Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “But by all means,” she said. “I — I too have missed our talks. Things have gone wrong a little? Let us try after dinner to put them straight. We shall find an opportunity.”

  “Thanks,” he said; and it was not only the word that thanked her.

  Jeannie’s maid must have been a first-rate hand at throwing, if by that simple process she produced in a quarter of an hour that exquisite and finished piece of apparelling which appeared at half-past eight. True, it was Jeannie who wore the jewels and the dress, and her hair it was that rose in those black billows above her shapely head; and the dress, it may be said, was worthy of the wearer. Still, if this was to be arrived at by throwing things, the maid, it was generally felt, must be a competent hurler.

  It so happened that everybody was extremely punctual that night, and Jeannie, though quite sufficiently so, the last to appear. Lady Nottingham was even just beginning to allude to the necessary quarter of an hour when she came in.

  Lord Lindfield saw her first; he was talking to Daisy. But he turned from her in the middle of a sentence, and said, —

  “By Gad!”

  It might have been by Gad, but it was by Worth. Four shades of grey, and pearls. Mrs. Beaumont distinctly thought that this was not the sort of dress to dash into the faces of a quiet country party. It was like letting off rockets at a five o’clock tea. Only a woman could dissect the enormity of it; men just stared.

  “I know I am not more than one minute late,” she said. “Lord Lindfield, Alice has told me to lead you to your doom, which is to take me in. — Alice, they have told us, haven’t they?”

  CHAPTER XXII.

  It seemed to Lord Lindfield that dinner was over that night with unusual swiftness, and that they had scarcely sat down when they rose again for the women to leave the room. Yet, short though it seemed, it had been a momentous hour, for in that hour all the perplexity and the anger that had made his very blood so bitter to him during these last two days had been charmed away from him, and instead, love, like some splendid fever of the spirit, burned there.

  Until Jeannie had been friendly, been herself with him again, he had not known, bad as the last two days had been, how deeply and intimately he missed her friendship. That, even that, merely her frank and friendly intercourse, had become wine to him; he thirsted and longed for it, and even it, now that it was restored to him, mounted to his head with a sort of psychic intoxication. Yet that was but the gift she had for the whole world of her friends; what if there was something for him behind all that, which should be his alone, and not the world’s — something to which this wine was but as water?

  At dinner this had been but the side she showed to all the world, but there was better coming. She had promised him a talk that night, and by that he knew well she did not mean just the intercourse of dinner-talk, which all the table might share in, but a talk like those they had had before by the roadside when the motor broke down, or in the punt while the thunderstorm mounted in hard-edged, coppery clouds up the sky. The last thing they had spoken of then was friendship, and he had told her, he remembered, how he hoped to settle down and marry. He hoped that she would of her own accord speak of friendship again; that would be a thing of good omen, for again, as before, he would speak of his hope of settling down and marrying. Only he would speak of it differently now.

  For him the hour had struck; there was no choice of deliberation possible any more to him. He did not look on the picture of quiet domesticity any more, and find it pleasing; he did not look on himself, count up his years, and settle, with a content that had just one grain of resignation in it, that it was time for him to make what is called a home. He looked at Jeannie, and from the ocean of love a billow came, bore him off his feet, and took him seawards. She, the beauty of her face, the soft curves of her neck, the grace and suppleness of her body, were no longer, as had been the case till now, the whole of the woman whom he loved. Now they were but the material part of her; he believed and knew that he loved something that was more essentially Jeannie than these — he loved her soul and spirit.

  Late this love had come to him, for all his life he had stifled its possibility of growth by being content with what was more material; but at last it had dawned on him, and he stood now on the threshold of a world that was as new as it was bewildering. Yet, for all its bewilderment, he saw at a glance how real it was, and how true. It was the light of the sun that shone there which made those shadows which till now he had thought to be in themselves so radiant.

  It was about half-past ten when Jeannie and Lord Lindfield cut out of a bridge-table simultaneously. They had been playing in the billiard-room, and strolled out together, talking. In the hall outside, that pleasant place of books and shadows and corners, Jeannie paused and held out her hand to him.

  “Lord Lindfield,” she said, “I have been a most utter beast to you these last two days, and I am sorry — I am indeed. You have got a perfect right to ask for explanations, and — and there aren’t any. That is the best explanation of all; you can’t get behind it. Will you, then, be generous and shake hands, and let us go on where we left off?”

  He took her hand.

  “That is exactly the condition I should have made,” he said.

  “What?”

  “That we should go on where we left off. Do you remember what you were talking about?”

  She had sat down in a low chair by the empty fireplace, and he drew another close up to hers, and at right angles to it. Just above was a pair of shaded candles, so that he, sitting a little further off, was in shadow, whereas the soft light fell full on to her. Had she seen his face more clearly, she might have known that her task was already over, that Daisy had become but a shadow to him, and that he was eager and burning to put the coping-stone on to what she had accomplished. But she remembered the scene in the punt; she remembered that immediately after she had spoken of friendship, he, like a friend, had confided to her his intention of settling down and marrying. This time, therefore, she would speak in a more unmistakable way.

