Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Ah, but how dear of you,” she said cordially, “but we shall make all kinds of mistakes. Are you sure you and Mrs. Osborne are willing to risk our making a hash of your party? I shall probably forget most things, and Claude will complete it by forgetting the remainder.” Mr. Osborne laughed.

  “My dear, you fill my plate with that hash, and I’ll ask for more,” he said. “I’ll send up my plate twice for that hash, hey? That’s capital, and it will give Mrs. O. a bit of a rest, for she’s a little overdone. Indeed, I was thinking of putting off the party, but she wouldn’t hear of it. And there’s another thing, my dear. Couldn’t you manage to call me ‘Dad,’ as the boys do? It isn’t in nature that you should call Claude’s father Mr. Osborne. I know it’s a favour to ask, like, but you and me hit it off from the first, didn’t we? You was the right wife for Claude, and no mistake.”

  That met with a far more spontaneous response from Dora. There was affection, kindness, as always, in what he said, but there was more than that now — namely, a pathos of a very touching kind, in his making a favour of so simple a request. Dora was ashamed of not having complied with it before it was asked.

  “Why, of course,” she said. “Dad, Dad, doesn’t it come naturally? And if you talk such nonsense, Dad, about its being a favour, I shall — I shall call Claude Mr. Osborne Junior.”

  He patted her hand gently.

  “Thank you, my dear, thank you,” he said. “Mrs. Per calls me Mr. Osborne, as you’ve often heard, and I don’t know that with her somehow that I want her to call me different. But I know with people like you, born in another rank of life, that’s not the custom. You make pet names and what not, not that I ask that. But I should feel it as a favour, my dear, I should indeed, if you felt you could manage to say ‘Dad’ like the boys do.” Dora held up a reproachful forefinger.

  “Now, I warn you, Dad,” he said. “In one moment Claude shall be called what I said he should be.”

  “Then not a word more about it. Well, give my love to that rascal who’s got so much more than he deserves, bless him, and we expect you both to-morrow. Gone to see Uncle Alf, has he? Poor old Alf: a mass of lumbago he was when I saw him two days ago. And acid? I should scarce have thought that anyone could have felt so unkind. And a beautiful day it was, too, with the sun shining, and all nature, as you may say, rejoicing — all but poor old Alf, God bless him. But Claude always does him more good than a quart of liniment, or embrocation either, though what he spends on doctors’ stuff is beyond all telling.”

  Such was Mr. Osborne’s plan, and, as has been said, the accomplishment of it gave Dora some rather bad moments. The party was terrifically ill-assorted: Lady Ewart, Mrs. Price, and one or two more like them and their husbands, being balanced against her mother and Austell, the Hungarian ambassador and his wife, and several others of that particular world in which both Mr and Mrs. Osborne so much wished to be at home. Dora, in consequence, was positively tossed and gored by unremitting dilemma. She was obliged to make herself what she would have called both cheap and vulgar in order to convey at all to the Prices and Ewarts that particular pitch of cordiality to which they were accustomed. Alderman Price, for instance, habitually declined a second helping, not because he did not want (and intend) to have it, but because good manners made him say “No” the first time and “Yes” the second. As for asking for more, as Austell did, he would not have considered that any kind of behaviour. He was used to be pressed or “tempted,” and Dora had to press and tempt him — a thing which, though she would have been delighted if he had eaten a whole haunch of venison, she found difficult to do naturally. You had to call the footman back (Mrs. Osborne did it quite easily), and get him to put Mr. Price’s plate aside, and wait till he had given the affair a second thought. Then he said, “Well, I don’t know as if—” and the matter was brought to a triumphant conclusion. Yet it was not easy to manage if the procedure was new to you. Or, again, his wife particularly liked a glass of port after dinner, which after all was a completely innocent desire, but her gentility was such that she would never have thought of accepting it when it was casually offered her, but every night it had to be accepted in order to oblige Dora. Mrs. Osborne, before giving up the reins of government to her daughter-in-law, had imparted this diplomatic instruction, and Dora had been subsequently assured that her pressing and tempting was held to be the perfection of hospitality.

