Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Bags had no pretence of fortitude left, and mopped his eyes.

  “Damn that horse,” he said. “Who’d have cared if it had killed the whole High Street, so long as David didn’t put his carcase in the light, silly — silly idiot. But — but a fellow just loves him the more for it. I keep thinking over day after day of these last five years. Do you remember when he was swished?”

  Maddox nodded.

  “Yes; jolly well deserved it too. And he was so sick with me afterwards when I told him so. But we made it up. David said he was sorry. Silly fool! As if he ever did anything to a pal he could be sorry for.” Bags caught his breath.

  “Don’t know what there was about him,” he said, “but there he was. Just David, you know. And he liked you most awfully. I used to get damned jealous. Sorry if you mind.”

  The two sat there together while the warm night with many stars wheeled overhead above the sleeping house, talking occasionally, but for the most part in silence. Adams, who also was sitting up, came in from time to time to see them, and they would sit all three together. From the sick-room came no determining news: David was conscious and awake, and they had given him all the morphia that they dared. His temperature had not risen further, but he was very much exhausted; the question was how his strength would hold out unless he got to sleep. This Adams told them, and perhaps they talked for a little of David, recalling some incident of past days. Then Adams would leave them again to go back to David’s father and sister.

  But not long after midnight he came in again, having only just gone out.

  “David has suddenly asked if you were here, Frank,” he said. “He wants to see you, and the doctor thinks you had better go to him. He is getting very restless, and perhaps you may be able to quiet him. That’s what they want you to do. You can trust yourself?”

  Frank got up.

  “Yes, sir; I know I can,” he said.

  The room where he lay was lit by a lamp that was shaded from the bed, and near the head of it was standing the doctor, who nodded to Frank as he came in, and beckoned him to the bed, putting a chair for him by the side of it.

  “David, old chap, here I am,” he said.

  David turned his tired eyes to him.

  “Oh, I say, that’s ripping,” he said faintly. “But I can’t see you very well. Mayn’t there be a bit more light?”

  The doctor quietly tilted the shade round the lamp, so that the light fell on Frank’s face.

  “Will that do?” said Frank.

  “Yes, rather. I wanted to see you awfully. I wondered if you would come. I thought perhaps you would when you knew. Frank, am I going to die?”

  Frank pulled the chair a little closer, and bent over him.

  “No,” he said. “You’re going to do nothing of the sort. We can’t get on without you possibly, so you’ve got to get well. See?”

  The doctor came close to Frank and whispered to him.

  “Tell him he must go to sleep,” he said, and stepped back again out of sight.

  “And to get well,” continued Frank, “you’ve got to go to sleep and bring your strength back. David, don’t you remember our two beds at the end of dormitory? Well, think yourself back in yours with me in the one next you, and imagine it’s time to go to sleep. It’s quite easy you know. Imagine it’s that jolly evening after our house-match last year, when you were so tired you fell asleep without undressing.”

  “Yes, I remember,” said David.

  He was silent a little, but his eyes were still wide.

  “I say, would it bore you awfully to hold my hand,” he said. “You’re so strong and fit and quiet. I might get some. I don’t know. Am I talking rot?”

  “No, not a bit. There!”

  Frank fitted his hand into David’s, which lay like a sick child within it.

  “Yes, ripping,” said he, a little drowsily. “Sure it’s not an awful bore?”

  “It’s a frightful bore,” said Frank.

  David smiled.

  “You didn’t get a rise out of me,” he said.

  “Shall have another try before long,” said Frank. “Comfortable?”

  “Rather.”

  David lay for some ten minutes still wide-eyed, but quiet. Then his eyelids fluttered, closed and opened again.

  “Awfully comfortable,” he said. “I wanted just you to tell me what to do. I did so want you to come.”

  David’s eyelids dropped again, and the doctor came round to Maddox’s side.

  “Sit quite still,” he whispered, “and don’t speak to him again.”

  “Sure it doesn’t bore you?” asked David once more.

  Again there was silence, and the two, the friend and the doctor, remained absolutely still for some five minutes. Then from the bed came a long sigh. David’s head rolled a little sideways on the pillow, and after that came the quiet, regular breathing. Then the doctor whispered once more to Maddox.

  “You may have to sit like that with your arm out for hours,” he said. “We’ll try to make you comfortable presently. Can you manage it?”

