Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  She paused again.

  “Jack, are you sure?” she asked. “I want you to have the best life that you can have. Are you sure you give yourself the best chance with me? My dear, there will be no syllable of reproach, on my lips or in my mind, if you reconsider. You ought to marry a younger woman than me. You will be still a man at sixty, I shall be just a thing at fifty-eight.”

  Dodo took a long breath and stood up.

  “Marry Nadine,” she said. “She is so like what I was: you said it yourself. And she hasn’t been battered like me. I think she would marry you. I know how fond she is of you, anyhow, and the rest will follow. I can’t bear to think of you pushing my Bath chair. God knows, I have spoiled many of your years. But, God knows, I don’t want to spoil more of them. She will give you all that I could have given you twenty years ago. Ah, my dear, the years. How cruel they are! How they take away from us all that we want most! You love children, for instance, Jack. Perhaps I shall not be able to give you children. Nadine is twenty-one. That is a long time ago. You should consider. I said ‘yes’ to you yesterday, but perhaps I had not thought about it sufficiently. I have thought since. Before you came down to Meering I was awake so long one night, wondering why you came. I was quite prepared that it should be Nadine you wanted. And, oh, how gladly I would give Nadine to you, instead of giving myself: I should see: I should understand. At first I thought that I should not like it, that I should be jealous, to put it quite frankly, of Nadine. But somehow now that I know that your first desire was for me, I am jealous no longer. Take Nadine, Jack! I want you to take Nadine. It will be better. We know each other well enough to trust each other, and now that I tell you that there will be nothing but rejoicing left in my heart, if you want Nadine, you must believe that I tell you the entire truth. I know very well about Nadine. She will not marry Hugh. She wants somebody who has a bigger mind. She wants also to put Hugh out of the question. She does not mean to marry him, and she would like it to be made impossible. Woo Nadine, dear Jack, and win her. She will give you all I could once have given you, all that I ought to have given you.”

  At that moment Dodo was making the great renunciation of her life. She had been completely stirred out of herself and she pleaded against her own cause. She was quite sincere and she wanted Jack’s happiness more than her own. She believed even while she renounced all claim on him, that her best chance of happiness was with him, for it had taken her no time at all to make up her mind when he proposed to her yesterday. And she had not exaggerated when just now she told him that he ran through her life like a string that keeps the beads of time in place. She had never felt for another man what she had felt for him, and her declaration of his freedom was a real renunciation, made impulsively but most generously and completely. She really meant it, and she did not pause to consider that the offer was one of which no man could conceivably take advantage. And Jack felt and knew her sincerity.

  “You are absolutely free, my dear,” she said. “Absolutely! And I will come to your wedding, and dance at it if you like, for joy that you are happy.”

  He got up too.

  “There will be no wedding unless you come to it,” he said. “Dance at it, Dodo, but marry me. Nobody else will do.”

  Dodo looked him full in the face.

  “Edith was quite right to remind you of — of what I have done,” she said.

  “And I am quite right to forget it,” said he.

  She shook her head, smiling a little tremulously.

  “Oh, Jack,” she said in a sigh.

  He took her close to him.

  “My beloved,” he said, and kissed her.

  CHAPTER V

  Dodo’s wedding, which took place at the end of July in Westminster Abbey, was a very remarkable and characteristic affair. In the first place she arrived so late that people began to wonder whether she was going to throw Jack over again, this time at the very last moment. Jack himself did not share these misgivings and stood at the west door rather hot and shy but quite serene, waiting till his bride should come. Eventually Nadine who was to have come with her mother appeared in a taxi going miles above the legal limit, with the information that Dodo was in floods of tears because she had been so horrible to Jack before, and wanted to be so nice now. She said she would stop crying as soon as she possibly could, but would Nadine ask Jack to be a dear and put off the wedding till to-morrow, since her tears had made her a perfect fright. On which the bridegroom took a card and wrote on it: “I won’t put off the wedding, and if you don’t come at once, I shall go away. Do be quick: there are millions and millions of people all staring.”

