Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “And now I want to hear all sorts of things, Edith,” she said. “Tell me about Mr. Beaumont, and the witch, and who lives next door on that side and on that. On that side” — and she pointed with her long brown hand— “I saw a roundabout little woman like a cook, sitting on a bench and reading the paper. Was it the cook? Was she looking in the advertisements for another place, I wondered.”

  “No; Mrs. Dobbs,” said Edith. “She’s a friend of mother’s and mine.”

  “Tell me about her. What does she think about?”

  It had never occurred to Edith to conjecture what Mrs. Dobbs thought about. You did not connect Mrs. Dobbs with the idea of thought.

  “She is very fond of dogs,” said Edith.

  “I saw them too, curled and brushed. I expect she blacks the ends of their noses like horses’ hoofs. I don’t call them dogs. But what does she think about if she lies awake at night? What you think about lying awake is what you really think about. Perhaps she doesn’t lie awake. We’ll leave her. I don’t seem to be interested in her. Who lives there?”

  “Mr. Holroyd.”

  “Whom Aunt Julia said was coming to dinner to-night? She called him Edward — dear Edward, I think — and I am sure she was going to tell me something about him when the old man — Lind, isn’t it? — came in to say Mrs. Williams was waiting. So I came out here. Tell me about Edward. Is he a relation? Shall I call him Edward?”

  Elizabeth gave one glance at Edith’s face, stopped suddenly, and clapped her hands.

  “I guess, I guess!” she said. “He isn’t a relation, but he is going to be. Edith, my dear, how exciting! I want to hear all about him instantly.”

  She stopped again.

  “I think he must have come out of his front gate in rather a hurry at nine o’clock,” she said. “Is he rather tall and clean-shaven, with the look that some people have as if he had washed twice at least that morning? Also, he was whistling Schumann’s first Novelette, very loud and quite out of tune. I thought that was rather nice of him, and I whistled too, out of my bedroom window. I had to; I couldn’t help it. Of course I didn’t let him see me, and he stopped and looked up at the sky to see where it came from. My dear, tell me all about Edward instantly.”

  Edith gasped in the grip of this genial whirlwind of a girl.

  “You are quite right, Elizabeth,” she said; “and — and there’s nobody like him. I should have come up to talk to you last night, but mother said you would be tired. How did you guess? It was quick of you.”

  Elizabeth laughed.

  “Not very, dear!” she said. “You looked as if — as if you were in church. And as you weren’t, it was obvious you were in love. ‘Mr. Holroyd’ — you said it like that, like an ‘Amen.’ My dear, what fun! But I do hope he’s good enough for you, and attractive enough. A man has to be so tremendously attractive to make up for being a man at all, with their tufts of hair all over their faces. Of course, I shall never marry at all. I shall —— Oh dear, I’ve begun to talk about myself, and really I’m not the least interested in myself. Tell me straight off all about Cousin Edward.”

  This was a task of which Edith was hopelessly incapable. She could no more talk about him than she could talk about religion. Reticent at all times, on this subject her inability to speak amounted almost to dumbness. Her thoughts, unable not to hover round him, were equally unable to alight, to be put into words. The very thought of speaking of him embarrassed her.

  “Quick!” said Elizabeth, putting her arm round her.

  “I can’t! I can’t say anything about him except that he is he. You must see for yourself. But oh, Elizabeth, fancy his wanting me! And fancy that when he asked me first I didn’t really care. But very soon I began to care, and now I care for him more than anything. If I go on like this I shall begin not to care about anybody else. Oh, there is the gong; that is for the motor. You must go. But in the interval I think you are a dear. I care for you.”

  Edith got up, hearing the sonorous Chinese music, but Elizabeth pulled her back to her seat again.

  “Surely the motor can wait five minutes,” she said. “We are beginning to know each other.”

  “But mother doesn’t like waiting,” said Edith.

  “Nor does daddy; but he very often has got to. What do you and Cousin Edward talk about? I shall call him Cousin Edward at once, I think, to show him that I know. Or is that forward and tropical of me?”

  Lind approached swiftly across the grass.

