Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  The wind, which had been threatening so long to spill the music that stood open on the piano, carried out its intention at last, but still Elizabeth did not stir. Something of the languor of spring had invaded her, and meaning every moment to get up and go on with her practising, which had been the excuse for her not going out with her mother on an expedition of economy to the Army and Navy Stores, she still lounged in the window-seat thinking over all that had passed since that evening when Edward came into the drawing-room at Arundel with the foreign telegram in his hand. It had been a shock to her, the violence of which she had not been conscious of at the time, but which showed itself afterwards in the weeks of nerve fatigue that followed. There had been taken away something in the very core and kernel of her life, and for the time she had known less of grief than of an inexplicable lack, as if, on the physical plane, a limb had been amputated, and that she had just awoke from the operation and found herself with arm or leg no longer there. Indeed, the feeling was not so much that he was dead as that a piece of herself was gone. She sent out messages from her brain and they were not received anywhere, nothing thrilled or moved in correspondence with them.

  And then slowly and by degrees there began to wake in her that new sense that almost always wakens in those who have suffered some intimate bereavement. Her mind could not take in, could not conceive, when once faced with it, the notion of annihilation, of ceasing to be. It revolted from it, and though for a time her reason (as she accounted her reason) kept telling her that he was gone, that the days of their love and confidence were over, she found the conclusion growing incredible. It began to dawn in her, like the waking of a new intelligence, that there was nothing of him gone, except the sight of him, and the possibility of his presence being apprehended any more by her physical senses. She knew she would not again see or touch him as she had known him before, or again hear his voice, but she found herself daily realizing more and more distinctly, by some perception as innate in her as growth, the knowledge that he was not and could not have been taken away, amputated, destroyed. All of him that she missed so dreadfully, all that for which she stretched out empty arms in the dark, was not her essential father, but only the signs by which she knew him. He became her companion again, by no effort of the imagination, but by the assertion of an instinct that could not be contradicted. Never in those communings with his quiet wisdom beneath the fading crimson of the Indian sunsets had she felt more strongly than now the immortal kinship between them, the reality of their spiritual alliance. He had told her once in words that at the time seemed to her to have been spoken in an unknown tongue that it was impossible to go beyond love, that you can only penetrate into it, finding it without beginning and without end. It was by his death that she had begun to understand that, by the knowledge of the impotence of the supreme divider —— The supreme divider! She echoed the meaningless words, the words from which all meaning had departed. Death did not divide; it was only meanness, falseness, impatience that could do so tragic a work.

  She remembered with growing clearness, as she lay in the window seat, with the daffodils nodding outside, and the music splayed on the floor, their talk in the garden that evening. It was as if it had been written in her mind with invisible ink, which required some spiritual solution to be poured over it, to bring out the words again. She herself, she remembered, had been full of vague visions as to the possibilities and wonders of the world. She had been full of the dreams that were coloured with the vivid unsubstantial hues that are painted by inexperience. Now behind them, not removing them or painting over them, there was stealing, soaking into them the colours that at the time seemed to her to be somehow dull, dingy, stereotyped. What he had said to her about love had seemed somehow commonplace, and when an hour or two afterwards she had sat by the dying fakir at the bottom of the garden, it was more the sensationalism, the picturesqueness of that weary and happy passing that had affected her. Now she saw differently — she saw that precisely the same spirit, precisely the same inborn knowledge had inspired both. The same rich and unclouded vision was their daily outlook. They had both staked their all on love. Then a few days afterwards Elizabeth had ridden out with her father, and he had spoken to her in the same quiet way about death. He had said he enjoyed life tremendously, but as for death it was to him but another stage in growing up....

  Elizabeth turned her face to the garden and the bright daffodils.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” she said aloud.

  She raised herself on her elbow, with the indolence and languor of spring quite slipped off from her, overwhelmingly conscious of her nearness to her father, not to his memory, but to him. None knew, none ever would know except herself, and she but guessed at the huge significance of it, just what his death had done for her with regard to her comprehension of life. The news had come to her in days of despair, when love itself seemed manifested to her only in the form of a desperate renunciation, when she who loved and was loved in return, was severed just by an untimely promise, by a bond signed blindly. Even then she had known, though only by the groping of instinct, that to disown that, or to allow it to be disowned, was to poison the very fountain and well-spring of love. Edward, she knew well, with reason on his side, had longed to marry her in despite of that, believing that the eternal gushing of that spring would wash away from the mouth of it the taint that had been laid there. But now she had begun to see how it was that her instinct had directed her, for even then, when her need was the sorest, she had comprehended, though without conscious knowledge of her comprehension, that while loyalty was of the very essence of love, passion was but a symptom of it; that while love died at the breath of disloyalty, it existed still, deep and calm, though the symptom, the froth on the surface was blown off it by the austere wind of mere straightforward, commonplace duty, or was suffered to die down under the frozen dawn of renunciation. How she had longed through those thirsty days to be able to go to her father and be comforted by his steadfast upholding of her choice, a draught of cold, sweet water in the sultriness of a barren land. Never, so it had been ordained, should she whisper to him the story of the summer, nor cry her fill on his shoulder, but his upholding and his comforting had been not one whit less vivid and present to her, though far away the parching wind swept over the grave beneath the tamarisk-trees in that remote cemetery.

