Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Once more she faced the situation as she conceived it to be. The time of romance, those months in the autumn were over: the red and gold of the autumn were withered from the trees. Brief had been their glory, which should have shed its light over many years yet; but, as far as she was concerned, what had made their flame was just the personal beauty of her husband. And out of them should already have sprung a deep and tender affection, the friendship which is not only the true and noble sequel of love, but is an integral part of love itself, perhaps even love’s heart. But was it there? It seemed to her rather that something bitter had come out of it, something in which regret for the past was mingled with the gall of disillusionment. And even regret had but small part in it; those months of gold seemed already unreal to her: she felt that she was regretting a dream. It was the same in little things too, for the little things all took their colour from what had been to her then the one great reality. He had referred to himself, for instance, that very afternoon as “Claudius Imperator,” and it was with a sense of unreality that she remembered the genesis of that very microscopic joke. She had bought a Roman coin in Venice with that inscription on it, and had given it to him, saying it was his label in case he was lost. Today she could not conceive doing such a thing: she could not recapture the state of mind in which she did it, the impulse even that made such a trifle conceivable. In any case, the thing was one that might be said once and then be forgotten. But Claude had the retentive Osborne sense of humour. With him it was “Once a joke, always a joke,” and from time to time, as to-day, he brought out the “Claudius Imperator” again. The Osborne humour had a heavy tread — a slow, heavy, slouching rustic tread — and a guffaw of a laugh.

  There is a Spectator within each of us who for ever watches our thoughts and words, and criticises them. It may be called conscience, or guidance, or the devil, as the case may be; for some folk are gifted with a Spectator that is their best self, others with a Spectator which is but a parody of themselves. Dora’s Spectator was above the average; he was optimistic anyhow, and kindly, and at this point he came to her aid with, so to speak, several smart raps over her knuckles. Whatever was the truth of the whole matter — if, indeed, there is any absolute truth to be arrived at in the fluid and ever-varying adjustments of our relationships with others — only one attitude is compatible with self-respect; namely, to find out and hoard like grains of gold all that is fine and generous and lovable in others, and do our best to find something in ourselves worthy of being matched with it. Instead of this, so said Dora’s Spectator to her now, she had, with acute and avid eye, been picking out all that in Claude seemed to her to be trivial or ludicrous or tiresome, and been finding in herself, to match it, intolerance and want of charity. There had been no difficulty, so said her Spectator, in laying hands on plenty of those.

  She had but one word to say in self-defence, and the moment it was said she perceived that it amounted to self-accusation. She had fallen in love with his beauty: how could she not despond when she found that she was in love with it — like that — no longer? It had blinded her to all else: she had seen his vulgarities but dimly, if at all, even as she had seen his panoply of excellent qualities but dimly. Now she saw only the vulgarities, or at any rate she saw them right in the foreground, big and blinding: while behind, in the distance, so to speak, sat the rest of him. Was it not reasonable that her outlook, which must take its colour from the past, should be pessimistic? And then even that piece of self-defence was turned into self-accusation. If that was the case, the fault had been hers from the beginning. But that was what she had done; she had separated him, the man, into packets: she had fallen in love with one packet, and now she was spreading in front of her another that only irritated and almost disgusted her. She had yet to learn the true and the wider outlook, to feel that fire of love that fuses all things together, and loves though it can tenderly laugh, and is gentle always, and rejoices in the weaknesses and imperfections and faults of the beloved, simply because they are his. For though there are many ways of love, the spirit that animates them all is just that; they are all swayed by one magical tune. But that Dora did not yet know, she had not heard a note of it, she did not even know the region of the soul where it made melody all day long. All that she had learned in the last few minutes was that she had with considerable acuteness been spying out causes for complaint, excuses for dissatisfaction. She could do a little better than that.

  By this time she had arrived at Uncle Alf’s and though the severe remarks of the Spectator had partially braced her again, after the rather sloppy abandonment of self-pity and dejection into which her introspection had brought her, it must be confessed that there was something about Uncle Alf, caustic and malicious though he was, that restored her more efficaciously. For out of all the weapons with which it is fair to fight the disappointments and despondencies that are incidental to human life, there is none sharper or more rapier-like in attack or defence than the sense of humour. And Uncle Alf was well equipped there: not even the picture dealer whom he habitually worsted would have denied that he had that. It was lambent and ill-natured; it twinkled and stung; but it had the enviable trick of perceiving what was ludicrous.

  “And I hear poor old Eddie has been out with you and Claude in Venice, my dear,” he said; “and I can’t say which I’m the most sorry for — you, or him, or Claude, or Venice.”

  “Oh, why Claude?” asked she, for she had not thought of being sorry for Claude.

  “Because you had taught him probably to admire Tintoret — or say he did — and Eddie would want him to admire the railway station. He would have to trim. A very funny party you must have been, my dear.”

  Dora laughed; till this moment she had thought of them all as a rather tragic party, and the other aspect had not occurred to her.

  “Do you know, I expect we were,” she said; “and all the time I took it seriously. I wonder if that was a mistake, Uncle Alf.”

  “To be sure it was. There’s many things in this world that will depress you, and make you good for nothing, if you take them seriously, and that cheer you up if you don’t.”

