Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Yet it is almost certainly one’s own fault if one is bored,” said Catherine. “To be bored only shows that a bore is present — probably oneself. Yet, Maud ... if I tell him about the bazaars, and sales, and speeches, and so on, he is bored; and they do make up a big part of my life.”

  “On the surface,” said she, “since we are being frank.”

  “No, not on the surface, since we are contradicting each other. The deepest and most real part of me that I know is sorry for poor devils, and it expresses itself in these ways. And it is exactly that which gets on his nerves. If I get up from lunch because I have got to go somewhere, he is irritated. He thinks I am restless. Well, so I am. I want to be doing things, not eating stupid cutlets. What do you want me to do? What does he want me to do? Eat opium instead?”

  Maud gave a long sigh.

  “Oh, Cathy, that was a pity!” she said.

  Catherine gave a little hopeless gesture.

  “Oh yes; it was a pity. Lots of things are. Our attitude towards each other is a pity. But I’m sorry I said that. Oh, do help me! Let’s be practical. Remember, I am at home when I am doing things. And I want to know what to do about a hundred things.”

  Catherine got up again. She was, as she said, always practical, and she was always restless. This afternoon in particular, after the inconclusive wakefulness of the night before, she longed to map out plans, rules of conduct, a line to take about all these complications. Yet, since all her life she had been chary of emotion, apt to regard it as useless, if not dangerous, stuff to have on board; now, when it was certainly there, either through her will or in opposition to it, she found herself — she, the ready speaker — destitute of words to deal with it to Maud. And in her silent search for expression again she paced up and down the busy bee-travelled flower-beds. Then there came a crisper note — the sound of crunched gravel — and a dog-cart drew up at the front-door, some fifty yards only from where they sat. There was only one person in it, a young man, who dismounted and rang the bell, and stood at the pony’s head waiting for it to be answered. But apparently the servants were drowsy too, as befitted Sunday afternoon, and after a pause he rang again.

  No definite process of reasoning went on through Catherine’s mind, but somehow her heart sank. This was no caller, no one who would need entertainment; but there was something dimly familiar in that cart, and in the tradesman-like young man, that reminded her of medicines, of the time when the children had the measles. Yes; it was a man from the chemist’s ... and next moment she knew why her heart sank.

  “I will see who it is,” she said to Maud. “The servants seem to be asleep;” and she went across the grass to the front-door.

  She had a word with the man, who gave her a small package, neatly sealed. Then he touched his hat, mounted, and turned his horse. Catherine came back to where Maud was sitting.

  “It is directed to Thurso,” she said, “and it is from the chemist in Windsor. Maud — —”

  Maud understood; but she shook her head.

  “Oh, you can’t open other people’s things,” she said— “you can’t. Oh, Catherine, what are we to do?”

  Catherine sat down again, with the bottle — the shape of it was plain — in her hand. Then Maud spoke again.

  “But we must,” she said. “Open it carefully, so that if it isn’t what we think we can do it up again. Oh, I hate it all; it seems mean, but I don’t care. I’ll open it if you would rather not.”

  Catherine seemed to think this unnecessary, and carefully broke the seals. There was a bottle of dark blue glass inside, with a red label of “Poison” on it. It was closed with a glass stopper, which she withdrew, and she smelled it. Then, paper and all, she passed it to Maud.

  Maud put the stopper back into the bottle, squeezed up the paper and string in which it had been wrapped into a tight ball, and threw it deep into the flower-bed. Then she went to the opening in the yew-hedge and flung the bottle itself into mid-stream.

  “So we’ve both had a hand in it,” she said when she returned. “Oh, Cathy, last night only he let you throw the wretched stuff out of the window, and the very next day has to go and order some more. Poor dear old boy! He must have ordered it when he went in with Theodosia after lunch. He must have told them he wanted it quickly. It’s death and hell, you know. I didn’t stop to think. I had to throw it into the river. What next? Are we to know anything about it or not?”

  “Yes; he would find out in any case. The chemist’s man would say he gave it to me. But there is no reason why you should come into it.”

  “Oh, give me my share,” said Maud quickly. “I want to help.”

  “Of course you can help; but I am quite willing to take the whole responsibility for what we have done,” said Catherine.

  “No; I want it to come from both of us,” said Maud, “if that is of any use.”

  Catherine considered this.

  “It is,” she said. “You have more weight with him than I have, you know.”

  There was no trace of any bitterness in her tone. It was plain unemotional speech, but it struck Maud as one of the saddest things she had ever heard said. She had long known, of course, that the married life of her brother and Catherine was not very happy, but this afternoon the tragedy of it was becoming, by these little trivial words, infinitely more real. And the materials for tragedy were being dreadfully augmented. This little bottle she had just thrown into the Thames was like one of those little incidents in the first act of a play, from which disaster will certainly be evolved later. What hideous scene in the last act did the great Playwright of life mean to make out of this?