  “Oh, Jack, what a brute you are,” said Nadine, as she read it, “I don’t think I can take it.”

  “You can and will,” said he. “You will also take Dodo by the hand and bring her here. Bring her, do you understand? Tell her that in twenty minutes from now I shall go.”

  Somehow Dodo’s marriage had seized the popular imagination, and the Abbey was crammed, so also for half a mile were the pavements. The traffic by the Abbey had been diverted, and all round the windows were clustered with sight-seers. The choir was reserved for the more intimate friends, and Bishop Algie who was to perform the ceremony was endorsed by a flock of eminent clergy. The news that Dodo was in tears, but that Nadine had been sent by the bridegroom to fetch her, traveled swiftly up the Abbey, and a perfect babel of conversation broke out, almost drowning the rather Debussy-like wedding march which Edith had composed for the occasion. She had also written an anthem, “Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine,” a highly original hymn-tune, and two chants for the psalms written for full orchestra with percussion and an eight-part choir. She had wanted to conduct the whole herself, and expressed her perfect willingness to wear a surplice and her music-doctor’s hood, and keep on her cap or not, exactly as the dean preferred. But the dean preferred that she should take no part whatever, beyond contributing the whole of the music, which annoyed her very much, and several incisive letters passed between them in which the topics of conventionalism, Pharisees and cant were freely introduced. Edith had to give way, but consoled herself by arranging that the whole of the “Marriage Suite” should be shortly after performed at the Queen’s Hall, where no dean or other unenlightened person could prevent her conducting in any costume she chose. But temporarily she had been extremely upset by this ridiculous bigotry.

  Dodo arrived before the twenty minutes were over, and she came up the choir on Jack’s arm, looking quite superb and singing Edith’s hymn tune very loud and occasionally incorrectly. She had just come opposite Edith, who had, in default of conducting, secured a singularly prominent position, when she sang a long bell-like B flat, and Edith had said “B natural, Dodo,” in a curdling, sibilant whisper. There were of course no bridesmaids, but Dodo’s train was carried by pages, both of whom she kissed when they arrived at the end of their long march up the choir. Mrs. Vivian, who on Dodo’s engagement had finally capitulated, was next to Edith, and Dodo said “Vivy, dear!” into her ear-trumpet, as she passed up the aisle. Miss Grantham alone among the older friends was absent: she had said from the beginning that it was dreadfully common of Dodo to marry Jack, as it was a “lived-happily-ever-afterwards” kind of ending to Dodo’s unique experiences. She knew that they would both become stout and serene and commonplace, instead of being wild and unhappy and interesting, and to mark her disapproval, made an appointment with her dentist at the hour at which the voice would be breathing over Eden in the exceedingly up-to-date music which Edith had composed. But so far from her dentist finding change and decay, he dismissed her five minutes after she had sat down, and seized by a sudden ungovernable fit of curiosity she drove straight off to the Abbey to find that Dodo had not arrived, and it seemed possible that there was a thrill coming, and everything might not end happily. But when it became known that Dodo was only late for sentimental reasons, she left again in disgust, and ran into Dodo at the west door, and said, “I am disappointed, Dodo.”

&n
bsp; Dodo sang Edith’s psalm with equal fervor, but thought it would be egoistic to join in the anthem, since it was about herself. But she whispered to Jack, “Jack, dear, it’s much the most delicious marriage I ever had. Hush, you must be grave because dear Algie is going to address us. I hope he will give us a nice long sermon.”