  That was not exactly wisdom out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, since Uncle Alf was a very old man, but it was a sort of elementary wisdom which a child might have hit on. And she felt that below the surface of this wizened, crabbed little old man there was something that was human. She had never suspected it before: in her shallowness she had been content to look upon him as a mask with a money-bag. To be sure, he was devoted to Claude: she had not even reckoned with what that implied, not given him credit for the power of feeling affection.

  “I believe you are right,” she said.

  “And when you’re as old as me, my dear, you will know it,” said he. “Lord, I’ve had a lot of amusement out of life — digging for it, you understand, not picking it up. Poor old Eddie amuses me more than I can say. Why, his hair is turning gray with success and pleasure.”

  “Ah, not a word against him,” said Dora; “he’s the kindest Dad that ever lived.”

  “I daresay; but there are things to laugh at in poor old Eddie, thank God. He and his Grote, and his Park Lane, and all! Did you ever see such a set-out, my dear? But Eddie in Venice must have been a shade finer yet. Tell me about it. He and Maria on the Grand Canal, and you and Claude; all in the same gondola, I’ll be bound, so as to make a family party. ‘This is the way we English go,’ good Lord. I wouldn’t have been your gondoliers on a hot day, not even for the entertainment of seeing you all like Noah’s Ark. Your gondoliers were thin men that evening, my dear, poor devils!”

  Alfred had guessed the situation with the unerring eye of cynical malice, and his words brought the scene back to Dora with amazing accuracy. That day had depressed her at the time; she had never guessed how funny it was; and here she was laughing at it now, when it was a month old!

  Alfred continued:

  “Eddie among the pictures, too,” he said. “A bull in a china shop would have been mo
re suitably housed! Why, I nearly came out myself in order to see the fun. ‘What a holy look there’s about that, Maria,’ he’d say; or, ‘My, I don’t believe it would go into the gallery at Grote unless you took the roof off.’ And he wrote to me yesterday that he had bought a copy of that housemaid among the clouds by Titian — what a daub, my dear! — with a frame to match!”

  It was too much for Uncle Alfred, and he gave a series of little squeaks on a very high note, shaking his head.

  “Eddie’s a silly man,” he said; “a very silly man is poor old Eddie, and he gets sillier as he gets older. What does he want with his Assumption of the Virgin and his six powdered footmen? What good do they do him? As little as my liniment does me. Lord, my dear, he says something too in his letter that makes me think they’re going to make a peer of him. He hints it: ah, I wish I’d kept the letter; but it made me feel sick, and I threw it away. But Eddie a peer, my dear. And I saw in a leader in the Times the other day that the Prime Minister hadn’t got a sense of humour! I reckon they’ll sack that leader writer if it’s true that Eddie’s going to have a peerage! Lord deliver us: Lord Saucepan: let’s think of half a dozen names and send some picture post cards of Venice to Lord Saucepan, care of Mr. Osborne, Park Lane; Lord Lavatory, Lord Kitchen-sink. Fancy Per too, an honourable, and Mrs. Per. My dear, I hate that woman worse than poison. I should like to smack her face. She thinks she’s a lady, and Maria thinks she’s a lady. Why, Maria’s more of a lady herself — and that’s not saying much. To see Mrs. Per and you talking together about art or acting would make a cat laugh. I wonder at your marrying Claude when you thought of his relations.”

  Dora smiled at him.

  “But that’s just what I didn’t do,” she said. “I only thought of Claude.”

  “And well you might. My dear, I love that boy. He’s got into proper hands too: you can make a lot of him. Lord Toasting-fork, Lord Egg-whisk, Lord Frying-pan,”

  Uncle Alfred could not get away from inventing titles for “poor old Eddie,” and he did it with a malicious relish that was rather instructive to Dora. It could not be called kind, but it hurt nobody; and his frank amusement at the idea of the peerage was certainly better than the heart-sinkings with which the prospect of the event had inspired Dora when she thought of the genial pomposity with which it would be received. Throughout. she had been too heavy, too ponderous: she had pulled long faces instead of laughing, had seen the depressing side of expeditions like the family party in the gondola instead of its humorous aspect. That was a hint worth attending to. She had got a sense of humour, so she believed, yet somehow it had never occurred to her to look at those spoiled days of Venice in a humorous light.

  Soon she rose to go.

  “Uncle Alfred,” she said, “you’ve done me good, do you know? It is better to be amused than depressed, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, my dear, and I hope you’ll laugh at me all the way back to town, me and my great-coat on a day like this, and my goloshes to keep the damp out, and a strip of flannel, I assure you, round the small of my back. Eh, I had the lumbago bad when first I saw you down at Grote, but the sight of those pictures of Sabincourt’s of Eddie and Maria did me more good than a pint of liniment. What a pair of guys! Lord and Lady Biscuit-tin.”

  Dora laughed again.

  “How horrid of you!” she said. “Well, I must go. Claude and I are going to the theatre to-night. And we are leaving the flat in Mount Street, Uncle Alf, and are to live in the house in Park Lane till the end of the season. Wasn’t it kind of Dad to suggest it?”