  “Yes, yes, I remember indeed,” she said; “and it was the last good hour I have had between that and this. But I am not blaming you, Lord Lindfield, except, perhaps, just a little bit.”

  He leant forward, and his voice trembled.

  “Why do you blame me,” he asked, “even a little bit?”

  Jeannie laughed.

  “No, I don’t think I can tell you,” she said. “I should get scarlet. Yet, I don’t know; I think it would make you laugh, too, and it is always a good thing to laugh. So turn away, and don’t look at me when I am scarlet, since it is unbecoming. Well, I blame you a little bit, because you were a little bit tactless. A charming woman — one, anyhow, who was trying to be charming — had just been talking to you about friendship, and you sighed a smile in a yawn, as it were — do you know Browning? — he is a dear — and said: ‘I am going to settle down and marry.’ Now, not a word. I am going to scold you. Had we been two girls talking together, and had just made vows of friendship, it would have been utterly tactless for the one to choose that exact moment for saying she was going to be married; and I am sure no two boys in similar conditions would ever have done such a thing.”

  Again Jeannie laughed.

  “It sounds so funny now,” she said. “But it was such a snub. I suppose you thought we were getting on too nicely. Oh, how funny! I have never had such a thing happen to me before. So I blame you just a little bit. I was rather depressed already. A thunderstorm was coming, and it was going to be Sunday, and so I wanted everybody to be particularly nice to me.”

  He gave a little odd awkward sort of laugh, and jerked himself a little more forward in his chair.

  “Mayn’t I look?” he said. “I don’t believe you are scarlet. Besides, I have to say I am sorry. I can’t say I am sorry to the carpet.”

  Jeannie paused for a moment before she replied; something in his voice, though still she could not see his face clearly, startled her. It sounded changed, som
ehow, full of something suppressed, something serious. But she could not risk a second fiasco; she had to play her high cards out, and hope for their triumph.

  “You needn’t say it,” she said. “And so let us pass to what I suggested, and what you would have made, you told me, a condition of your forgiving me. Friendship! What a beautiful word in itself, and what a big one! And how little most people mean by it. A man says he is a woman’s friend because he lunches with her once a month; a woman says she is a man’s friend because they have taken a drive round Hyde Park in the middle of the afternoon!”

  Jeannie sat more upright in her chair, leaning forward towards him. Then she saw him more clearly, and the hunger of his face, the bright shining of his eyes, endorsed what she had heard in his voice. Yet she was not certain — not quite certain.

  “Oh, I don’t believe we most of us understand friendship at all,” she said. “It is not characteristic of our race to let ourselves feel. Most English people neither hate nor love, nor make friends in earnest. I think one has to go South — South and East — to find hate and love and friends, just as one has to go South to find the sun. Do you know the Persian poet and what he says of his friend:

  ‘A book of verses underneath the bough, A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou Beside me singing in the wilderness, The wilderness were paradise enow.’

  Ah, that is more my notion of friendship, of the ideal of friendship, the thing that makes Paradise of the desert.”

  He got up quickly and stood before her, speaking hoarsely and quickly.

  “It does not matter what you call it,” he said. “I know what you mean. I call it love, that is all — Jeannie, Jeannie — —”

  He seized both her hands in his roughly, brutally almost, and covered them with kisses.

  “Ah, it is done!” said Jeannie quickly, and half to herself. Then she rose too, and wrenched her hands from him.

  “Have you gone mad?” she said. “Stand out of my way, please.”

  But she had not reckoned on the strength of the passion she had raised. For one moment he looked at her in blank astonishment, but he did not move. She could not get by him without violence. Then he advanced a step again towards her, as if he would have caught her to him. Jeannie put both her arms in front of her; she had turned pale to the lips.

  “Not till you have told me — —”

  “I have nothing to tell you, except that I thought you were a gentleman and a friend. There is some one coming out of the billiard-room.”

  Daisy appeared in the doorway at the moment.

  “The rubber’s over already,” she said, “just two hands. Won’t you and Lord Lindfield — —”

  She stopped suddenly. It was clear he had not heard her, for, with arms still held out, he faced Jeannie, unconscious of any one but her.

  “Jeannie — —” he began again.

  Jeannie did not look at him.

  “Please let me pass,” she said.— “No, Daisy, I think I have played enough. I am going upstairs. It is late. I am tired.”

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  Jeannie went straight to her room. It was done, even as she had said, and her heart bled for her triumph. Yet she did not for a moment repent it. Had it been necessary to do it again, she would again have gone through the same hateful scene, and her scorn of herself weighed light even now with the keeping of the promise she had made by the bedside of Diana. But the thing had been worse than she had anticipated; it was no superficial desire she had aroused in him, but the authentic fire. But that made Daisy the safer: a man was not often in earnest like that.

  But still the future was unplanned for; she had made her scene, scored her point, and the curtain, dramatically speaking, should have descended. But in real life the curtain did not descend; life insisted that there were no such things as curtains; it made one go on. She knew, too, that Lindfield would not take this as final; she had to think of something which should make it final. In any case she could not contemplate stopping in the house, with him there, and decided to go back to town to-morrow, cutting her stay here short by a day. She would go early, before any one was down; Alice would invent and explain for her.

