by E. F. Benson
Jack, for all his grizzled hair and his serious political years, had a great deal about him that was still boyish, and with the inconsistency of youth having settled that it was impossible to think about his chance, proceeded very earnestly to do so. The chance seemed a conspicuously outside one. She had had more than one opportunity of marrying him before, and had felt herself unable to take advantage of it: it was very little likely that she would find him desirable now. Twice already she had embarked on the unaccountable sea; both times her boat had foundered. Once the sea was made, in her estimate, of cotton-wool; the second time, in anybody’s estimate, of amorous brandy. It was not to be expected that she would experiment again with so unexpected a Proteus.
Meantime a parliament of the younger generation in Nadine’s room were talking with the frankness that characterized them about exactly the same subject as Jack was revolving alone, for Dodo had gone away with Edith in order to epitomize the last twenty years, and begin again with a fresh twenty to-morrow.
“It is quite certain that it is Mama he wants to marry and not me,” said Nadine. “I thought it was going to be me. I feel a little hurt, like when one isn’t asked to a party to which one doesn’t want to go.
“You don’t want to go to any parties,” said Hugh rather acidly, “but I believe you love being asked to them.”
Nadine turned quickly round to him.
“That is awfully unfair, Hughie,” she said in a low voice, “if you mean what I suppose you do. Do you mean that?”
“What I mean is quite obvious,” he said.
Nadine got up from the window-seat where she was sitting with him.
“I think we had all better go to bed,” she said. “Hugh is being odious.”
“If you meant what you said,” he remarked, “the odiousness is with you. It is bad taste to tell one that you feel hurt that the Ripper doesn’t want you to marry him.”
Nadine was silent a moment. Then she held out her hand to him.
“Yes, you are quite right, Hugh,” she said. “It was bad taste. I am sorry. Is that enough?”
He nodded, and dropped her hand again.
“The fact is we are all rather cross,” said Esther. “We haven’t had a look in to-night.”
“Mother is quite overwhelming,” said Berts. “She and Aunt Dodo between them make one feel exactly a hundred and two years old, as old as John. Here we all sit, we old people, Nadine and Esther and Hugh and I, and we are really much more serious than they.”
“Your mother is serious enough about her music,” said Nadine. “And Jack is serious about Mama. The fact is that they are serious about serious things.”
“Do you really think of Mother as a serious person with her large boots and her laurel-crown?” asked Berts.
“Certainly: all that is nothing to her. She doesn’t heed it, while we who think we are musical can see nothing else. I couldn’t bear her quartette either, and I know how good it was. I really believe that we are rotten before we are ripe. I except Hugh.”
Nadine got up, and began walking up and down the room as she did when her alert analytical brain was in grips with a problem.
“Look at Jack the Ripper,” she said. “Why, he’s living in high romance, he’s like a very nice gray-headed boy of twenty. Fancy keeping fresh all that time! Hugh and he are fresh. Berts is a stale old man, who can’t make up his mind whether he wants to marry Esther or not. I am even worse. I am interested in Plato, and in all the novels about social reform and dull people who live in sordid respectability, which Mama finds so utterly tedious.”
Nadine threw her arms wide.
“I can’t surrender myself to anybody or anything,” she said. “I can be cool and judge, but I can’t get away from my mind. It sits up in a corner like a great governess. Whereas Mama takes up her mind like one of those flat pebbles on the shore and plays ducks and drakes with it, throws it into the sea, and then really enjoys herself, lets herself feel. If for a moment I attempt to feel, my mind gives me a poke and says ‘attend to your lessons, Miss Nadine!’ The great Judy! If only I could treat her like one, and take her out and throw brickbats at her. But I can’t: I am terrified of her; also I find her quite immensely interesting. She looks at me over the top of her gold-rimmed spectacles, and though she is very hard and angular yet somehow I adore her. I loathe her you know, and want to escape, but I do like earning her approbation. Silly old Judy!”
Berts gave a heavy sigh.