  “Why, yes,” said he.

  The doctor quietly left the room, but came back soon after with pillows, and, as well as he could, propped up Maddox’s outstretched arm. Then he spoke to the nurse who was to sit up, and came back to the bed and looked at David a moment, listening to his regular breathing.

  “I’m going to get a bit of sleep now,” he whispered to Frank, “but I’m afraid you won’t. You must stop just as you are. If he lets go of your hand you must still sit there in case he wakes and asks for you. If he says anything, answer him as if he was in his dormitory, and you in the bed next him. You’re in charge.”

  It was a couple of hours before David moved. Then he turned a little in bed.

  “Frank,” he said.

  “Oh, shut up and go to sleep,” said Frank.

  “’Tisn’t morning.”

  “Right oh!” said David.

  All sensation had gone from Maddox’s arm; it was quite numb up to the shoulder, and it was only with his eyes that, presently after, he knew that David had let his hand slip from his own. Then very gently he withdrew it, and it fell helplessly on to his knees.

  David slept on through the hour before dawn when the flame of vitality burns dim and the dying loose their hold on life, until through the curtains the pale light of morning looked in, dimming the lamp-light. Outside the twitter of birds began, and the hushed sounds of life stole about within the house, and the nurse moved quietly to and fro in the room, setting things in order for the day. She brought Frank a cup of tea and some bread and butter, and he ate and drank without moving from the bedside. Before long the doctor paid his promised visit, but there was nothing for him to do, now that sleep had come to David. The immediate necessity was fulfilled, and beyond that there was no need to look at present. Only Hope, the little white flame which had burned so dim and had come so near to being quenched the evening before, shone more bravely.

  All that morning Maddox sat by David’s bed as he slept. It was he who had brought to him, through the tie of their love and David’s instinctive obedience to his suggestion, the sleep that had been so imperative a need, and the sunny morning grew broad and hot as he dozed sometimes, but oftener watched, filled with a huge and humble exultation of happiness that he had been able to help David. And when David woke, as he did, a little after noon, it was the best of all. For even while his eyes were yet scarcely unclosed, he spoke just one word — Frank’s name, still sleepily.

  “Oh, go to sleep,” said Frank, just as he had said it twelve hours before. “No early school.” But this time David reasserted himself a little. “‘Course not,” he said. “But I’ve slept ages and — and I want something to eat.”

  The beaming nurse stepped to the bedside.

  “I’ll bring you some beef-tea in a minute,” she said. “Lie quite still.”

  David turned his head.

  “Why, it’s quite morning,” he said. “Absolutely,” said Fran
k.

  “And I’ve slept ever since you told me we were in dormitory together,” he said. “How long ago was that!”

  “Oh, about twelve hours,” said Frank.

  “And you’ve sat here all the time?”

  “Think so.”

  “Oh, I say! And just because you thought I might want you.”

  David’s eyes were bright and untired again: there was life shining behind them, young life that may still be feeble as the snowdrops raising their frail heads above the ground on some sunny morning of February are feeble. But they answer to the beckoning of spring, not, like late autumn blossoms, feeling the chill of the winter that approaches.

  Frank leaned over him.

  “Yes, I thought you might want me,” he said; “but also I couldn’t go away. I wanted you.” David smiled at him.

  “I was pretty bad yesterday, wasn’t I!” he asked.

  “Yes, pretty bad.”

  “I knew I must be, because I didn’t care what happened. I do to-day. I’m going to get better.”

  “Of course you are,” said Frank, “and here’s your food.”

  “Lord, it smells good,” said David. “Do be quick, nurse.”

  * * * * *

  So there was house-supper at Adams’s that night.

  THE END

  UP AND DOWN

  CONTENTS

  MAY, 1914

  JUNE, 1914

  JULY, 1914

  AUGUST, 1914

  SEPTEMBER, 1915

  OCTOBER, 1915

  NOVEMBER, 1916

  DECEMBER, 1915

  JANUARY, 1917

  FEBRUARY, 1917

  MARCH, 1917

  APRIL, 1917

  MAY, 1914

  I do not know whether in remote generations some trickle of Italian blood went to the making of that entity which I feel to be myself, or whether in some previous incarnation I enjoyed a Latin existence, nor do I greatly care: all that really concerns me is that the moment the train crawls out from its burrowings through the black roots of pine-scented mountains into the southern openings of the Alpine tunnels, I am conscious that I have come home. I greet the new heaven and the new earth, or, perhaps more accurately, the beloved old heaven and the beloved old earth; I hail the sun, and know that something within me has slept and dreamed and yearned while I lived up in the north, and wakes again now with the awakening of Brünnhilde....