  The register was signed by almost everybody in the world, and there were so many royalties that it looked at first as if everybody was going to leave out their surnames. But the time of ambassadors and peers came at last, and then it looked as if the fashion was to discard Christian names. “In fact,” said Dodo, “I suppose if you were much more royal than anybody else, you would lose your Christian name as well, your Royal Highness, and simply answer to Hie! or to any loud cry — Oh, are we all ready again? We’ve got to go first, Jack. Darling, I hope you won’t shy at the cinematographs. I hear the porch is full of them, like Gatling guns, and to-night you and I will be in all the music-halls of London. Where are my ducks of pages? That’s right: one on each side. Now give me your arm, Jack. Here we go! Listen at Edith’s wedding march! I wonder if it’s safe to play as loud as that in anything so old as the Abbey. I should really be rather afraid of its falling down if Algie hadn’t told me not to be afraid with any amazement.”

  It took the procession a considerable time to get down the choir, since Dodo had to kiss her bouquet (not having a hand to spare) to such an extraordinary number of people. But in course of time they got out, faced the battery of cameras and cinematograph machines, and got into their car. Jack effaced himself in a corner, but Dodo bowed and smiled with wonderful assiduity to the crowds.

  “They have come to see us,” she explained. “So it is essential that we should look pleased to see them. I should so like to be the Queen, say on Saturdays only, like the train you always want to go by on other days in the week. Darling, can’t you smile at them? Or put out your tongue, and make a face. They would enjoy it hugely.”

  Eventually, as they got further away from the Abbey, it became clear to Dodo that the people in the street were concerned with their own businesses, and not hers, and she leaned back in the carriage.

  “Oh, Jack,” she said, “it is you and I at last. But I can’t help talking nonsense, dear. I only do it because I’m so happy. I am indeed. And you?”

  “It is morning with me,” he said.

  They left town that afternoon, though Dodo rather regretted that they would not see themselves in the cinematograph to make sure that she had smiled and that Jack’s hair was tidy, and went down to Winston, Jack’s country place, where so many years ago Dodo had arrived before as the bride of his cousin. He had wondered whether, for her sake, another place would not be more suitable as a honeymoon resort, but she thought the plan quite ideal.

  “It will be like the renewal of one’s youth,” she said, “and I am going to be so happy there now. Jack, we were neither of us happy when you used to come to stay there before, and to go back like this will wipe out all that is painful in those old memories, and keep all that isn’t. Is it much changed? I should so like my old sitting-room again if you haven’t made it something else.”

  “It is exactly as you left it,” said he. “I couldn’t alter anything.”

  Dodo slipped her hand into his.

  “Did you try to, Jack?” she asked.

  “Yes. I meant to alter it entirely: I meant to put away all that could remind me of you. In fact, I went down there on purpose to do it. But when I saw it, I couldn’t. I sat down there, and—”

  “Cried?” said Dodo softly, sympathetically.

  “No, I didn’t cry. I smoked a cigarette and looked round in a stupid manner. Then I took out of its frame a big photograph of myself that I had given you, in order to tear it up. But I put it back in its frame again, and put the frame exactly where it was before.”

  Dodo gave a little moan.

  “Oh, Jack, how you must have hated me!” she said.

  “I hated what you had done: I hated that you could do it. But the other, never. And, Dodo, let us never talk about all those things again, don’t let us even think of them. It is finished, and what is real is just beginning.”

  “It was real all along,” she said, “and I knew it was real all along — you and me, that is to say — but I chose to tell myself that it wasn’t. I have been like the people who when they hear the scream of somebody being murdered say it is only the cat. I have been a little brute all my life, and in all probability it is past half-time for me already; in fact it certainly is unless I am going to live to be ninety. I’m not sure that I want to, and yet I don’t want to die one bit.”

  “I should be very much annoyed if you ventured to do anything of the sort,” remarked Jack.

  “Yes, and that is so wonderful of you. You ought to have wished me dead a hundred times. What’s the phrase? ‘Yes, she would be better dead.’ Just now I want to be better without being dead. I often think we all have a sort of half-time in our lives, like people in foot-ball matches, when they stop playing and eat lemons. The lemons, you understand, are rather sour reflections that we are no better than we might be, but a great deal worse. And somehow that gives one a sort of a fresh start, and we begin playing again.”