  The flow of badinage, too, that went on incessantly from morning till night, and was almost exclusively matrimonial in character, was difficult to live up to, for whatever she or Claude did was construed by Mr. Osborne or Sir Thomas (with whom Dora, so she was assured by Lady Ewart, had become a favourite) into having some connubial bearing. If, as happened one day, Claude drove Mrs. Price home from the shooting, Lady Ewart, with an inflamed and delighted countenance, told Dora that she wouldn’t wonder if they lost their way, and said the motor had broken down, to explain their coming in late. Or again Dora was pompously asked by Sir Thomas, on a morning of streaming wet, when no shooting was possible, to have a game of billiards, and accepting this proposal was expected to be immensely amused by the suggestion that Claude would be found hiding in the window seat, to hear what went on. The joke was all-embracing; if she spoke to Claude somebody wondered (audibly) what she was saying; if she spoke to anyone else, it was, again audibly, imagined that Claude was looking jealous. And if, for the moment, she did not speak to anybody, wonder was expressed as to what was on her mind.

  All this was trivial enough in itself, and, as she well knew, oceans and continents of kindliness lay behind it. Her guests — this section of them at any rate — were pleased and well entertained as far as her part was concerned, and were charmed with her. But during all those seven stricken days — for the party was of the most hospitable order, and embraced a complete week — she had to nail a brave face, so to speak, over her own, and set her teeth inside the smiling mouth. The Prices and the Ewarts had come here to enjoy themselves, and clearly they did. But there was a certain thick-skinned robustness which was necessary to anyone who had to enter into the spirit of their enjoyment. Had the party consisted entirely of Ewarts and Prices and “Pers,” Dora would have found her own conduct an affair of infinitely less difficulty. As it was, her mother and Austell were there, and some six or seven more of her own world who looked on with faint smiles at such times as humour was particularly abundant, and, to do the barest justice to it, it must be said that it seemed unfailingly ubiquitous. One night Sir Thomas had taken Madame Kodjek, the wife of the Hungarian ambassador, into dinner, and in an unusual pause in the conversation Dora had heard her say in her faint silvery voice: “How very amusing, Sir Thomas. What fun you must have in Sheffield.” Then she turned her back on him, put a barrier of a white elbow on the table between him and her, and talked to Dora herself, three places off, for the rest of dinner — a thing which, as Sir Thomas’s indignant face silently testified, was conduct to which he was unaccustomed. Clearly such breach of ordinary manners was a thing unheard of in Sheffield. Dora, halfway between giggles and despair at the incident, had not, though longing to know, the heart to ask Mimi afterward what was the particular incident that made her conclude that life in Sheffield was so humorous an affair; but Sir Thomas had confided in his favourite that he thought the Baroness a very haughty lady and without any sense of what was due “to the gentleman who took you in to dinner.”

  It had been difficult, therefore, to steer a course, and, as in the case of those wandering channels in the lagoons, there were here no friendly groups of pali to guide her. She had to guess her way, turn her helm swiftly this way and that, to avoid running aground. Had she not been Dora Osborne she would, if she had found herself in a house party of this description, have had entrancing bedroom talks to Mimi and others about Sir Thomas and the Ewarts, and — the Osbornes. Such talks would not have been unkindly; she would have seen, even as she saw now, that all manner of excellent qualities underlay the irredeemable vulgarity, and, a thing more
difficult in her present position, she would have seen the humorous side of affairs. But, as it was, she could not have any bedroom talks at all of this description. Indeed, Mimi and others pointedly avoided, as they were bound to do, any mention of these other guests from the amiable desire not to say things that would embarrass her. Dora had married an Osborne, and by that act had joined another circle. True, she had not in the least left her own, but she had taken on, by necessity, the relations and friends of her husband. Indeed, looking at the transaction as a whole, there was not one of her friends who did not think she had done right, and few who did not a little envy her. There were some slight inconveniences in marrying into such a family, but they weighed very light indeed if balanced against the consequent advantages, and it was the business of her friends to minimize these disadvantages for her, pretend that Sir Thomas made no particular impression on them, and be deaf to Dora’s insidiousness in getting Mrs. Price to have her glass of port. And the advantages were so great, she had gained superabundant wealth in exchange for crippling poverty, the Osbornes’ house was now one to which everybody of any sense, and many of no sense, went, if they were so fortunate as to be asked, and, above all, she had married that charming and quiet Adonis of a husband, who looked anyhow leagues away from and above his effusive parents.