  The conviction is as unfathomable and as impervious to analysis as the springs of character, and if it is an illusion I am deceived by it as completely as by some master-trick of conjuring. It is not merely that I love for their own sakes the liquid and dustless thoroughfares of Venice, the dim cool churches and galleries that glow with the jewels of Bellini and Tintoret, the push of the gliding gondola round the corners of the narrow canals beneath the mouldering cornices and mellow brickwork, for I should love these things wherever they happened to be, and the actual spell of Venice would be potent if Venice was situated in the United States of America or in Manchester. But right at the back of all Venetian sounds and scents and sights sits enthroned the fact that the theatre of those things is in Italy. Florence has her spell, too, when from the hills above it in the early morning you see her hundred towers pricking the mists; Rome the imperial has her spell, when at sunset you wander through the Forum and see the small blue campanulas bubbling out of the crumbling travertine, while the Coliseum glows like a furnace of molten amber, or pushing aside the leather curtain you pass into the huge hushed halls of St. Peter’s; Naples has her spell, and the hill-side of Assisi hers, but all these are but the blossoms that cluster on the imperishable stem that nourishes them. Yet for all the waving of these wands, it is not Bellini nor Tintoret, nor Pope nor Emperor who gives the spells their potency, but Italy, the fact of Italy. Indeed (if in soul you are an Italian) you will find the spell not only and not so fully in the churches and forums and galleries of cities, but on empty hill-sides and in orchards, where the vine grows in garlands from tree to tree, and the purple clusters of shadowed grapes alternate with the pale sunshine of the ripened lemons. There, more than among marbles, you get close to that which the lover of Italy adores in her inviolable shrine, and if you say that such adoration is very easily explicable since lemon trees and vines are beautiful things, we will take some example that shall be really devoid of beauty to anyone who has not Italy in his heart, but to her lover is more characteristic of her than any of her conventional manifestations.

  So imagine yourself standing on a hilly road ankledeep in dust. On one side of it is a wine-shop, in the open doorway of which sits a lean, dishevelled cat, while from the dim interior there oozes out a stale sour smell of spilt wine mingled with the odour of frying oil. A rough wooden balcony projects from the stained stucco of the house-front, and on the lip of the balcony is perched a row of petroleum tins, in which are planted half a dozen unprosperous carnations. An oblong of sharp-edged shadow stretches across the road; but you, the lover of Italy, stand in the white of the scorching sunshine, blinded by the dazzle, choked by the dust, and streaming with the heat. On the side of the road opposite the wine-shop is a boulder-built wall, buttressing the hillside; a little behind the wall stands a grey-foliaged olive-tree, and on the wall, motionless but tense as a curled spring, lies a dappled lizard. From somewhere up the road comes the jingle of bells and the sound of a cracked whip, and presently round the corner swings a dingy little victoria drawn by two thin horses decorated between their ears with a plume of a pheasant’s tail feathers. The driver sits cross-legged on the box, with a red flower behind his ear, and inside are three alien English folk with puggarees and parasols and Baedekers. You step aside into the gutter to avoid the equipage, and as he passes, the driver, with a white-toothed smile, raises and flourishes his hat and says, “Giorno, signor!” The lizard darts into a crevice from which his tail protrudes, the carriage yaws along in a cloud of dust.... It all sounds marvellously ugly and uncomfortable, and yet, if you are an exiled Italian, the thought of it will bring your heart into your mouth.

  It was just this, of which I have given the unvarnished but faithful jotting, that I saw this morning as I came up from my bathe, and all at once it struck me that this, after all, more than all the forums and galleries, and gleams of past splendour and glory of light and landscape, revealed Italy. But that was all there was to it, the sense of the lizard and the dust and the trattoria, and yet never before had my mistress worn so translucent a veil, or so nearly shown me the secret of her elusive charm. Never had I come so near to catching it; for the moment, as the Baedekers went by, I thought that by contrast I should comprehend at last what it is that makes to me the sense of home in the “dark and fierce and fickle south,” as one of our Laureates so inappropriately calls it, having no more sympathy with Italy than I with Lapland. For the moment the secret was trembling in the spirit, ready to flower in the understanding.... But then it passed away again in the dust or the wine-smell, and when I tried to express to Francis at lunch in beautiful language what I have here written, he thought it over impartially, and said: “It sounds like when you all but sneeze, and can’t quite manage it.” And there was point in that prosaic reflection: the secret remained inaccessible somewhere within me, like the sneeze.