  They arrived at Winston late in the afternoon; the village had turned out to greet them, flags and arches made rainbow of the gray street with its thatched houses and air of protected stability, and from the church-tower the bells pealed welcome. Dodo, always impressionable and impulsive, was tremendously moved, and with eyes brimming over, leaned out of one side of the carriage and then the other to acknowledge these salutations.

  “Oh, Jack, isn’t it dear of them?” she said. “Of course I know it’s all for you really, but you’ve endowed me with everything, and so this is mine too. Look at that little duck whom that nice-faced woman is holding up, waving a flag! Hark to the bells! Do you remember the poem by Browning, ‘The air broke into a mist with bells’? This is a positive London fog of bells; can’t you taste it? Is it the foghorns, in that case, that make the fogs? And here we are at the lodge and there’s the lake, and the house! Ah, what a gracious thing a summer evening is. But how fragile, Jack, and how soon over.”

  That wistful, underlying tenderness in her nature, almost melancholy but wholly womanly, rose for the moment to the surface. It was not the less sincere because it was seldom in evidence. It was as truly part of her (and a growing part of her) as her brilliant enjoyment and insouciance. And the expression of it gleamed darkly in her soft brown eyes, as she leaned back in the carriage and took his hand.

  “I will try to make you happy,” she said.

  He bent over her.

  “Don’t try to do anything, Dodo,” he said. “Just — just be.”

  For a moment a queer little qualm came over her. Had she followed her immediate impulse, she would have said, “I don’t know how to love like that. I have to try: I want to learn.” But that would have done no good, and in her most introspective moments Dodo was always practical. The qualm lasted but a moment, as the door was opened, when they drew up. But it lasted long enough to cause her to wonder whether it would be the past that would be entered again instead of the future, entered, too, not by another door, but by the same.

  On the doorstep she paused.

  “Lift me over the threshold, Jack,” she said; “it is such bad luck for a bride to stumble when she enters her home.”

  “My dear, what nonsense.”

  “Very likely, but let’s be nonsensical. Let us propitiate all the gods and demons. Lift me, Jack.”

  He yielded to her whim.

  “That is dear of you,” she said. “That was a perfect entry. Aren’t I silly? But no Austrian would ever dream of letting his wife walk over the threshold for the first time. And — and that’s all about Austria,” she added rather hastily.

  Dodo looked swiftly round the old, remembered hall. Opposite was the big open fireplace round which they so often had sat, preferring its wide-flaring homely com
fort to the more formal drawing-rooms. To-day, no fire burned there, for it was midsummer weather; but as in old times a big yellow collie sprawled in front of it, grandson perhaps, so short are the generations of dogs, to the yellow collies of the time when she was here last. He, too, gave good omen, for he rose and stretched and waved a banner of a tail, and came stately towards them with a thrusting nose of welcome. The same pictures hung on the walls; high up there ran round the palisade of stags’ heads and Dodo (with a conscious sense of most creditable memory) recognized the butler as having been her first husband’s valet. She also remembered his name.

  “Why, Vincent,” she said, holding out her hand, “It is nice to see another old face. And you don’t look one day older, any more than his lordship does. Tea? Yes, let us have tea at once, Jack. I am so hungry: happiness is frightfully exhausting, and I don’t mind how exhausted I am.”

  Suddenly Dodo caught sight of the portrait of herself which had been painted when this house was for the first time her home.

  “Oh, Jack, look at that little brute smiling there!” she said. “I was rather pretty, though, but I don’t think I like myself at all. Dear me, I hope I’m not just the same now, with all the prettiness and youth removed. I don’t think I am quite, and oh, Jack, there’s poor dear old Chesterford. Ah, that hurts me; it gives me a bitter little heart-ache. Would you mind, Jack, if—”