  “Mrs. Hancock is waiting, miss,” he said to Elizabeth. “She thinks you can’t have heard the gong out here.”

  Elizabeth gave him a ravishing smile.

  “Oh, I heard it beautifully!” she said. “Say I’m coming.”

  “I think Mrs. Hancock expects you at once, miss,” said Lind, quite unsoftened, and continuing to stand firmly there until Elizabeth should move.

  Under these circumstances it was impossible to continue anything resembling an intimate conversation, and Elizabeth rose just as Mrs. Hancock herself came out on to the gravel walk below the drawing-room window. She had been waiting at least three minutes — a thing to which she was wholly unaccustomed except when going by train. Then, for the sake of the corner seat facing the engine, she cheerfully waited twenty.

  Elizabeth was quite unconscious of any severity of scrutiny on the part of her aunt as she ran across the lawn and jumped over a flower-bed, nor did she detect the slightest intention of sarcasm in Mrs. Hancock’s greeting.

  “Arc you nearly ready, Elizabeth?” she asked. “If so the car has been waiting some time.”

  “I’m quite ready, Aunt Julia,” she said, “and I am so looking forward to my drive.”

  The usual detailed discussion was gone through with Denton as to their exact route, and Mrs. Hancock put her feet up on the footstool that had been bought for the journey to Bath.

  “Now we’re off,” she said; “and if you would put down your window two more holes, dear, or perhaps three, we shall be quite comfortable. You look quite rested; that’s what comes of stopping in your room for breakfast. And if you get a good long rest again this afternoon, while Edith and I are out, I’ve no doubt you’ll be quite brisk this evening. Mr. Holroyd is coming to dinner, and you’ll hear him play. That will be quite a treat for you as you are so fond of music. And now I want to tell you — —”

  Elizabeth interrupted her aunt. To this also she was unaccustomed.

  “I think I know,” she said. “Do you mean about Mr. Holroyd? Edith told me. But she didn’t seem able to describe him at all. Do tell me about him! Is he good enough for her? I think she’s a dear!”

  “Edward is a young man in a thousand,” began Mrs. Hancock.

  “Yes; but is he the right young man in a thousand? I hope he’s rich too, though of course that doesn’t matter so much for Edith. Aunt Julia, what a lovely car! May I drive it some day? Would your chauffeur lend me his cap and coat? I used often to drive daddy, till one day when I went into a ditch. It was so funny; one door was jammed, of course, against the side of the ditch and we couldn’t open the other. Mamma was inside. We thought we should have to feed her through the window. But daddy said afterwards that it wasn’t entirely my fault. May I drive now? Or perhaps I had better learn about the car first. And now about Cousin Edward?”

  Mrs. Hancock had received several shocks during this hurricane speech, and she had to collect herself a little before she could reply. But before she could reply Elizabeth was away again.

  “Oh, here we are on that nice heath!” she said. “It did smell so good! Oh, Aunt Julia, I think I had better confess! I couldn’t stop in bed this morning, though it was nice of you to want me to get rested, and I went for a walk about six.”

  “My dear! All alone?”

  “Some of the time. I met a man whom I thought was a lunatic with a butterfly net, but Edith says it was Mr. Beaumont. He fell down, so we talked. And his sister came out of a wood! Oh, I believe that is he again, coming along the road towards us now
!”

  “But, my dear, what odd conduct on your part!”

  “Was it? It seemed the only thing to do. Had I better bow to him, Aunt Julia?”

  Mrs. Hancock felt slightly bewildered by so puzzling a question of etiquette as that involved by a girl conversing with a total stranger — particularly when that stranger turned out to be Mr. Beaumont — at six o’clock in the morning. Prudence prevailed.

  “We will both look at the view out of the side-window,” she said, and Mr. Beaumont encountered a pair of profiles.

  But Mr. Beaumont and his butterfly net being left behind, Mrs. Hancock thought well to take advantage of the opportunity for a few general remarks. Already she had been kept waiting, been interrupted, and been faced with this problem arising from quite unheard-of conduct on Elizabeth’s part. And as a gentian thrusts blossoms through the snow, so at the base of her cordiality of tone lay a frozen rigidity. As her custom was, when she wanted to say something of the correcting and improving nature, she laid her hand softly — then squeezed — on Elizabeth’s. This was symbolical of the affectionate nature of her intention.