  And Claude? During all this week Dora had been filled with an almost ecstatic admiration of him. He took the place corresponding to that which she herself so difficultly occupied, with perfect ease and success, and without apparent effort. To Mrs. Price’s most outrageous sallies he found a reply that convulsed her with laughter, or made her, as the case might be, call him a “naughty man,” and the thing seemed to be no trouble to him. And for the time, anyhow, such replies gave her no jerks, or, if they did, they were jerks of relief. “I shall warn Sir Thomas, Lady Ewart,” he would say, “and you will find yourself watched,” and without pause or hint of discomfiture continue a Bach conversation with Madame Kodjek.

  Dora had set herself with a heartfelt enthusiasm to study and find out the secret of this wonderful performance, and she came to the conclusion that it was consummate tact grafted on to a nature as kindly as his father’s or mother’s that produced this perfect flower of behaviour. And the tact — a rare phenomenon rather, for tact implies the tactician, the pleasant schemer — was apparently unconscious. At least if it was conscious, it was Claude’s delightful modesty that disclaimed the knowledge of it. One evening she had a word with him about it.

  “Darling, I don’t know how you manage,” she said, “and oh, Claude, I wish you would teach me. Everyone’s delighted with you, and you do it all so easily. How can you flirt — yes, darling, flirt — with Mrs. Price one moment and without transition talk to Mimi on the other side?”

  “Oh, the Price woman isn’t so bad,” said he. “She’s a kind old soul really, and if you chaff her a bit she asks no more.”

  He had come in to see her before going down to the smoking room again, where the best cigars in England were, so to speak, on tap, and where Per and Sir Thomas, between the cigars, a little brandy and soda, and the recollections of their prowess among the pheasants during the day, always sat up late. In Mr. Osborne’s house it was one of the rules of honour that the host should express a wish to sit up later than any of his guests, or wait at any rate till they all had yawned before proposing retirement, and Claude, after this cheerful remark about Mrs. Price, turned to leave the room again. Dora knew what was expected of him and suddenly rebelled.

  “Surely you can leave them to drink and smoke and turn out the lights,” she said. “Do stop and talk to me. I have sent Hendon away, and who is to brush my hair? Besides, I want to talk. I’ve got better right to talk to you than Sir Thomas has. Oh, Claude, teach me: you are yourself all the time, and yet you can say things to Mrs. Price, which, if it wasn’t you—”

  Dora broke off. He had unpinned the tiara, which was one of his father’s many wedding gifts to her, and which she wore, knowing it was a ludicrous thing to do in the country, because it pleased him, and next moment her hair, unpinned also by a movement or two of his deft fingers, fell in cataracts round her face.

  “I don’t see the trouble,” he said. “Lady Ewart isn’t your sort, darling, but it’s you who are so clever. It’s you who manage so well, not me. Why, she said only to-day that she was quite jealous of you, for Sir Thomas thought such a lot of you, though of course that was only her chaff. And they say he’ll be in the running for a peerage at the next birthday honours.”

  For the moment Dora was silent; simply she could not speak. She saw in the looking glass in front of her, looking over his shoulder, that face which to her was the most beautiful thing in the world, and simultaneously she heard what that beautiful mouth said. For that instant her mind was divided: it could not choose between beauty and the hopelessness of what was said. As if anybody cared who was made a peer, or as if a peerage conferred not only nobility but a single ounce of breeding! As if a problematic Lord Ewart could be for that reason even a shade more tolerable than a Sir Thomas of the same name! What could it matter, except to guards and railway porters who might count on a rather larger tip? And then the greater potency of her lover’s face absorbed her, and she lifted up her hands and drew it down to her. “Ah, well, what does it all matter?” she said, “so long as there’s you and me? But go down, dear, if you think you had better, and be sure to yawn a great deal, so that they won’t sit up very late.”