“What an extraordinary lot of words to tell us that you are an intellectual egoist,” he said. “And you needn’t have told us at all. We all knew it.”
Nadine gave her hiccup-laugh.
“I am like the starling,” she said. “I can’t get out. I want to get out and go walking with Hugh. And he can’t get in. For what a pack of miseries was le bon Dieu responsible when he thought of the world.”
“I should have been exceedingly annoyed if He had not thought of me,” said Berts.
Nadine paused opposite the window-seat, where Hugh was sitting silent.
“Oh, Hugh,” she said, speaking very low, “there is a real me somewhere, I believe. But I cannot find it. I am like the poor thing in the fairy-tale, that lost its shadow. Indeed I am in the more desperate plight, I have got my shadow, but I have lost my substance, though not in riotous living.”
“For God’s sake find it,” he said, “and then give it me to keep safe.”
She looked at him, with her dim smile that always seemed to him to mean the whole world.
“When I find it, you shall have it,” she said.
“And last night it was the moon you wanted,” said he, “not yourself.”
Nadine shrugged her shoulders.
“What would you have?” she said. “That was but another point of view. Do not ask me to see things always from the same standpoint. And now, since my mama and Berts have made us all feel old, let us put on our night-caps and put some cold cream on our venerable faces and go to bed. Perhaps to-morrow we shall feel younger.”
CHAPTER IV
Seymour Sturgis (who, Berts thought, ought to have been drowned when he was a girl) was employed one morning in July in dusting his jade. He lived in a small flat just off Langham Place, with a large, capable, middle-aged Frenchwoman, who worshiped the ground on which he so delicately trod with the cloth-topped boots which she made so resplendent. She cooked for him in the inimitable manner of her race, she kept his flat speckless and shining, she valeted him, she did everything in fact except dust the jade. Highly as Seymour thought of Antoinette he could not let her do that. He always alluded to her as “my maid,” and used to take her with him, as valet, to country-houses. It must, however, be added that he did this largely to annoy, and he largely succeeded.
The room which was adorned by his collection of jade, seemed somehow strangely unlike a man’s room. A French writing-table stood in the window with a writing-case and blotting-book stamped with his initials in gilt; by the pen-tray was a smelling-bottle with a gold screw-top to it. Thin lace blinds hung across the windows, and the carpet was of thick fawn-colored fabric with remarkably good Persian rugs laid down over it. On the chimney-piece was a Louis Seize garniture of clock and candlesticks, and a quantity of invitation cards were stuck into the mirror behind. There were half-a-dozen French chairs, a sofa, a baby-grand, a small table or two, and a book-case of volumes all in morocco dress-clothes. On the walls there were a few prints, and in glazed cabinets against the wall was the jade. Nothing, except perhaps the smelling-bottle, suggested a mistress rather than a master, but the whole effect was feminine. Seymour rather liked that: he had very little liking for his own sex. They seemed to him both clumsy and stupid, and his worst enemies (of whom he had plenty) could not accuse him of being either the one or the other. On their side they disliked him because he was not like a man: he disliked them because they were.
But while he detested his own sex, he did not regard the other with the ordinary feeling of a man. He liked their dresses, t
heir perfumes, their hair, their femininity, more than he liked them. He was quite as charming to plain old ladies, even as Dodo had said, as he was to girls, and he was perfectly happy, when staying in the country, to go a motor drive with aunts and grandmothers. He had a perfectly marvelous digestion; ate a huge lunch, sat still in the motor all afternoon, and had quantities of buttered buns for tea. He dressed rather too carefully to be really well-dressed and always wore a tie and socks of the same color, which repeated in a more vivid shade the tone of his clothes. He had a large ruby ring, a sapphire ring and an emerald ring: they were worn singly and matched his clothes. He spoke French quite perfectly.