  Then suddenly some memory of things Mr. Cochrane had said to her up in Scotland, some sentences from a book concerning Christian Science which he had lent her, came back to her mind. He had warned her that she would find in it certain things which would seem to her ridiculous, and he had asked her to pass over those. But he had told her that she would also find there certain things which were indisputably true, and, remembering one of them, she told herself now that she was thinking wrongly in anticipating evil like this. If she was to be of any use in the world, or produce any happiness in herself or others, she must turn away from evil, must deny it, and look at and affirm this great reality of Love and Good. To dwell on sin and error and on their consequences was to invite them, to make them her guests. It was another Guest — a very willing One — that was to be made welcome, but He was autocratic: you had to do His bidding all the time, even in details.

  “Yes, let me help,” she said. “And we must tell him at once what we have done. Don’t let us deceive him, even if we could.”

  “He will be furious,” said Catherine.

  “We can’t help that. We have certainly got to tell him. Besides, we don’t want to conceal what we have done; we don’t want to think of some plan for preventing it coming to his knowledge. We are not ashamed of it. Wouldn’t you do it again? I would. I would throw all the laudanum bottles in the world into the Thames if I could prevent the stuff reaching him.”

  People began to gather again after this. Rudolf Villars and his companion came back from the river, he looking fatigued, while Alice was fresher than paint. Her husband came out from the house with considerable alertness, as if letter-writing had been an unconscious recuperative process. A few people from neighbouring houses came, by road or river, to look in at tea-time; and when Thurso, with the two Americans, returned from Windsor, there was a rather numerous company on the lawn. He went into the house before joining the others, and was there some minutes, during which time they heard a bell ring furiously within. Catherine’s eyes and Maud’s met over this; and when he came out, another piece of silent telegraphy went on between them, and Maud got up and went straight to him before he joined the tea-table group.

  Catherine could not go with her, being busy with her entertaining, but between sentences she watched them. They were not far distant when they met, and Thurso’s face was towards her. She saw it get suddenly
white, and he gave one furious gesticulation, then turned and went back towards the house again, without joining them. He did not go in, but walked down the shrub-set road that led to the stables.

  Maud came back to the tea-table, spoke to friends, and gradually got close to Catherine.

  “He is going back to Windsor to get more,” she said quietly. “Yes, no sugar, thanks. He would not listen to me. I have never seen him so angry.”

  Catherine just nodded, and then, since, whatever private tragedy was being played, the public comedy had to go on, she was, with the surface-Catherine, no more than an admirable hostess, charmed to see her guests, eager to interest them. But below, courageous though she was, and little as she regretted what Maud and she had done, though it turned out to be futile, she feared what was coming, for she hated anger, and she hated, also, to think that just now, when, for reasons of which Maud knew nothing, she wanted Thurso’s friendship and companionship so much, there should open this fresh breach between them. But it was no good thinking of that: here was Villars at her elbow, and here was Thurso already on his way back to Windsor, for she had heard the motor start by the back way from the stables. And only last night he had let her pour the foul stuff away, and had thanked her for doing it!

  Meantime the tinkle of drawing-room philosophy went on round her, and it was a relief, in its way, to join in it. It was so perfectly easy.

  “Yes, it is necessary for all of us to have some fad which for the time being is quite the most serious thing in the world,” she said to Lady Swindon, who had come down the river from Cookham. “We do the serious things lightly, but we take our fads in deadly earnest. Two years ago, do you remember, we never wore hats in the country. I didn’t get as far as wearing none in town, though I remember you did; but in the country I felt that golden hours were wasted if I had a hat on. Then last year there was the simple life. I retain pieces of that still.”

  Lady Swindon laughed.

  “I know you do, darling Catherine, but you are so busy that you find time for everything. I gave it up because it was so very complicated. One had to provide two sorts of lunches and two sorts of dinners every day — one for the simple-life people who ate curried lentils and all the most expensive fruits, and one for the people who ate beef. Swindon always ate both, to show he wasn’t bigoted, and so, of course, he had two months at Carlsbad instead of one. The simple life, anyhow, is finished with: it was too difficult. Do tell me what the next fad is going to be. You always are a full fad ahead of the rest of us.”

  “I wish I knew. I thought it would be spiritualism at one time, but I don’t believe now that it will come off. Such confusing things happen. I went to a séance the other day, and the most wonderful materialisation occurred, and I recognised the figure at once, and for certain, as being my grandmother. But in the same breath Major Twickenham over there recognised it as being his great-aunt, who was Austrian, and is no more a relation of mine than I am of the Shah’s. The medium subsequently explained it as being a spiritual coalition, but personally I felt rather inclined to explain it as being the medium.”

  Lady Swindon looked thoroughly disappointed.

  “Oh, I did hope it was going to be spiritualism,” she said. “I do automatic writing every evening, unless I am really tired — because it’s no use then, is it? — and sometimes it says the most extraordinary things. Haven’t you ever tried it? It is quite fascinating, especially if you use a stylograph pen, which seems to go easier. And Swindon and I have heard the most awful raps — like the postman. But if it is not going to be the craze I shall give it up. One has no time for a private hobby: one has to ride the public hobby all the time. Are you sure you are right? Think of the Zigzags. I never can remember their name. And what about Christian Science? I hear it is spreading tremendously. Or deep breathing?”