  A note, hastily scribbled, settled this. “It is done, Alice,” she wrote, “and I feel satisfied and utterly miserable. Daisy does not exist for him. I shall go back to town early to-morrow, dear. Will you make some excuse? I know you will understand.”

  But the more important matter was not settled so easily. She had to show poor Lindfield unmistakably that her rejection of him was quite irrevocable. What interpretation he put on her conduct mattered but little, as long as he clearly understood that. And then a means occurred to her which was quite simple and quite sufficient. She wrote a couple of lines to Victor.

  “My dearest,” she said, “I must go to town early to-morrow, and shall not see you till you come up the day after. And I want you to announce our engagement at once. I should like it to be in the evening papers to-morrow. Tell them yourself down here. I write this in great haste. All love.”

  Jeannie rang for her maid to get these delivered, dismissed her for the night, and sat down to think over what she had done. She was still tremulous from it. To a man she really liked, and to a girl whom she tenderly loved, she had made herself vile, but it was still her sincere hope that neither would ever know the reason for what she had done. They must write her down a flirt; they had every reason for doing so.

  She rose and looked at herself a moment in the long mirror beside the dressing-table. “You beast!” she said to herself. But there was another thought as well. “Diana, my dear,” she said, as if comforting her.

  It had been settled that Jeannie was to live with Lady Nottingham till the end of the season, and the latter had given her two charming rooms in the Grosvenor Square house, so that she could make things home-like about her for the few weeks before she would go down to her own house in the country. Little household gods had arrived and been unpacked while she was in the country, and she occupied herself during this solitary day in London with the arrangement of them. There were not many, for she did not tend to buy, but there were a few “bits of things” which she had got in Rome, a Cinque-cento bas-relief, a couple of Florentine copies of the Della Robbia heads, and some few pieces of Italian needlework. All these took some little time to dispose satisfactorily in the room, and that done, she proceeded to the arrangement of her writing-table. She liked to have photographs there: there was one of Daisy and Diana, two mites of ten years old and four years old, lovingly entwined, Daisy’s head resting on her sister’s shoulder; there was one of Victor as he was now, and another as he had been when an Eton boy; there were half a dozen others, and among them one of Diana, signed and dated, which Diana had given her hardly more than a year ago in Paris.

  All this arranging took up the greater part of the day, and she kept herself to her work, forcing her mind away from those things which really occupied it, and making it attend to the manual business of putting books in shelves and pictures on the walls; but about tea-time there was nothing more to occupy her here, and by degrees her thoughts drifted back to Bray and her friends — or were they enemies? — there. It was no use thinking of it or them, for there was nothing more to be contrived or planned or acted, no problem for her to dig at, no crisis to avert.

  She had finished everything, and there was nothing left for her to do except be silent, and hope perhaps by degrees to win Daisy back again. How Daisy reconstructed things in her own mind Jeannie did not know, and, indeed, the details of such reconstruction she did not particularly want to know. She had taken Lord Lindfield away from the girl, for a mere caprice, apparently, for the love of annexation characteristic of flirts, while all the time she was engaged to Victor Braithwaite. And having made mischief like this, she had run away. It was like a child who, having from sheer wantonness set fire to something, runs to a safe distance and watches it burn.

  Jeannie had ordered the carriage to come round at six to take her for a drive,
and a few minutes before, though it was barely six yet, she had heard something drive up and stop at the door, and supposed that before long her maid would tell her that it was round. Even as she thought this she heard steps come along the passage outside, then her door opened.

  Daisy entered. She was very pale, but in each cheek there flamed one high spot of colour. She stood quite still by the door for a moment, looking at her aunt, then closed it and advanced into the room.

  “It is true, then, Aunt Jeannie,” she said, “that you are engaged to Victor Braithwaite? I came up from Bray to ask you that, to know it from your own lips.”

  Jeannie did not move, nor did she give Daisy any word of conventional greeting.

  “It is quite true,” she said.

  Daisy began pulling off her gloves.

  “I congratulate you,” she said. “It came as rather a surprise to me. Aunt Alice told me. I think she understood why it was a surprise to me. I wonder if you do?”

  Daisy appeared to be keeping a very firm hand on herself. There was no question that she was speaking under some tremendous stress of emotion, but her voice was quite quiet. It trembled a little, but that was all, and it seemed to Jeannie that that tremor was of anger more than of self-pity or sorrow. She was glad — in so far as she was glad of anything — that this was so.

  “I see you don’t answer me,” said Daisy, “and, indeed, there is no need. But I want an answer to this question, Aunt Jeannie. Why did you do it? Don’t you think I have a right to know that?”

  For one moment it occurred to Jeannie to profess and to persist in professing that she did not know what Daisy meant. But that would have been useless, and worse than useless — unworthy. In her utter perplexity she tried another tack.

  “Is it my fault that he fell in love with me?” she said.

  “Did you not mean him to?” asked Daisy. “And all the time, while you meant him to, you were engaged to Mr. Braithwaite.”