  “I can’t tell you, dear Elizabeth,” she said, “how I have been looking forward to your coming here, and I am quite certain we shall have the happiest summer together. And I hope you won’t find the manners and customs expected of a young lady in England very strange, though I know they are so different to what is quite right and proper in India, with all its deserts and black people. Most interesting it all must be, and I am greatly looking forward to hearing about it all, and I’m sure when you tell me I shall want to go to India myself. But here, for instance, dear Edith would never dream of taking a walk at six o’clock in the morning all alone, when there might be all kinds of people about, or talking to strangers, or thinking even of driving a motor-car. My dear, if you would reach down that tube and blow through it and then say, ‘To the right, please, Denton,’ he will take us a very pleasant round, and we shall get back ten minutes before lunch and have time to rest and cool. Had we started a few minutes sooner, when the car came round, we should have had time to go a long round, past a very pretty mill which I wanted to show you. As it is, we will take a shorter round.”

  There was all Mrs. Hancock’s quiet masterfulness in these agreeable remarks, all the leaden imperturbability which formed so large a factor in the phenomenon of her getting her own way in her own manner, and of everybody else doing, in the long run, what she wished, until they were reduced to the state of abject vassalage in which her immediate circle found themselves. The effect it produced on Elizabeth, though not complete, was material.

  “I’m afraid that it was my fault we didn’t start punctually, Aunt Julia,” she said. “But couldn’t we go round by the mill all the same and be a little late for lunch?”

  Mrs. Hancock laughed.

  “And make other people unpunctual as well?” she said. “No, my dear; when anybody has been unpunctual — I am never unpunctual myself — my rule is to get back to punctuality as soon as possible and start fair again. We will go to the mill another day, for I hope we shall have plenty of drives together. About Mr. Beaumont, I hardly know what to do. If only, you naughty girl, you had not got up but stayed quietly in bed, as I meant you to do, it would never have happened. I think the best plan will be for me to ask him to lunch with us and then introduce you quite fresh, so that he will see that we all mean to forget about your meeting on the heath. Look, here are the golf links! Very likely we shall see Mr. Martin playing. He is our clergyman, and we are most lucky to have him. Yes, upon my word, there he is! Now he sees my car and is waving his cap! Well, that was a coincidence, meeting him, for now you will recognize him again when you see him in his surplice and hood in church to-morrow morning. Dear me, it is the first Sunday in the month, and there will be the Communion after Morning Service. Mr. Martin never calls it Matins; he says that is a Roman Catholic name. How quickly the Sundays come round!”

  Elizabeth looked out of the window at the celebrated Mr. Martin, and saw that here was an opportunity for saying what she felt she must say to her aunt before Sunday morning. The talk she had had with her father on the reality of religious beliefs to her had been renewed before she left India, and, with his consent, she had made up her mind not to go to church while the reason for so doing remained inconclusive to her. To attend public worship seemed to her a symbolical act, an outward sign of something that, in truth, was non-existent.... It was like a red Socialist joining in the National Anthem. But she had promised him — and, indeed, the promise was one with the desire of her heart — to pray, not to let neglect cement her want of conviction.

  “Aunt Julia,” she said, “I want to tell you something. It is that I don’t want to go to church. It — it doesn’t mean anything to me. Oh, I’m afraid you are shocked!”

  It seemed a justifiable apprehension.

  “Elizabeth!” said Mrs. Hancock. “How can you say such wicked things?”

  This roused the girl.

  “They are not wicked!” she said hotly. “It is very cruel of you to say so. I had a long talk, two talks, with daddy about it. He agrees with me. He was very sorry, but he agrees.”