  But after he had gone she wondered whether she guessed the reason why Claude made himself appropriate so easily to Lady Ewart and Mrs. Price. Was it simply because he found no difficulty in doing so? Was not his cleverness, his tact, shown rather in the fact that he could talk to Mimi appropriately? And it was at that moment, as she remembered now, that a certain trouble, vague and distant as yet, and couched in the innermost recesses and darkness of her mind, began to stir. She scarcely then knew what it was: she knew only that there was veiled trouble somewhere.

  After this week of the shooting party, she and Claude had returned to town, still occupying the flat in Mount Street, where they remained till Christmas, with weekends in the country. Most of these had been passed at the houses of Dora’s friends, and it could not but please and gratify her to find how Claude was welcomed and liked, so that, if at Grote there had been trouble astir, it was still again. He did all the usual things better than the average: he shot well, he played golf excellently, he was a quiet and reliable partner at bridge, he talked pleasantly, always got up when a woman entered the room, and always opened the door for her to leave it. Such accomplishments did not, it is true, reach down very far below the surface, but a young man, if he happens to be quite exceptionally good-looking and has such things at his fingers’ ends, will generally be a welcome guest. Dora had never actually wanted comforting with regard to him, but it pleased her to see that he took his place easily and naturally. For the rest, he was busy enough, for in view of the next general election he was nursing a suburban constituency, which promised well. He spoke with fluency and good sense, he was making an excellent impression in public, and he earned a considerable personal popularity in the domestic circles of his voters. And in this connection Dora had another uncomfortable moment.

  As was frankly admitted between them, she could help him a good deal here, and she often went down with him and made innumerable calls at West Brentworth on miles of detached and semi-detached villas. It was an advantage beyond doubt, in this sort of place, that Claude had married a girl of “title,” and Lady Dora Osborne, or, as she was more generally addressed, Lady Osborne, charmed a large section of constituents not only because she was delightful, but because her brother was the Earl and her mother the Countess. There was no use in denying or failing to make the most of this adventitious advantage, and Dora made the most of it by being completely natural, and entering with zest into the questions of board-wages and the iniquities of tweenies. She could do that with knowledge and experience to back her, since suc
h minutiae had formed a very real part of her life up to the time of her marriage, and her mother was an adept in getting the most out of those who were so fortunate as to be the recipients of the somewhat exiguous wages. She could speak about beer money and the use of coals when the household was on board-wages with point and accuracy, and it charmed West Brentworth to find that Lady Osborne was not “too high” to take interest in such matters. At other houses, however, there reigned a more aristocratic tone: there would be a peerage and a copy of the World on the table, and a marked unconsciousness of the existence of anybody who was not a baronet. There the parties for Newmarket were discussed, and Mrs. Sandford, pouring out tea, and “tempting” Lady Osborne to a second cup, would say that the whole world seemed to have been in town lately, and was Lady Osborne dining at the Carlton two nights ago when so many distinguished people were there?

  Upon which would ensue a very enlightened conversation. Mrs. Sandford knew quite well that the Earl of Wendover was Dora’s first cousin, and the Viscount Bramley her second cousin (for that came out of the peerage) and what a beautiful terrace there was at Bramley (for that came out of Country Life).

  Then — and this was the uncomfortable moment —— she and Claude got into their motor, having made the last call, and started for town. Claude said, “What a superior woman Mrs. Sandford seems to be.”

  All these things, and others of which these were typical, Dora thought over as she sat in the window of her sala looking over the Grand Canal on that baking afternoon in June when Claude had gone to Milan to meet his father and mother. They were all trivial enough, each at any rate was trivial; but to-day she wondered whether there was an addition sum to be done with regard to them. Each, if she took them singly, might be disregarded, just as half-pennies have no official status on cheques and are not treated seriously. But did they add up to something, to something that could not be disregarded?