Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Dodo was not attending in any marked manner.

  “We will all do what we choose,” she said genially.

  “We will be a sort of harmless Medmenham Abbey. You shall spill all the ink you please, and Nadine shall marry Hugh, who will get quite well, and I shall go and order dinner and see if Nadine is awake. I am afraid I am rather fatuously optimistic this morning, like Mr. Chesterton, and that is always so depressing, both to other people at the time, and to oneself subsequently. Dear me, what a charming world if there was no such thing as reaction. As a matter of fact I do not experience much of it.”

  Edith gave a great sigh of relief as Dodo left the room, and concentrated herself with singular completeness on the horn-tune in the subdominant. She was quite devoted to Dodo, but the horn-tune was in focus just now, and she knew if Dodo had stopped any longer, she would have become barely tolerant of her presence. Shortly afterwards the fresh supply of ink came also, and Edith proceeded straight up into the seventh heaven of her own compositions, which, good or bad, were perfection itself to their author.

  Dodo found a packet of letters waiting for her and among them a telegram from Miss Grantham saying, “Deeply grieved. Can I do anything?” This she swiftly answered, replying, “Darling Grantie. Nothing whatever,” and went to Nadine’s room, where she found Nadine, half-dressed, rosy from her bath, and radiant of spirit.

  “Oh, Mama, I never had such a lovely night,” she said. “How delicious it must be to be married! I didn’t wake till half-an-hour ago, and simultaneously Hughie woke, which looks as if we suited each other, doesn’t it? And then the doctor came in, and looked at him, and said he was much stronger, much fuller of vitality for his long sleep, and he congratulated me on having made him sleep. And the nurse told me the first great danger, that he would not rally after the shock of the operation, was over. As far as that goes he will be all right.”

  Nadine kissed her mother, and clung round her neck, dewy-eyed.

  “I’m not going to think about the future,” she said. “Sufficient to the day is the good thereof. It is enough this morning that Hughie has got through the night and is stronger. If I had been given any wish to be fulfilled I should have chosen that. And if on the top of that I had been given another, it would have been that I should have helped towards it, which I suppose is the old Eve coming in. I think I had better finish dressing, Mama, instead of babbling. Have you had breakfast?”

  “Yes, dear, I had it with Edith. She is in bed making tunes and pouring ink over the counterpane, and not minding.”

  Nadine’s face clouded for a moment, in spite of the accomplishment of her wishes.

  “And then I must see Seymour,” she said. “It is no use putting that off. But, oh, Mama, to think that till yesterday I was willing to marry him, with Hugh in the world all the time. Whatever happens to Hugh, I can’t marry him, Seymour, I mean, if the ridiculous English pronouns admit of any meaning; and I must tell him.”

  “Seymour left half an hour ago,” said Dodo. “But there’s no need for you to tell him. I took him into Hugh’s room and he saw you asleep. He understands. He couldn’t very well help understanding, darling. He told me he understood before, when you called out to Hugh not to attempt the rescue. But he only understood it pretty well, as the ordinary person says he understands French. But when he saw you asleep, not exactly in Hugh’s arms, but sufficiently close, he understood it like a real native, poor boy!”

  “What did he do?” asked Nadine.

  “He behaved very rightly and properly, and lost his temper with me, just as I lose my temper with the porter at the station if I miss my train. I had been just porter to him. He thanked me for a horrid visit, only he called it damnable, and so I lost my temper, too, and we had a few flowers of speech on the staircase, not big ones, but just promising buds. And then, poor chap, he came back to me, and told me he was in hell, and I kissed him, and he didn’t seem to mind much, and I suppose he caught his train. Otherwise he would have been back by now. I’m exceedingly sorry for him, Nadine, and you must write him a sweet little letter, which won’t do any good at all, but it’s one of the things you have to do. Darling, I wonder if jilting runs in families like consumption and red faces. You see I jilted my darling Jack, to marry into your family. But you must write the sweet little letter I spoke of, because you are sorry, only you couldn’t help it.”

  “Did you write a sweet little letter under — under the same circumstances to Papa Jack?” asked Nadine.

