by E. F. Benson
Jessie came down for another week-end before she took her kitchen-maid situation, and brought the news that a fresh draft of Lord Harlow’s regiment was ordered to the front, and that he would leave for France within the next day or two.
Archie felt a wild desire to laugh, to skip, to show his intense appreciation of these tidings. But he remembered that Jessie was not his confidante to that extent, and checked his exuberant inclination.
“Poor Helena!” he said, with an accent of great sincerity. “She must be broken-hearted. Why, they’ve only been married a fortnight, if as much.”
It was excellently said, and Jessie felt she would have shown herself an infidel, with regard to the general decency of the human race, if she had not accepted those words with the sincerity with which they surely must have been uttered. She resolutely put away from her all those misgivings that had assailed her when first she knew of Archie’s changed attitude towards her sister.
“You have been a brick about Helena,” she said. “I want to tell you that. Your forgiveness of the way she treated you seems to me beyond all praise.”
“Oh, nonsense,” said he lightly. “Besides, it was so dreadfully uncomfortable being always angry and miserable. Martin showed me that. But about Helena: how is she bearing it?”
It was now Jessie’s turn to be obliged to cloak her meaning.
“Very calmly and bravely,” she said.
“She would,” said Archie enthusiastically. “One always felt there was a steel will behind all Helena’s gentleness. What will she do, do you think? Would she perhaps like to come down here? There isn’t much to offer her, but then London in August doesn’t offer much either.”
Suddenly all Jessie’s mistrust stirred and erected itself. She could not believe that this scheme, which would throw Helena and Archie completely together, could be made with the apparent innocence with which it was put forward. How was it possible that Archie, who so few weeks ago was in such depths of misery and bitterness, could honourably suggest so dangerous a plan? It could not be Archie who suggested it: it came from that smiling white presence which she had seen in his room not many nights ago. And it was just that which she could not say to him.
“It’s nice of you to think of that,” she said.
“Not a bit: it would be nice for me, not nice of me. And besides,” he added, with an amazing cynicism, “it would be my way of ‘doing my bit,’ which everybody is talking about, if I could make things cheerfuller for pretty women like poor Helena, whose husband has gone out to fight.”
The moment he had said it he was sorry. But for the moment he had forgotten he was speaking to Jessie: the sentence had come out of his mouth as if he was but talking to himself. Also it introduced the suggestion of his own forbearance to enlist.
There was a rather awkward silence, and he felt irritated with Jessie for not changing the subject which he had so incautiously brought forward. But that was like her. She had no tact in such matters, refusing to be insincere, when insincerity was so simple a matter. His irritation grew on him, and at the same time he wanted to know what Jessie thought of his remaining inertly here, while all his contemporaries were enlisting. Why he wanted to know he did not define: the motive perhaps belonged to the time when Jessie had been so good a friend, and perhaps he knew that she was so still.
“Or do you think that I ought to behave like William, and serve my country?” he asked.
Jessie sat with eyes downcast for a moment. Then she raised them and looked him in the face, with all her affection and sincerity alight in them.
“Do you really want to know what I think, Archie?” she asked.
“Certainly I do.”
“Well, I can’t understand your not doing it,” she said. “At the same time, I think it is a matter about which you must decide for yourself.”
The sincerity of his manner equalled hers. He never spoke with more apparent frankness.
“Shall I tell you why I don’t?” he said. “It’s this. Do you remember one night our finding that my father was breaking the contract he made with me about drinking? Do you remember how sordid and horrible the discovery was?”
Jessie remembered quite well how Archie had laughed at it.
“I remember the evening,” she said.
“Well, we’ve renewed our contract,” said he, “and I’m the only person in the world who can keep my father to it. If I left him he would drink himself to death. Where, then, do you think my duty lies, Jessie? Isn’t it clearly for me to save my father? Can there be a more obvious duty than that? Do you think I have a very delightful life down here, all alone with him? Wouldn’t it be vastly easier for me to join my friends and go out alongside of them? I know my conduct lays me open to misconception, but I must be thick-skinned over that. But I hope you won’t misjudge me. Besides, my father has said that he forbids me to go. Of course I could leave him; he doesn’t lock me up. But I can’t see how I should be right in leaving him. I’m the one anchor he has left.”