  Francis has been an exceedingly wise person in the conduct of his life. Some fifteen years ago he settled, much to the dismay of his uncle, who thought that all gentlemen were stockbrokers, that he liked Italy much better than any other country in the world, and that, of all the towns and mountains and plains of Italy, he loved best this rocky pinnacle of an island that rises sheer from the sapphire in the mouth of the Bay of Naples. Thus, having come across from Naples for the inside of a day, he telegraphed to his hotel for his luggage and stopped a month. After a brief absence in England, feverish with interviews, he proceeded to stop here for a year, and, when that year was over, to stop here permanently. He was always unwell in England and always well here; there was no material reason why he should ever
return to the fogs, nor any moral reason except that the English idea of duty seems to be inextricably entwined with the necessity of doing something you dislike and are quite unfitted for. So herein he showed true wisdom, firstly, in knowing what he liked, and secondly, in doing it. For many otherwise sensible people have not the slightest idea what they like, and a large proportion of that elect remainder have not the steadfastness to do it. But Francis, with no ties that bound him to the island of England, which did not suit him at all, had the good sense to make his home in this island of Italy that did. Otherwise he most certainly would have lived anæmically in an office in the City, and have amassed money that he did not in the least want. And though it was thought very odd that he should have chosen to be cheerful and busy here rather than occupied and miserable in London, I applaud the unworldliness of his wisdom. He settled also (which is a rarer wisdom) that he wanted to think, and, as you will see before this record of diary is out, he succeeded in so doing.

  Many Mays and Junes I spent with him here, and six months ago now, while I was groping and choking in the fogs, he wrote to me, saying that the Villa Tiberiana, at which we had for years cast longing glances as at a castle in Spain, was to be let on lease. It was too big for him alone, but if I felt inclined to go shares in the rent, we might take it together. I sent an affirmative telegram, and sat stewing with anxiety till I received his favourable reply. So, when a fortnight ago I returned here, I made my return home not to Italy alone, but to my home in Italy.

  The Villa Tiberiana, though not quite so imperial as it sounds, is one of the most “amiable dwellings.” It stands high on the hill-side above the huddled, picturesque little town of Alatri, and is approachable only by a steep cobbled path that winds deviously between other scattered houses and plots of vineyard. Having arrived at the piazza of the town, the carriage road goes no further, and you must needs walk, while your luggage is conveyed up by strapping female porters, whom on their arrival you reward with soldi and refresh with wine. Whitewashed and thick-built, two-storied and flat-roofed, it crouches behind the tall rubble wall of its garden that lies in terraces below it. A great stone-pine rears its whispering umbrella in the middle of this plot, and now in the May-time of the year there is to be seen scarcely a foot of the earth of its garden beds, so dense is the tapestry of flowers that lies embroidered over it. For here in the far south of Europe, the droughts of summer and early autumn render unpractical any horticultural legislation with a view to securing colour in your flower-beds all the year round. However much you legislated, you would never get your garden to be gay through July and August, and so, resigning yourself to emptiness then, you console yourself with an intoxication of blossom from March to June. And never was a garden so drunk with colour as is ours to-day; never have I seen so outrageous a riot. Nor is it in the garden-beds alone that rose and carnation and hollyhock and nasturtium and delphinium unpunctually but simultaneously sing and blaze together. The southern front of the house is hidden in plumbago and vines with green seed-pearl berries, and as for the long garden wall, it is literally invisible under the cloak of blue morning-glory that decks it as with a raiment from foundation to coping-stone. Every morning fresh battalions of blue trumpets deploy there as soon as the sun strikes it, and often as I have seen it thus, I cannot bring myself to believe that it is real; it is more like some amazing theatrical decoration. Beyond on the further side lies the orchard of fig and peach, and I observe with some emotion that the figs, like the lady in Pickwick, are swelling visibly.