  “No, dear, because I hadn’t got anybody exceedingly wise to give me that good advice,” said Dodo. “Also, because I was a little brute there is no reason why you should be.”

  “Perhaps it runs in the family, too,” suggested Nadine.

  “Then the quicker it runs out of the family the better. Besides you are sorry for Seymour.”

  Nadine opened her hands wide.

  “Am I? I hope so,” she said. “But if you are quite full of gladness for one thing, Mama, it is a little difficult to find a corner for anything else.”

  Dodo turned to leave the room.

  “Anywhere will do. Just under the stairs,” she said. “I don’t want to put it in the middle of the drawing-room. After all, darling, you propose to jilt him.”

  “There’s something in that,” said Nadine. “Oh, Mama, I used not to have any heart at all, and now that I’ve got one it doesn’t belong to me.”

  “No woman’s heart belongs to her,” said Dodo. “If it belongs to her, it isn’t a heart.”

  “I should have thought that nonsense yesterday,” said Nadine. “Oh, wait while I finish dressing; I shan’t be ten minutes. What meetings we have had in my lovely back room! One, I remember so particularly. You and Esther and Berts all lay on my bed like sardines in evening dresses, and I had just refused to marry Hugh, who was playing billiards with Uncle Algie. Somehow the things like love and devotion seemed to me quite old-fashioned, or anyhow they seemed to me signs of age. They did, indeed. I thought a clear brain was infinitely preferable to a confused heart, especially if it belonged to somebody else. I’m not used to it, Mama: it still seems to me very odd like a hat that doesn’t fit. But it’s a fact, and I suppose I shall grow into it, not that any one ever grew into a hat. But when Hugh swam out yesterday morning, something came tumbling down inside me. Or was it that only something cracked, like the shell of a nut? It does not much matter, so long as it is not mended again. But how queer that it should happen in a second, like that. I suppose time has nothing to do with what concerns one’s soul. I believe Plato says something about it. I don’t think I shall look it up. He wrote wonderfully, but when a thing happens to oneself, that seems to matter more than Plato’s reflections on the subject.”

  There was a short pause as Nadine brushed her teeth, but Dodo sitting on the unslept-in bed did not feel inclined to break it. She wondered whether a particular point in the situation would occur to Nadine, whether her illumination as regards a woman’s heart threw any light on that very different affair, a man’s heart. She was not left long in doubt. The question of a man’s heart was altogether unilluminated, and to Dodo there was something poignantly pathetic about Nadine’s blissful ignorance. She came and sat down on the bed close to her mother.

  “Hughie will see I love him,” she said, “because he won’t be able to help it. I shall just wait, oh, so happily, for him to say again what he has so often said before. He will know my answer, before I give it him. I hope he will say it soon. Then we shall be engaged, and people who are engaged are a little freer, aren’t they, Mama?”

  Dodo felt incapable of clouding that radiant face, for she knew in the days that were coming, all its radiance would be needed: not a single sparkle of light must be wasted. But it did not seem to her very likely that Hugh, whose joyous strength and splendid activity had been so often rejected by Nadine, would be likely to offer to her again what would be, in all probability, but a crippled parody of himself. But her sense of justice told her that Nadine owed him all t
he strength and encouragement her eager vitality could give him. It was only fair that she should devote herself to him, and let him feel all the inspiration to live that her care of him could give him. But it seemed to her very doubtful if Hugh would consent, even if he perceived that it was love not warm friendship that she gave him, to let himself and his crippled body appeal to her. In days gone by, she would not marry him for love, and it seemed to Dodo that a real man, as Hugh was, would not allow her to marry him for pity. He had offered her his best, and she had refused it; it would not be surprising if he refused to offer her his worst. The joy that had inspired Dodo so that she had softly melted over the sight of Nadine asleep by Hugh, and had exultantly mopped up the spilt ink with Edith, suddenly evaporated, leaving her dry and cold.

  “You must wait, Nadine,” she said. “You must make no plans. Give Hughie your vitality, and don’t ask more.”

  She got up.

  “Now, my darling, I shall go downstairs,” she said, “and order your breakfast. You must be hungry. And then you can say your prayers, and breakfast will be ready.”

  Nadine, absorbed in her own thoughts, felt nothing of this.

