Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Lady Ellington was happily unconscious at this moment what an extremely tangled web she was weaving, and how impossible it was for her to disentangle it, for not having had the privilege of overhearing Madge’s conversation with Philip, she had, by no fault of hers, no idea that he was pledged to secrecy. True, he had not actually mentioned, a thing which he might be expected to have done, the fact that Madge was going to sit again, but no doubt a little well-turned conversation might make him do so. Madge, at the end of the third act, was talking to a neighbour in the stalls, and she herself turned to Philip.

  “A stupid act, rather,” she said. “Those two laid their plans so badly.”

  Then, with a sudden sense of the inward humour of her words:

  “It isn’t enough to open people’s letters,” she said, “you must hear their conversations too. I should really have made an excellent villain, if I had studied villainy. I should have hidden behind the curtains, and under the tables, and listened at key holes, for the private conversations of other people, and carefully looked in such places, and hung a handkerchief over the key-hole before indulging in any of my own.”

  Philip laughed.

  “Yes, I think you would be thorough in all you did,” he said, “and certainly, whatever your line was, I should ‘pick you up’ first, as schoolboys say, to be on my side.”

  “Ah! I am certainly on your side,” said she. “Now, what have you done with yourself all day? I like to hear always exactly what people have done. A few weeks of what people have done gives you the complete key to their character.”

  “Is that why you ask?” said he.

  “No, because I know your character. I ask merely from interest in you.”

  “Well, I rode before breakfast,” said he, “and got down to the city about half-past ten. I worked till half-past two, dull work rather — but, by-the-bye, hold on to your East Rand Mining, I think they are going better — then I ate three sandwiches and a piece of cake; then I sat to Evelyn for two hours, then I went round to see Madge, dressed, dined, and didn’t think much of the play.”

  “And your portrait?” asked Lady Ellington. “Is it good?”

  “Ah! all he does is good,” said Philip. “A man like that cannot do a bad thing. But it is more than good. It’s Mary Jane’s top-note.”

  “I thought Madge was his top-note,” said Lady Ellington.

  “Well, I think he has gone a semitone higher,” said he. “Of course I am the worst person to judge, but it seems to me that he is even more sure in this than he was in her portrait. Haven’t you seen it?”

  Lady Ellington was quite quick enough to catch at this.

  “No, but I should so much like to,” she said. “Do you think he would let me see it?”

  “I’m sure he would.”

  Philip paused a moment.

  “Send him a note, or I will,” he said. “I shouldn’t go to-morrow, if I were you, because I know he is busy.”

  “Ah! what a pity,” said Lady Ellington, lowering her voice a little. “I have nothing to do to-morrow afternoon.”

  “I know he is busy,” repeated Philip. “He told me so.”

  “And Madge’s portrait,” she said, “when shall we see that? It is quite finished, is it not?”

  Suddenly the preposterous idea occurred to Philip that he was being pumped. No doubt it was only Madge’s rather ridiculous request that her mother should not know that she was going to sit again that suggested it, but still it was there. On this point also he had given his promise to her, and he went warily in this time of trouble.

  “I fancy he is going to work a little more at it,” he said, anxious to tell the truth as far as possible. “Indeed, he told me so to-day. But he said that if I sent for it in a couple of days it would be ready for me to take.”

  It was quite clear, therefore — indeed, the letter that had so providentially come into her hands told her that — that Philip knew that Madge was going to sit again to-morrow. The letter anyhow had told her that she was going to sit again; Philip’s suggestion that she herself should not go to see his portrait to-morrow was quite sufficiently confirmatory of the rest. He had not told her, it is true, that Madge was going to do this, but it would answer her purpose well enough. There was only one thing more to ask.

  “I think Madge said she would not sit for him again,” she observed.

  “Yes, I know she did,” said he, “because I was the bearer of that message from her. I thought it was a mistake, I remember, at the time.”

  It was on the tip of Lady Ellington’s tongue to say, “And have told her so since,” but she remembered how terribly this would fall below her usually felicitous level of scheming. So, as the curtain went up at this moment, she turned her attention to the stage. Had it not gone up, she would have diverted the talk into other channels; the raising of the curtain was not a deliverance to her.

  “Let us see what these second-rate schemers make of it all,” she said.

  The act was played to a tragic end, and Philip helped her on with her cloak.

  “No, they committed an initial fault,” she said; “they didn’t lay their original schemes well enough.”

  But though the play was a disappointment, she pondered over it all the way home.