  “Not a bit of it. You’ll help entertain Maria’s fine friends, half of whom she don’t know by sight. Not but what I envy you: Maria’s as good as a play down at Grote, and Maria in London must be enough to empty the music-halls. She does too, so they tell me. She asks everybody in the ‘London Directory,’ and they all come. Good-bye, my dear; come down again some time and tell me all they do and say. Write it down every evening, else one’s liable to forget the plums.” Dora had given orders that their personal luggage should be transferred from the flat to No. 92 during the afternoon, and on her return she drove straight to that house. Claude had already arrived, and was sitting in the big Italian drawing room. He had had a most successful meeting, and was in excellent spirits.

  “This is a bit better than the flat,” he said. “I went in there just now, and it was like a furnace. But here you wouldn’t know it was a hot day. It’s a handsome apartment: the governor bought nothing but the best when he had it done. And how’s Uncle Alf?”

  “Very well, I thought, and very amusing,” said she. “Oh, Claude, he had a great-coat on, and goloshes. He is too funny!”

  Claude did not reply for a moment.

  “Darling, I hate criticising you,” he said at length, “but I don’t think you ought to laugh at Uncle Alf, considering all he does for us.”

  “But he recommended me to,” said she. “He said he hoped I should laugh at him all the way back to town. In fact we talked about laughing at people, and he said what a good plan it was.”

  Claude paused again. He felt strongly about this subject.

  “Did he laugh at the governor?” he asked.

  “Well, yes, a little,” said Dora.

  “I hope you stuck up for him. I’m sure you did.” Dora gave a hopeless little sigh: she wondered if Uncle Alfred could have seen the humorous aspect of this; personally she could not.

  “It was no question of sticking up for him,” she said. “It was all chaff, fun.”

  Claude got up, with his chin a good deal protruded. “Ah, fun is all very well in its right place,” he said, “and I’m sure no one likes a joke more than me. But there are certain things one should hold exempt from one’s fun —— —”

  Dora tried the humorous plan recommended by Uncle Alfred.

  “Darling, I hope you don’t consider yourself exempt,” she said. “I am laughing at you now. You are ridiculous, dear. You take things heavily, and I do too. We must try not to. So I hereby give you leave to laugh at mother and Austell as much as you like — and me.”

  “Dora, I am serious,” he said.

  “I know; that is just the trouble,” she said, still lightly. Claude’s face darkened.

  “Well, it’s a trouble you must learn to put up with,” he said rather sharply. “I daresay I’m old-fashioned: you may call me what you like. But I ask you to respect my father. I daresay he and the mater seem to you ridiculous at times. If they do, I ask you to keep your humorous observations to yourself. I hate speaking like this, but I am obliged to.”

  Dora felt her hands grow suddenly cold and damp. She was not afraid of him exactly, but there was some physical shrinking from him that was rather like fear.

  “I don’t see the obligation,” she said.

  “Perhaps not. It is sufficient that I do. Now let’s have done. We spoke on the same subject, your attitude to my father, in Venice. Don’t let us speak of it again!”

  “You say your say, and I am to make no reply. Is that it?” she asked.

  “Yes; that is it. I know I am right. Come, Dora.” But the appeal had no effect, and for the moment she did not know how to apply Uncle Alf’s wise counsels.

  “And if I know you are wrong?” she asked. “If I tell you that you don’t understand?”

  “It will make no difference. Look here: the governor has done lots for you. You’ve never expressed a wish but what he hasn’t gratified.”

  “Then ask him if he is satisfied with my attitude toward him,” said Dora. “See what he says. Tell him that Uncle Alfred has laughed at him, and I laughed too. Tell him all.”

  “I wouldn’t hurt him like that,” said Claude.

  Dora walked to the window and back again. She felt helpless in a situation she believed to be trivial. But she could not laugh it off: she could think of no light reply that would act as a dissolvent to it. And if she could find no light reply, only a serious answer or silence was possible. She chose the latter. If more words were
to be said, she wished that Claude should have the responsibility of them. Eventually he took it.

  “And I’m sure we’ve all been good enough to your people,” he said; “made them welcome at Grote for as long as they chose, and behaved friendly. And it was only ten minutes before you came in that I wrote to Jim, telling him he could live in the flat and welcome till the end of July. I don’t see what I could do more.”

  The logical reply was on the tip of Dora’s tongue — the reply “That did not cost you anything” — but she let it get no further. Only she rebelled against the thought that it was a kindness to do something that did not cost anything. He thought it was kind — and so in a way it was — to give Jim the flat rent free. He might perhaps have let it for fifty pounds. But he did not want fifty pounds. Yet he thought that it was kind: it seemed to him kind. It must be taken at that: it was no use arguing, going into the reasons for which it was no real kindness at all. And he had told her that now, she felt sure, to contrast his friendliness to her relations with her ridicule — so he would put it — of his. But he had done his best: she was bound to take it like that, not point out the cheapness of it.

  “Claude, dear, that was nice of you,” she said, searching for anything that should magnify his kindness. “And Jim will be an awful tenant. He will leave your books about and smoke your cigars. I hope you’ve locked them up.”