  “Prayers?” she said. “Why I was praying all night till dawn. At least, I was wanting, just wanting, and not for myself. Isn’t that prayers?”

  Dodo loved that: it was exactly what she meant in her inmost heart by prayers. She drew Nadine to her and kissed her.

  “Darling, you have said enough for a week,” she said, “if not more. And you said them because you must, which is the only proper plan. If you don’t feel you must say your prayers, it is just as well not to say them at all. But you shall have breakfast, whether you feel you must or not. I say you must.”

  CHAPTER XII

  One morning a fortnight later, Jack, Dodo, and Edith were sitting together on the cliff above the bay, looking down to the sandy foreshore. Jack, finding that Dodo was obliged to stop at Meering with Nadine, had personally abandoned his third shooting-party, leaving Berts, whom he implicitly trusted to make himself and everybody else quite comfortable, in charge. Among the guests was Berts’ father, whom Berts apparently kept in his place. Jack had just told Dodo and Edith the contents of Berts’ letter, received that morning. All was going very well, but Berts had arranged that his father should escort two ladies of the party to see the interesting town of Lichfield one afternoon, instead of shooting the Warren beat, where birds came high and Berts’ father was worse than useless. But it was certain that he would enjoy Lichfield very much, and the shoot would be more satisfactory without him. If his mother was still at Meering, Berts sent his love, and knew she would agree with him.

  Edith just now, working her way through the entire orchestra, was engaged on the cor anglais which, while Hugh was still so ill, Dodo insisted should not be played in the house. It gave rather melancholy notes, and was productive of moisture. But she finished a passage which seemed to have no end, before she acknowledged these compliments. Then she emptied the cor anglais into the heather.

  “Poor Bertie is a drone,” she said; “he never thinks it worth while to do anything well. Berts is better: he thinks it worth while to sit on his father really properly. I thought my energy might wake Bertie up, and that was chiefly why I married him. But it only made him go to sleep. Lichfield is about his level. I don’t know anything about Lichfield, and I don’t know much about Bertie. But they seem to me rather suitable. And much more can be done with the cor anglais than Wagner ever imagined. The solo in Tristan is absolute child’s play. I could perform it myself with a week’s practice.”

  Dodo had been engaged in a small incendiary operation among the heather, with the match with which she had lit her cigarette. For the moment it seemed that her incendiarism was going to fulfil itself on larger lines than she had intended.

  “Jack, I have set fire to Wales, like Lloyd George,” she cried. “Stamp on it with your great feet. What great large strong feet! How beautiful are the feet of them that put out incendiary attempts in Wales! About Bertie, Edith, if you will stop playing that lamentable flute for a moment—”

  “Flute?” asked Edith.

  “Trombone, if you like. The point is that your vitality hasn’t inspired Bertie; it has only drained him of his. You set out to give him life, and you have become his vampire. I don’t say it was your fault: it was his misfortune. But Berts is calm enough to keep your family going. The real question is about mine. Yes, Jack, that was where Hughie went into the sea, when the sea was like Switzerland. And those are the reefs, before which, though it’s not grammatical, he had to reach the boat. He swam straight out from where your left foot is pointing. A Humane Society medal came for him yesterday, and Nadine pinned it upon his bed-clothes. He says it is rot, but I think he rather likes it. She pinned it on while he was asleep, and he didn’t know what it meant. He thought it was the sort of thing that they give to guards of railway trains. The dear boy was rather confused, and asked if he had joined the station-masters.”

  Jack shaded his eyes from the sun.

  “And a big sea was running?” he asked.

  “But huge. It broke right up to the cliffs at the ebb. And into it he went like a duck to water.”

  Edith got up.

  “I have heard enough of Hugh’s trumpet blown,” she said.

  “And I have heard enough of the cor anglais,” said Dodo. “Dear Edith, will you go away and play it there? You see, darling, Jack came out this morning to talk to me, and I came out to talk to him. Or we will go away if you like: the point is that somebody must.”

  “I shall go and play golf,” said Edith with dignity. “I may not be back for lunch. Don’t wait for me.”

  Dodo was roused to reply to this monstrous recommendation.