  ELEVENTH

  MADGE lunched alone next day, a thing that seldom happened to her and a thing that was always in a childish way rather a “treat.” For in order to counteract the natural tendency of mankind to gobble over the solitary meal, or else to eat nothing at all, it was her custom to bring some book down with her, prop it up against the mustard-pot, and intend, anyhow, to read slowly and to eat slowly. These sensible results seldom happened, since, as a matter of fact, the result was that she read two pages of her book, and then took a dozen rapid mouthfuls. And to-day not even that result was attained, for she read nothing, not even opening the book she had brought down with her, and ate hardly more. For in spite of all that lay before her, the rupture with Philip, his inevitable pain and sorrow, his natural and justified indignation and contempt of her, all of which were scarcely faceable if she faced them only, in spite, too, of all that her mother would feel and no doubt say, in spite of the fear she felt in the face of that, in spite of all that the world in general would say, she was too happy to read, and too happy to eat. For the birthday of her life, she knew, had come: this afternoon, in an hour or two, she would be face to face with the man who loved her, the man she loved, and in front of that tremendous fact, the fact that swallowed up the rest of the world in a gulp, nothing else could really count for anything. Everything else was like minute type of some kind, while in the middle was just the one sentence, in huge, glowing capitals.

  Everything had fallen out so conveniently, too: Lady Ellington had told her at breakfast that she was going to be out for lunch, and engaged after lunch, and she did not inquire into Madge’s plans at all. She had received no reply to her note to Evelyn, and the very fact that there was none seemed to bring her into more intimate relations with him. Then after lunch she had to change to her white evening dress, over which she put a long dark cloak, her maid arranged her hair, for it was best to go complete, and she took with her, in case of need, the scarlet opera cloak. And all this preparation was so much joy to her, she felt in her very bones that it was while he was looking at her dressed thus that he first knew he loved her, and thus dressed she would come back to him to-day. Above all, the long riddle of these days was solved now; here was the answer, she was the answer.

  Yet though all her heart leaped forward, it did not accelerate her actual movements; the four-wheeler also was rather slow, and it was some ten minutes after three when she arrived at the door of the studio in the King’s Road. Just beyond it was drawn up a motor-car, beside which stood a footman. As she stepped out of her cab, he went to the door of the motor and opened it. And within a yard or two of her stood her mother.

  Instantly all the passion and love in Madge’s heart was transformed into mere resolve, for she knew t
hat a struggle, the matching of her will against her mother’s lay in front of her. But all the strength of her love was there; it lost nothing of that. Lady Ellington had crossed the pavement more quickly than she, and stood in front of the door.

  “Where are you going to, Madge?” she asked.

  Madge turned not to her but to the footman, holding out a florin.

  “Pay my cab, please,” she said.

  Then she turned to her mother.

  “I have made an appointment to sit to Mr. Dundas this afternoon,” she said. “It is absurd for you to tell me that you didn’t know that. But I ask you how you knew?”

  “Philip told me,” said Lady Ellington.

  “Philip!” cried Madge. Then she controlled that sudden ebullition, for every fibre within her knew that her incredulity, which only half-believed this, had done him wrong.

  So, calming herself, she spoke again.

  “I don’t believe that,” she said.

  That was the declaration of war; quiet, tranquil, but final. The point between the two was vital, it reached downwards into the depths of individuality where compromise cannot live, being unable to breathe in so compressed an atmosphere. And Lady Ellington knew that as well as Madge; there was war. She and her daughter stood in unreconcileable camps, diplomacy was dumb, the clash of arms could alone break the silence. She pointed to the motor-car, for the modernity of setting was inevitable, even though primeval passions were pitted against each other.

  “It does not make the slightest difference whether you believe it or not,” she said quietly. “Get into the motor, as you have sent your cab away.”

  Madge seemed hardly to hear this.

  “Philip never told you,” she repeated, “because he promised me he would not.”

  Lady Ellington judged that it would be mere waste of energy or ammunition to contest this, for it was now immaterial to her campaign. She realised also that she needed all the energy and ammunition that she possessed to enable her to carry out her main movement. She knew, too, that Madge had long been accustomed to obey her mere voice; the instinct of obedience to that was deeply rooted. But how wholly it was uprooted now she did not yet guess.

  “Get into the motor, Madge,” she said. “Are we to wait all day here?”

  Then Madge came a step nearer.

  “Yes, that used to frighten me,” she said, “but now it does not. And Philip never told you what you said he did. Who was it, then? Nobody else knew.”

  Again she took one more step closer.

  “Mother, have you been tampering with my letters?” she asked. “For how could you have known otherwise? It is ridiculous to say that Philip told you. What else have you done, I wonder? Now, stand away, please, and let me ring the bell. Or do you propose that you and I, you and I, should fight like fishwives on the pavement?”

  The old instinctive right of fighting for one’s own, obscured by centuries of what is called civilisation, obscured, too, in Madge’s own instance by years of obedience, broke out here. She was herself, and nobody else was she. It did not matter one penny-worth who stood between her and the bell; if all the apostles and prophets had stood there she would have fought them all. And Lady Ellington knew that this particular engagement was lost; the bell would be rung. But her plan was not defeated yet, so far as she knew. What she did not know was that mere scheming, mere brain-wrought work on her part, had no chance at all against its adversary. No clever person can understand that until it is enacted under his eyes, and the cleverer he is, the less he will conceive it possible that his spider-weavings can fail to hold their fly. But when passion comes along, it is a bumble-bee that blunders through them all, without knowing that there has been any opposition.

