length. “Come and have tea.”
The moment she had said it she was afraid that he would do something stupid, look fervent, even seize her hand. But she need not have been afraid. Anthony rose at once.
“Oh, do let us have tea,” he said; “I am longing for it.”
Maud’s relief was great.
“It was stupid of me,” she said. “Won’t you have a whisky-and-soda? You must be awfully thirsty.”
“No, I should prefer tea, thanks,” he said. “I hate drinks at odd times. How lovely your garden looks!”
“Yes; but it’s still rather backward. The chestnut-flowers should be out by now, and they are still hardly budding.”
“How can you remember that?”
“Oh, if one takes an interest in things, it is difficult to forget about them,” said Maud.
“That is perfectly true,” remarked Anthony.
Soon after tea he left again, and took the white riband of the Bath Road back into London. He could not help telling himself that he had prospered beyond all expectation; and if he had been, as he had told Maud, not hopeless before, he was, it may be supposed, on the sunny side of hope now. But he intended to stop, once and for all, the risk of mismanagement on the part of others, and having reached home he went straight to his mother’s room.
“I’ve been down to Windsor,” said he, “and I had tea with Maud Brereton — alone.”
“You haven’t got a spark of proper pride, Anthony,” said his mother with some heat. “To go dangling and mooning after a girl who’s refused you flat! I wonder what she sets up to be!”
“I think she sets up to be herself,” said Anthony. “It is rather rare. I like it. But I want to manage my own affair in my own way. I particularly wish Lady Brereton not to say a word more of any kind to Maud. I should like you to tell her so if you have an opportunity.”
“Why, I’m sure she’s been as eager as anybody,” said Lady Maxwell.
“I shall not succeed with her because her mother wishes it,” said Anthony. “I’ll play my hand alone, please.”
In London, in the meantime, the fact that Maud had refused him had become generally known, and London, with that admirable substitute for altruism which is so characteristic of it, and consists in vividly concerning one’s self with those things that do not in the least concern one, had been very voluble on the subject. There was scarcely any divergence in the views expressed, and everybody was agreed that it was a terrible thing for poor Mildred to find she had for a daughter so obstinate and wrong-headed a girl. “Why, the Maxwells roll, my dear — simply roll! Of course, Maud is wonderfully good-looking, and no doubt lots of other men will be after her, but why not have accepted Anthony provisionally? It is always so easy to let it be understood, if anything else turned up, that a young girl like that hadn’t known her own mind — —”
On the top of this there leaked out the fact that Marie Alston had strongly dissuaded her from it, and the world, with the agility and restlessness of monkeys, leaped to the new topic. Really Marie was getting a little too strong! It was all very well to scatter those amusing and general criticisms on people in general, and take the unworldly pose; but when it came to putting her finger in the wheels of the Society watch, so to speak, and stopping them from turning, it was too much. How on earth were struggling mothers to hope to get their daughters happily — yes, happily — married, if idealistic snowflakes were ready to descend upon them at street corners and forbid the banns. Over this Society grinned and showed its teeth for a little while, and then was off again on a fresh tack. How would Mildred behave to Marie? Here there were wheels within wheels, and the upshot was that Society was not at all sure that there had not been a break on one side or the other between Jack and her. Given that certain things had come to Marie’s ear, it would account for everything. What an ingenious revenge, too, on Marie’s part! Really, she was a person of brains. It required cool thinking to hit upon a riposte like that.
After this, sensation came hard on the heels of sensation. Mildred began to be mentioned in the same breath as Jim Spencer, and, far more remarkable, Jack began to be mentioned in the same breath as his wife. They had dined out together twice last week; they had been together to party after party. How curious and interesting! A complete resorting of the cards, and without any fuss whatever; and the honour, as usual, in Marie’s hand. In one partie she had recaptured her husband, shunted off her admirer on to Mildred, scored heavily against her, all the time with her nose in the air, as unapproachable and distinguished as ever. But meanwhile Lady Ardingly sat like a spider in the middle of her web. The threads had extended farther than even she had originally planned, but she did not object in the least to that. And when people came and told her the news, she was less severe than usual.
“Ah, my dear!” she would say, “how you fly about, and gather honey and all sorts of curious other things! And I sit here. I never know anything except what you are good enough to come and tell me. And so Jack is amouraché again of his wife? So charming, is she not? Let us play Bridge immediately.”
Mildred, however, did not think that things were quite so satisfactory. At first the idea of Jack and Marie Darby-and-Joaning it together sent her into fits of laughter. But after a week or so the joke began to lose its point — or, to state it more accurately, the point became rather too sharp for her liking. Jack and she had settled that they were to see less of each other, and not give any ground for people to say behind their backs what was perfectly and absolutely true; but she had not bargained for this return to intim
acy between husband and wife. Once she had approached Jack on the subject.
“You are very realistic,” she had said, “and have a great respect for detail.”
“To what are you referring?” he asked.
“Oh, don’t be stupid! You are taking your part very seriously. You see nothing of me — that is all right; but is it necessary to bore yourself quite so much with Marie?”
“I don’t bore myself,” he had said.
“Bore her, then?”
“I try not to do that,” said Jack with curdling equanimity. “But what are you driving at? Do you want me to mourn for you, to watch the shadow on your blind? That would be rather unconvincing to other people, would it not?”
“No; they would say I was tired of you.”
Jack considered this.
“I don’t want them to say anything about us at all,” he answered, and again the sense of imperfect grip haunted the woman, and the sense of having been talking to a cook the man.
Nor was this the sum of Mildred’s discomfort. She had amiably proposed not long ago to break with Marie, but now that the opportunity was ripe she felt herself simply unable to do so. There was a deficiency of force in her — moral or immoral, it matters not which — which was unable to stand up to the other. Also, she was dimly aware that people in general were watching her, looking at her rather as they had done when, now years ago, her hair had turned golden in a single night. But now the cause was not so tangible. Was it that she herself, not her hair only, was turning gray? Certainly she was conscious of a failure of power. It was in vain that she ate her many solid meals, or, as the whim took her, lived on varalettes and lean meat, vowing that this treatment made the whole difference to her; it was in vain she slept her solid six hours, drove a great deal in the fresh air, and kept her windows unwontedly open. People, the hundred diverting situations in which her friends daily found themselves, diverted her less, and she wondered whether the truth was, as fashion papers assured her, that the season was not very brilliant, or whether it was she who was losing the power to be amused. The thought of old age, a veritable bogey to one who has always felt young, sat daily by her in the empty seat of the victoria, and flapped in the wind-stirred blind of her bedroom at dark hours.