  But it was not often she thought either of the grave or of his death itself, for those things seemed to her even as they had seemed to him, but little incidents of the wayside, not events of great moment in the onward march of his soul, nor to be given a place beside what he had been and what he was to her. He had died swiftly under the stroke of the sword of the pestilence, died in a few hours from the time that he had been taken ill. They had buried him that night as the moon rose, with the wheeling planets for his funeral lamps, and the flitting owls crying his requiem. It was but little of him and that no more than a garment outworn that had there been laid to rest; he, his essential self, seemed to Elizabeth never to have left her through all the dark days of autumn and winter, nor through the lengthening evenings of this long-delayed spring.

  It had been a hard struggle and a stern one, this work in which his spirit seemed so continually to have been at her side. There was so much which appeared inextricably intertwined with her love for Edward that must be cast out, annihilated; there was so much also, and this was of even greater moment, that must be so loyally and uncompromisingly kept. Not one of those threads of pure gold that ran through the whole fabric must be drawn out of it; there must be no loss of that, no turning the royal mantle into a cloak for a funeral. She must not part, if her shoulders, on to which it had fallen, were to be worthy of it, with one gleam of its splendour, with one atom of its gold, and here was a task to test the utmost of her patience and her wisdom, in preserving all this, and yet unravelling and disentangling certain other threads. There were feelings, there were attitudes of mind, there were desires connected with Edward that seemed at first to be an integral part of the
fabric, so strictly were they woven into it; it seemed that to draw these out must make rents. And yet it had to be done, to be done radically and completely, though no rent must be seen or exist there. It was not that these things were in themselves no part of love; it was only that circumstances had made it impossible that they should be part of her love for him. Indeed, they were not hers; they belonged by right to Edith. They must come out of her fabric; each one of them must come out. She had to divert from it certain strains, certain colours, the human longing, the desire, the yearning even. They were natural, they were proper for one other woman only, but not for herself. How well she remembered how her father had told her that knowledge would come to her through love, through love of a “common man,” as she had added. It was even so; it had come to her thus, and even more through the right renunciation, not the mere rejection of the whole, but the rejection of a certain part of it. The gold, all that was infinitely precious, must remain. But the rest was not dross; merely it was not hers.

  Not only at first, but through long months of patient effort, the task appeared impossible, so intimately was the passion of her love woven in with the love itself. Sensibly enough, she let her subconscious mind work at it, while she employed her best efforts in filling the days with other interests and occupations. Yet so many of these, and of them all the one that hitherto had most enthralled and engrossed her, namely, the study of music, gave her every moment stabs of recollection. Her passion for it had been so immensely kindled and quickened by him, that when she tried to kindle it again, it was still the thought of him that fed the flame. All that had to go; she must retrace her steps and find for it the inspiration of itself alone. She had to shatter the dreams with which it filled her; she had to shake herself awake from them. The associations which it roused in her must be disconnected from it; it had to be made to speak to her with its own voice. Often she thought of giving it up altogether, of cutting off from the stem of her life the flowers of melody and harmony, so closely were they set with thorns that made her heart bleed. Yet that again would have been a wanton and a mutilating renunciation. Instead, with patience that sometimes shrank and fainted, she set herself to pick off the thorns that were no essential part of the growth. Yet the thorns bled; the very stem seemed to ooze with the life-sap.

  And of all the spiritual tasks which filled Elizabeth’s days with strivings, and drove sleep from her during the weary nights, the most haunting, the most difficult of all remains to be mentioned — namely, that of keeping her heart sweet when she thought of Edith. It seemed at first that mere patience, mere daily and unremitting striving, was of no avail to quarry away that adamantine block; the tools of her armoury were blunted at its contact. She tried not to judge her, or to attempt to record a verdict about an action that was morally unintelligible to her, if, indeed, she could preserve herself from thinking it vile, but when she contemplated the choice Edith had made, her refusal to let Edward go free from the promise he had made, before he knew what love was, she could scarcely abstain from revolted condemnation, or succeed in leaving the case unjudged. It was not easy to dissociate from it the momentous personal consequences that this refusal held for her, or to look at it impartially, as if the situation had been presented to her as an incident that had happened among strangers; but even when she most schooled herself to put her own entanglement in it out of the question she felt it difficult not to seethe with scorn over it. She could not understand how a girl with respect either for herself or the great emotions could refuse to set free a man who no longer wished to be tied to her, who longed, as Edith knew very well, to be acquitted of his promise. It was inconceivable, even had he not given his heart elsewhere, to claim a right in such a matter, to refuse to uncage the bird of love which was beating its wings against the wires, just because the cage was hers, and in her hands it was to close or unclose the door. It seemed to Elizabeth that the very fact that Edith loved him, though it made it more difficult for her to give him up, must make that giving of him up the more imperative. Love, so it appeared to her, must have relaxed the fingers that detained him. Had she not cared for him, had she not known what love was, these other desires, the liking she had for him, the desire in a general way to be married, the feeling that she would be happy with him, might have caused her to keep him, or, at any rate, not voluntarily to release him from his promise. But that she could love (as Elizabeth rightly felt she did) and yet not find predominant over everything else the longing for his happiness was the thing that was utterly inconceivable.