  “I certainly do not resemble a fishwife,” she said, “nor have I any intention of acting as one. There is the bell — ring it.”

  Madge looked at her for a moment in wide-eyed astonishment, feeling sure that by some trick — anyhow, something underhand — her mother had got her knowledge.

  “And for my mother to do that!” she said.

  Lady Ellington may or may not have felt the depth of the well from which this sprang. In any case it was beside her purpose to waste a volley on what was merely rhetorical. And the faint tinkle of the electric bell was the only response.

  A maid-servant opened the door.

  “Miss Ellington,” said Madge, and passed in. But the door was not so open to the other.

  “Mr. Dundas said he was at home only to Miss Ellington, ma’am,” said she.

  “Then kindly tell Mr. Dundas that Lady Ellington has come with her,” said she.

  The fight was in grim earnest now. Both Madge and her mother were disposed to fight every yard of ground. But the former had some remnant of duty, of compassion left. Horrible to her as had been the scene on the doorstep, convincing as it had been to her of some breach of faith, of honour, on her mother’s part, she did not want to expose that.

  “Ah! is it wise of you?” she said. “Had you not better go home? You can do no good, mother.”

  “We will go upstairs,” said Lady Ellington.

  The studio was at the top of the house, and two landings had to be passed and three staircases surmounted before it was reached. On the second of these Madge had fallen back behind her mother, throwing the dark cloak which she wore on to a chair. The scarlet opera cloak she had on her arm. The maid had preceded them both, and threw the door of the studio open without announcement of names. Lady Ellington entered first, a moment afterwards came Madge, dressed as for the portrait, with the cloak over her arm.

  Now Evelyn had been through an emotional crisis not less vital than that of Madge. Indeed, the changes that had passed for him since he had received her note were wider than was anything that had come to her. She had passed only from the uncertainty as to the manner in which he and she would come face to face again; while he had passed from the certainty that all was over to the certainty that all was yet to come. Yet when the door opened and Lady Ellington appeared, he felt as if death on the white horse was there. But a moment afterwards, before he had even time to greet her, came life with the eyes he loved and the face and form that he loved. And he stood there silent a moment, looking from one to the other.

  “I learned that my daughter was going to sit to you again, Mr. Dundas,” said Lady Ellington, “and I came with her, met her here rather, in order to forbid it. After what you said to her on that day down in the New Forest, it is not conceivable that she should sit to you again. You must have known that. Yet you allowed her to come here, alone, for all you knew. I only ask you if you think that is the act of a gentleman?”

  Evelyn flushed.

  “When Miss Ellington proposed it, how could I refuse?” he said quickly. “She had decided to trust me, and from the bottom of my heart I thanked her for it, and I should not have been unworthy of her trust. Ever since you wrote to me from Brockenhurst — —”

  Madge turned to him.

  “My mother wrote to you from Brockenhurst?” she asked.

  “Yes; surely you knew — you must have known!” he said.

  “I had not the smallest idea of it till this minute. What did she say?”

  Lady Ellington lost her head a little.

  “The letter I wrote you was private,” she said; “it was meant only for your eye.”

  “It concerns me,” said Madge, tapping the table with a nervous, unconscious gesture. “I must know.”

  Evelyn and she looked at each other, and it was as if each caught some light from the other’s eyes.

  “Yes, that is true,” said he. “Lady Ellington forbade me to write or attempt an interview with you, and I gathered that you acquiesced in this. I gathered, as was natural, that you were deeply offended — —”

  He stopped, for the light that shone in Madge’s face was that which was never yet on sea or land, but only on the face of a woman. And Lady Ellington’s presence at that moment was to them less than the fly that buzzed in the window-
pane, or the swallows that swooped and circled outside in this world of blue and summer. The secret that was breaking out was to them a barrier impenetrable, that cut off the whole world, a ring of fire through which none might pass. Dimly came the sounds of the outer world to them there that which his eyes were learning, that which her eyes were teaching, absorbed them almost to the exclusion of everything else. Lady Ellington, perhaps, had some inkling of that; but she did not yet know how utterly she had lost, and she manned, so to speak, her second line of defence. The first had been lost; she was quick enough to see that at once.

  “So since Madge was going to give you this sitting,” she said, “it was only reasonable that I should accompany her, to prevent — to prevent,” she repeated, with biting emphasis, “a recurrence of what happened when you, Mr. Dundas, last found yourself alone with my daughter.”

  Then Madge lifted her head a little and smiled, but she still looked at Evelyn.

  “Ask how she knew,” she said, “that I was going to sit to you. No, it does not matter. I am ready, Mr. Dundas, if you are.”

  She turned and mounted the platform where she had stood before.

  “The cloak, shall I put that on?” she asked. “It is by you there.”

  Lady Ellington was at length beginning to feel and realise the sense of her own powerlessness; they did not either of them seem to attend to her remarks, which she still felt were extremely to the point.