All these depressing traits naturally enraged such men as came in contact with him, but though they abhorred him they could not openly laugh at him, for he had a tongue, when he chose, of quite unparalleled acidity, and was markedly capable of using it when required and taking care of himself afterwards. In matters of art, he had a taste that was faultless, and his taste was founded on real knowledge and technique, so that really great singers delighted to perform to his accompaniment, and in matters of jewelry he designed for Cartier. In fact, from the point of view of his own sex, he was detestable rather than ridiculous, while considerable numbers of the other sex did their very best to spoil him, for none could want a more amusing companion, and his good looks were quite undeniable. But somewhere in his nature there was a certain grit which quite refused to be ground into the pulp of a spoiled young man. In his slender frame, too, there were nerves of steel, and, most amazing of all, when not better employed in designing for Cartier, or engaged in bloodless flirtations, he was a first-class golfer. But he preferred to go for a drive in the afternoon, and smoke a succession of rose-scented cigarettes, which could scarcely be considered tobacco at all. He was fond of food, and drank a good many glasses of port rather petulantly, after dinner, as if they were medicine.
This morning he was particularly anxious that his jade should show to advantage, for Nadine was coming to lunch with him, to ask his advice about something which she thought was old Venetian-point lace. He had taken particular pains also about the lunch: everything was to be en casserole; there were eggs in spinach, and quails, and a marvelous casseroled cherry tart. He could not bear that anything about him, whether designed for the inside or the outside, should be other than exquisite, and he would have been just as sedulous a Martha, if that strange barbarian called Berts was coming, only he would have given Berts an immense beefsteak as well.
The bell of his flat tinkled announcing Nadine. He did not like the shrill treble bells, and had got one that made a low bubbling note like the laugh of Sir Charles Wyndham; and Nadine came in.
“Enchanted!” he said. “How is Philistia?”
“Not being the least glad of you,” she said. “I wish I could make people detest me, as Berts detests you. It shows force of character. Oh, Seymour, what jade! It is almost shameless! Isn’t it shameless jade I mean? Is any one else coming to lunch?”
“Of course not. I don’t dilute you with other people; I prefer Nadine neat. Now let’s have the crisis at once. Bring out the lace.”
Nadine produced a small parcel and unfolded it.
“Pretty,” said he.
Then he looked at it more closely, and tossed it aside. “I hoped it was more like Venetian point than that,” he said. “It’s all quite wrong: the thread’s wrong: the stitch is wrong: it smells wrong. Don’t tell me you’ve bought it.”
“No, I shan’t tell you,” she said.
He took it up again and pondered.
“You got it at Ducane’s,” he said. “I remember seeing it. Well, take it back to Ducane, and tell him if he sold it as Venetian, that he must give you back your money. My dear, it is no wonder that these dealers get rich, if they can palm off things like that. C’est fini. — Ah, but that is an exquisite aquamarine you are wearing. Those little diamond points round it throw the light into it. How odd people usually are about jewelry. They think great buns of diamonds are sufficient to make an adornment. You might as well send up an ox’s hind-leg on the table. What makes the difference is the manner of its presentation. Who is that lady who employs herself in writing passionate love-novels? She says on page one that he was madly in love with her, on page two that she was madly in love with him, on page three that they were madly in love with each other, and then come some asterisks. (How much more artistic, by the way, if they printed the asterisks and left out the rest! Then we should know what it really was like.) You can appreciate nothing until it is framed or cooked: then you can see the details. The poor lady presents us with chunks of meat and informs us that they are amorous men and women. I will write a novel some day, from the detached standpoint, observing and noting. Then I shall go away, abroad. It is only bachelors who can write about love. Do you like my tie?”
Seymour had a trick of putting expression into what he said by means of his hands. He waved and dabbed with them: they fondled each other, and then started apart as if they had quarreled. Sometimes one finger pointed, sometimes another, and they were all beautifully manicured. Antoinette did that, and as she scraped and filed and polished, he talked his admirable French to her, and asked after the old home in Normandy, where she learned to make wonderful soup out of carrots and turnips and shin-bones of beef. At the moment she came in to announce the readiness of lunch.
“Oh, is it lunch already?” said Nadine. “Can’t we have it after half an hour? I should like to see the jade.”