  The smile on Alice Yardly’s face widened and deepened as she heard the sacred word. But at this moment she was being talked to, and could not join in with her long and lucid explanations, though the scientific statement of Being — cause, source, origin — was trembling on her lips.

  “I have tried deep breathing,” said Catherine, “but there really isn’t time. You can’t do anything else while you are doing it; you can’t talk even, because your mouth is closed, and you breathe in through one nostril and breathe out through the other. Perhaps it will be Christian Science, though, do you know, I think some of it is too serious and sensible to be a fad, whereas the other half is too silly. On that side talk to Alice, or read what Mark Twain says. But on the serious side — the side that is sensible — get Maud to tell you about the typhoid up at Achnaleesh and her Mr. Cochrane.”

  “Her Mr. Cochrane?” asked Lady Swindon, with the alertness of the world.

  But the unconsciousness of the world, no less important an equipment, answered her.

  “Oh, only ‘hers’ because she told me about him; no other reason. Thurso and she were up there together.”

  “And Thurso — isn’t he here?”

  “Oh yes,” said Catherine, “but tea-time isn’t his hour. Tea-time is women’s hour; it corresponds to men’s after-dinner talk when we have gone upstairs.”

  “But we have women’s hour then, too,” said Lady Swindon. “I suppose we have got more to say?”

  Lady Thurso laughed.

  “Oh, I don’t think that,” she said. “I think we only take longer to say it. Tea, Theodosia?”

  Theodosia had truly American ideas about being introduced. It was her custom — and a genial one — to make all her guests formally known to each other by name, and she expected the same formality.

  “Kindly introduce me, Catherine,” she said.

  “Lady Swindon — my cousin, Mrs. Morton.”

  “Very happy to make your acquaintance, Lady Swindon,” said Theodosia; “and don’t you think that Catherine’s place down here is just the cunningest spot you ever saw? Why, look at that yew-hedge! I guess — expect, I mean — that Noah planted it before the Flood, or, anyhow, soon after, to have made it that height. But, then, all Catherine has is perfect, is it not? I adore her things and her. My! I never saw such a wonderful black pearl as that you’ve got around your neck. It looks as if it came straight from the Marquis of Anglesea’s tie-pin.”

  “I think not; I inherited it,” said Lady Swindon rather icily.

  “Well, there you are,” said the prompt Theodosia. “That’s what comes of being an Englishwoman of the upper classes. You inherit things, and we’ve got to buy them. Why, this afternoon Lord Thurso and my husband and I drove over to Windsor, and I never saw a spot that looked so inherited as that. You can’t buy that look: it’s just inheritance. Do you know my husband? Ah! he’s talking to Count Villars over there; and what a lovely man he is! And we had the loveliest time to-day! I never saw Windsor before; and fancy inheriting that! But I’m afraid Lord Thurso is sick. He called at a chemist’s, and told them to send some medicine out here right away. I guess he pined for that medicine. And he’s not here, is he? I shouldn’t wonder if he went straight in to take it. I guess he’s taking it now. Catherine, I think your husband is the loveliest man! I hope he’s not real sick. But he just pined for that medicine.”

  Tea was no longer in demand, and Catherine got up. The whole situation was beginning to get on her nerves. Theodosia, with her awful American manner, was on her nerves; this dreadful information about the call at the chemist’s was there also, and she felt sure that Lady Swindon, for all her “darling Catherines,” was that sort of friend who likes knowing the weak points of others, not necessarily with the object of their malicious use, but as useful things to have in your pocket. Theodosia, as she was aware, when she got up now to get out of immediate range of that rasping voice, was one of her weak points: the mention of Thurso’s medicine and his anxiety to get it were others. Theodosia touched them with the unerring instinct of the true and tactless bungler. So Catherine, with the higher courage that wants not to know the worst, if Theodosia was going to throw more sid
elights on the subject of this medicine, moved out of earshot.

  Lady Swindon justified her position of a true friend to Catherine, and became markedly more cordial to Theodosia. She wanted to know more about this, and proceeded in the spirit of earnest inquiry.

  “What a charming afternoon you must have had!” she said. “To see Windsor for the first time is delightful, is it not? and to have Lord Thurso as a companion is delightful at any time. But he is not ill, is he?”

  “He seemed just crazy to get to that chemist’s,” said Theodosia, “and he seemed just crazy to get back home again. They tell me you have a speed-limit for motors over here, but if we didn’t exceed it, I don’t see that it can be of much service.”

  Now, Lady Swindon was not really more malicious than most people, in spite of her weakness for her friends’ weaknesses, and it was in the main her truly London desire to be always well up in current scandals, and know the details of all that may perhaps soon be beginning to be whispered, that led her to “pump” (if a word that implies effort may be used about so easy a process) Theodosia on this subject. Thurso’s long absence in Scotland, to begin with, had seemed to her queer, and to require explanation. It did not seem likely, somehow, that he had gone there after a woman, but, on the other hand, she personally thought it improbable that he had really gone to look after fever-stricken tenants. As a matter of fact, of course he had done so, but the truth usually escapes these earnest inquirers, especially if it is quite simple and straightforward. But here was a fresh fact: he had been crazy to get to the chemist’s and had raced home. She felt she had guessed.