  “If I had been in the habit of waiting for you,” she said, “I should still be where I was twenty years ago. You are always in a hurry, darling, and never in time.”

  “I was in time for dinner last night,” said Edith.

  “Yes, because I told you it was at eight, when it was really at half past.”

  Edith blew a melancholy minor phrase.

  “Leit-motif,” she said, “describing the treachery of a friend.”

  “Tooty, tooty, tooty,” said Dodo cheerfully, “describing the gay impenitence of the same friend.”

  Edith exploded with laughter, and put the cor anglais into its green-baize bag.

  “Good-by,” she said, “I forgive you.”

  “Thanks, darling. Mind you play better than anybody ever played before, as usual.”

  “But I do,” said Edith passionately.

  Dodo leaned back on the springy couch of the heather as Edith strode down the hillside.

  “It’s not conceit,” she observed, “but conviction, and it makes her so comfortable. I have got a certain amount of it myself, and so I know what it feels like. It was dear of you to come down, Jack, and it will be still dearer of you if you can persuade Nadine to go back with you to Winston.”

  “But I don’t want to go back to Winston. Anyhow, tell me about Nadine. I don’t really know anything more than that she has thrown Seymour over, and devotes herself to Hugh.”

  “My dear, she has fallen head over ears in love with him.”

  “You are a remarkably unexpected family,” Jack allowed himself to say.

  “Yes; that is part of our charm. I think somewhere deep down she was always in love with him, but, so to speak, she couldn’t get at it. It was like a seam of gold: you aren’t rich until you have got down through the rock. And Hugh’s adventure was a charge of dynamite to her; it sent the rock splintering in all directions. The gold lies in lumps before his eyes, but I am not sure whether he knows it is for him or not. He can’t talk much, poor dear; he is just lying still, and slowly mending, and very likely he thinks no more than that she is only sorry for him, and wants to do what she can. But in a fortnight from now comes the date when she was to have married Seymour. He can’t have forgotten that.”

&nb
sp; “Forgotten?” asked Jack.

  “Yes; he doesn’t remember much at present. He had severe concussion as well as that awful breakage of the hip.”

  “Do they think he will recover completely?” asked Jack.

  “They can’t tell yet. His little injuries have healed so wonderfully that they hope he may. They are more anxious about the effects of the concussion than the other. He seems in a sort of stupor still; he recognizes Nadine of course, but she hasn’t, except on that first night, seemed to mean much to him.”

  “What was that?”

  “He so nearly died then. He kept calling for her in a dreadful strange voice, and when she came he didn’t know her for a time. Then she put her whole soul into it, the darling, and made him know her, and he went to sleep. She slept, or rather lay awake, all night by his bed. She saved his life, Jack; they all said so.”

  “It seems rather perverse to refuse to marry him when he is sound, and the moment he is terribly injured to want to,” said Jack.

  “My darling, it is no use criticizing people,” said Dodo, “unless by your criticism you can change them. Even then it is a great responsibility. But you could no more change Nadine by criticizing her, than you could change the nature of the wildcat at the Zoo by sitting down in front of its cage, and telling it you didn’t like its disposition, and that it had not a good temper. You may take it that Nadine is utterly in love with him.”

  “And as he has always been utterly in love with her, I don’t know why you want me to take Nadine away. Bells and wedding-cake as soon as Hugh can hobble to church.”

  “Oh, Jack, you don’t see,” she said. “If I know Hughie at all, he wouldn’t dream of offering himself to Nadine until it is certain that he will be an able-bodied man again. And she is expecting him to, and is worrying and wondering about it. Also, she is doing him no good now. It can’t be good for an invalid to have continually before him the girl to whom he has given his soul, who has persistently refused to accept it. It is true that they have exchanged souls now — as far as that goes my darling Nadine has so much the best of the bargain — but Hugh has to begin the — the negotiations, and he won’t, even if he sees that Nadine is a willing Barkis, until he knows he has something more than a shattered unmendable thing to offer her. Consequently he is silent, and Nadine is perplexed. I will go on saying it over and over again if it makes it any clearer, but if you understand, you may signify your assent in the usual manner. Clap your great hands and stamp your great feet: oh, Jack, what a baby you are!”