  It is hard to convey exactly the impression made on Mrs. Hancock’s mind. If Elizabeth had confessed to a systematic course of burglary or murder she would not have been more shocked, nor would she have been more shocked if her niece had announced her intention of appearing at dinner without shoes and stockings. The conventional outrage, in fact, was about as distressing to her as the moral one. She knew, of course, perfectly well that even in well-regulated Heathmoor certain most respectable inhabitants, who often sat at her table, were accustomed to spend Sunday morning on the golf-links instead of at public worship, but she never for a moment thought of classing them with Elizabeth. She could not have explained that; it was merely matter of common knowledge that grown-up men did not seem to need to go to church so much. Similarly it was right for them to smoke strong cigars after dinner, whereas the fact that Elizabeth had consumed one of Mr. Beaumont’s cigarettes, had she been cognizant of that appalling occurrence, would have seemed to her an almost inconceivable breach of decency. Girls went to church, and did not smoke; here was the statement of two very simple fundamental things.

  “I hardly know what to say to you,” she said. “Talking to Mr. Beaumont is nothing to this. I must ask you to be silent for a little while, Elizabeth, while I collect my thoughts, and on our first drive too, which I hoped we should enjoy so much, although your being late made it impossible for us to go round by the mill as I had planned.”

  The poor lady’s pleasure was quite spoiled, and not being accustomed to arrange her thoughts in any order, except when she was forming careful plans for her own comfort, she found the collection of them, which she desired, difficult of attainment. But very quickly she began to see that her own comfort was seriously involved, and that gave her a starting-point. It would be known by now throughout Heathmoor that her niece from India had come to stay with her for the summer, and it would be seen that no niece sat with her in the pew just below the pulpit. Almost all the seats in the church faced eastwards; this, with one or two others, ran at right angles to them, and was thus in full view of the congregation. It followed that unless she explained Elizabeth’s absence, Sunday by Sunday, when there was always a general chat — except on the first Sunday of the month — at the gate into the churchyard, by a cold or some other non-existent complaint (and this was really not to be thought of), her circle of friends would necessarily come to the most shocking conclusion as to Elizabeth’s non-appearance. Certainly Mr. Martin would notice it, and it would be his duty to inquire into it. That would be most uncomfortable, and if inquiries were made of her she could not imagine herself giving either the real reason or a false one. No doubt if Mr. Martin talked to Elizabeth he could soon awake in her that sense of religious security, of soothed, confident trust — a trust as complete as that with which any sane person awaited the rising of the s
un in the morning, which to Mrs. Hancock connoted Christianity, but that he should talk to her implied that he must know what ailed her. And in any case the rest of Heathmoor would notice Elizabeth’s absence from church.... It was all very dreadful and puzzling, and was no doubt the result of a prolonged sojourn in India, where heathens, in spite of all those missions to which she did not subscribe, were still in such numerical preponderance. But the cause of Elizabeth’s proposed absence did not in reality so greatly trouble her. What spoiled her pleasure, in any case, was the uncomfortableness of the situation if Elizabeth was seen to be consistently absent from the eleven o’clock service.

  Then the light began to break, and conventional arguments flocked to the assistance of her beleaguered conventionality.

  “I am so shocked and distressed, dear,” she said, “though you will tell me, I dare say, that there is little good in that, and on this lovely morning, too. But of the reason for your not going to church I will not speak now. I am thinking of the effect. Every one knows that you are here with me, and, unless I am to say you are unwell every Sunday morning, what am I to say? And, indeed, I could not bring myself to say you are unwell, and keep on repeating it. Of course we all say, ‘Not at home,’ when it is not convenient to receive callers, but on a subject like this it would be out of the question. There is Mr. Beaumont again; we seem always to be meeting him. And the servants, too. Lind and Denton and Filson will all certainly know you don’t go to church, and Mrs. Williams, who can’t go, though I am sure she would if her duties allowed her to, will be certain to hear you moving about from the kitchen. They will talk among themselves and say how odd it is. It will offend them, dear, and you know what is said about giving offence. I am sure you did not think of that” — Mrs. Hancock had only just thought of it— “or consider what effect your absence would have. I assure you that often and often I have felt inclined not to go on Sunday morning, and should much prefer, when it is wet, to read the psalms and lessons at home. Even then Lind and Filson and the others would know that it was only the weather that prevented me, and they would see the prayer-books and Bibles lying about.”