“Oh, quite impossible,” said he. “She has taken such pains. It would distress her. For me, I should prefer not to lunch yet, but she is the artist now. They are fragile things, Nadine, eggs in spinach. You must come at once.”
“How greedy you are,” she said.
“For you that is a foolish thing to say. I am simply thinking of Antoinette’s pride. It is as if I blew a soap-bubble, all iridescent, and you said you would come to look at it in ten minutes. You shall tell me news: if you talk you can always eat. What has happened in Philistia?”
Nadine frowned.
“You think of us all as Philistines,” she said, “because we like simple pleasures, and because we are enthusiastic.”
“Ah, you mistake!” he said. “You couple two reasons which have nothing to do with each other. To be enthusiastic is the best possible condition, but you must be enthusiastic over what is worth enthusiasm. Is it so lovely really, that Aunt Dodo has settled to marry the Ripper? Surely that is a rechauffée. You wrote me the silliest letter about it. Of course it does not matter at all. Much more important is that you look perfectly exquisite. Antoinette, the spinach is sans pareil: give me some more spinach. But it is slightly bourgeois in Jack the R. to have been faithful for so many years. It shows want of imagination, also I think a want of vitality, only to care for one woman.”
“That is one more than you ever cared for,” remarked Nadine.
“I know. I said it was bourgeois to care for one. There is a difference. It is also like a troubadour. I am not in the least like a troubadour. But I think I shall get married soon. It gives one more liberty: people don’t feel curious about one any more. English people are so odd: they think you must lead a double life, and if you don’t lead the ordinary double life with a wife, they think you lead it with somebody else and they get curious. I am not in the least curious about other people: they can lead as many lives as a piano has strings for all I care, and thump all the strings together, or play delicate arpeggios on them. Nadine, that hat-pin of yours is simply too divine. I will eat it pin and all if it is not Fabergé.”
Nadine laughed.
“I can’t imagine you married,” she said. “You would make a very odd husband.”
“I would make a very odd anything,” said he. “I don’t find any recognized niche that really fits me, whereas almost everybody has some sort of niche. Indeed in the course of hundreds of years the niches, that is the manners of life, have been evolved to suit the sorts of types which nature prod
uces. They live in rows and respect each other. But why it should be considered respectable to marry and have hosts of horrible children I cannot imagine. But it is, and I bow to the united strength of middle-class opinion. But neither you nor I are really made to live in rows. We are Bedouins by nature, and like to see a different sunrise every day. There shall be another tent for Antoinette.”
That admirable lady was just bringing them their coffee, and he spoke to her in French.
“Antoinette, we start for the desert of Sahara to-morrow,” he said. “We shall live in tents.”
Antoinette’s plump face wrinkled itself up into enchanted smiles.
“Bien, m’sieur,” she said. “A quelle heure?”
Nadine crunched up her coffee-sugar between her white teeth.
“You are as little fitted to cross the desert of Sahara as any one I ever met,” she said.
“I should not cross it: I should—”
“You would be miserable without your jade or your brocade and the sand would get into your hair, and you would have no bath,” she said. “But every one who thinks has a Bedouin mind: it always wants me to go on and find new horizons and get nearer to blue mountains.”
“The matter with you is that you want and you don’t know what you want,” said he.
Nadine nodded at him. Sometimes when she was with him she felt as if she was talking to a shrewd middle-aged man, sometimes to a rather affected girl. Then occasionally, and this had been in evidence to-day, she felt as if she was talking to some curious mixture of the two, who had a girl’s intuition and a man’s judgment. Fond as she was of the friends whom she had so easily gathered round her, gleeful as was the nonsense they talked, serious as was her study of Plato, she felt sometimes that all those sunny hours concerned but the surface of her, that, as she had said before, the individual, the character that sat behind was not really concerned in them. And Seymour, when he made mixture of his two types, had the effect of making her very conscious of the character that sat behind. He had described it just now in a sentence: it wanted it knew not what.