  Whether Edith had secured her own happiness she had no idea whatever. She had but seen her some half-dozen times since Edward and Edith had returned from Egypt in the early spring, and Edith seemed to have developed a sort of sheath over her, a carapace that was insensitive to the touch. It was natural — indeed, anything else would have been impossible — that no mention of past history or how it bore on the present should take place between them, but it seemed to Elizabeth that her cousin had shut herself up in this hard integument, and gave no indication of her real self. If she spoke of her home, it was to say that they had put a fresh carpet down in the drawing-room, if of her daily life, to say that she often lunched with her mother; if of Mrs. Hancock, that she had raised Denton’s wages; if of Edward, that he seldom came back from the City before the later of the two trains. Once or twice, it is true, it had seemed to Elizabeth as if Edith was wanting to say something more, that, as if shipwrecked on some desert island, she was silently waving an inconspicuous flag, that might, indeed, not be a flag at all. But nothing came of these efforts, and it was impossible for Elizabeth to urge her to confidence, when it was so very doubtful whether she wished to confide, or, indeed, had anything to say. Once Elizabeth had made an impulsive attempt — had said suddenly, not pausing to consider the wisdom of such a speech, but eager for her own sincerity —

  “Oh, Edith, I hope you are happy. You are, aren’t you?” And Edith, if she had been signalling, furled her flag at once, as if afraid it had been seen.

  “Quite happy, thank you,” she had said, and picked up from the floor the umbrella with a false onyx top that had fallen there. She proceeded to explain about the top. Mrs. Hancock had bought it in Cairo very cheap, and Edith hoped she would never know it was not real onyx. She need not have been afraid, for Mrs. Hancock had had her doubts on the subject, but had resolutely put them from her before she made this present.

  It has been said that Elizabeth was “eager for her own sincerity” in wishing to know that Edith was happy. That expresses with fair accuracy the measure of her success in trying not to judge Edith. It may be taken also as the epitaph on the grave where her jealousy of her was buried. The cynic is at liberty to reflect that since Edward did not love his wife she had no cause for jealousy.

  Of all the virtues that lift the eyes of men to the hills, patience is the least admired, has the least to attract the attention and thus earn the encouragement of others, and yet none is more certain of its results. Never does it fail in putting forth its fruits in due season, nor in accomplishing its perfect work. But for the most part its growth is imperceptible; it does not shoot up like the aloe flower, nor challenge attention from the brilliance of its blossoming; and, like the violet, it hides its lovely fragrance, and those who observe carelessly and without love are usually quite unaware of its blossoming. It trumpets forth no deeds of valour, it fills the stage with no heroic attitudes and splendid speeches; and only those who watch tenderly and closely can see the growth of its sweet-smelling purple. It was not a matter for wonder then that Mrs. Fanshawe, eagerly intent on herself, interested in her own grief and bereavement, and marvellously anxious that others should be (if possible) equally interested in them, should have observed nothing of this modest flowering, not even now, when on this languid April day Elizabeth’s plot was thick with the flowers of her silent gardening. Indeed, she was disposed to blame her stepdaughter for many omissions in her general conduct. There was much to be desired in her that she did
not get. When she played to her, so to speak, Elizabeth was not always ready to dance; when she mourned Elizabeth did not always weep. She took but a tepid interest in Mrs. Fanshawe’s brilliant and absorbing economies, and though she was always ready to go on searching through Army Lists, she did not bring to that employment the eager zeal which might have been expected from one who had just lost so well-beloved a father. Worse still, when Mrs. Fanshawe’s voice sometimes broke and her eyes filled with self-pitying tears, as she read aloud to Elizabeth some fresh and pathetic page of the memoir, describing how her father had sat up till half-past three on two consecutive nights so that his wife should have her fill of dancing, Elizabeth seemed as hard as adamant over this poignant recollection. Indeed, Elizabeth had tried to persuade her (quite unsuccessfully) to cut out from the preface the concluding paragraph which began “Out of the depths of my broken heart I wish to thank all those friends whose sympathy has supported me in my bereavement.”