He paused a moment, thinking over, with that stupendous swiftness of brain that was the result of Martin’s inspiration, all he had said, and remembered his light cynicism with regard to his “bit.”
“I know I rather shocked you just now,” he said, “when I spoke of its being ‘my bit’ to console pretty women whose husbands had gone out. But sometimes one has to be flippant to conceal one’s real thoughts on a serious subject, for I did not foresee then that we should talk it out. So there’s the end of that jest.”
So that had been a jest, not to be taken seriously. But it was a grimmer affair for Jessie not to be able to take seriously Archie’s seriousness. For a moment the frankness of his manner had convinced her, but very soon her conviction collapsed like a house of cards as he went on speaking. The horribleness of the discovery of his father’s drinking, for instance, when what she remembered was Archie’s laughter! If he could say that, what credence could possibly be placed in the picture he had drawn of himself as his father’s last hope? Or what in the image of himself as one who must silently bear cruel misconception? She could believe none of it…
Yet it was not the Archie whom she loved with all the sweetness and strength of her nature who spoke, but the Thing that was possessing him and filling his soul from the reservoir of some immense abyss of pure evil. She felt sure she did not misjudge him; true and infinitely tragic was her comprehension.
“It is entirely for you to decide, Archie,” she said. “I think I fully appreciate the worth of your reasons.”
Indeed, she knew not what else to say, though the bitter doubleness of her words cut her to the heart. But, if she could help Archie at all, she must at all costs retain such confidence as he gave her, must not give him the chance of quarrelling with her.
To her great relief, he seemed to accept the literal value of her words, and took her arm. And this time she felt in her soul that there was sincerity in his speech.
“You are a good friend, Jessie,” he said. “Don’t give me up, will you?”
“I couldn’t,” she said quietly.
* * * * *
They were strolling together by the edge of the lake in the hour of sunset, and Jessie, though sick at heart and tortured by the weight of her forebodings, and the tempest of fire and blood which had burst on Europe, yet tried to open her heart to the sweet spell of the tranquil evening. Somewhere behind the cloud of evil which had so suddenly taken shape in that host of barbarians who already had overrun Belgium, and which, no less, was invading the spirit of the boy she loved with the uttermost fibre of her being, there shone the eternal serenity of Omnipotent Mercy. But He dealt through human means; it was through those who had left love and home and ease behind them to perish in France that that torrent would be stayed, and through her, though in ways she could not conjecture, would come the delivery of her beloved. And in the rose-flecked sky, the leafy towers of the elms, the bosom of the lake, that Power also dwelt, no less than in the hearts that yearned for its presence an
d its manifestation. As in a glass darkly she beheld its reflection, which nothing could ever shatter. Of that she must never lose sight, nor cease to keep her inward eye fixed on the gleam, which some day would signal to her.
About a week later Archie was spending a delectable morning at the bathing-place. Never had there been so superb an imitation of Italian weather in England as this year, and day after day went by in unclouded brightness and strong, fresh heat. In those delightful conditions it had been perfectly easy for him to take his mind completely away from the war, and the misconceptions which he was possibly suffering under. He gave every morning but the briefest glance to the paper, for there was a tiresome uniformity about the news, and a monotonous regularity about the daily map, which marked the progress of the German line across North-East France. He gave hardly more thought to Helena, who seemed to think it more appropriate to stay in London with her father, just for the present, but had written the most characteristic of letters, saying how sweet Archie’s sympathy was to her, and how acute her anxiety concerning her husband. Certainly at the moment this was the right attitude to take, and Archie really did not much care whether she was here with him or not, for he had found his way into the Paradise that forms the portico of the palace where the absinthe-drinker dwells, and not yet had he penetrated into the halls of Hell that lie beyond.
His pleasure in the fact of being alive, in the colours of morning and evening, in the touch of cool waters, in the whispering of wind among the firs, were quickened to an inconceivable degree; it was impossible to want anything except the privilege of enjoying this amazing thrill of existence. And with it there had returned to him the need of expressing himself in writing; a new aspect of the world had been revealed to him, and without struggle, but with an even-flowing pen he set himself to record it, in veiled phrases and descriptions through which, as in chinks of light seen at the edges of drawn blinds, there came hints and suggestions of the fresh world that had dawned on him. Where before it was the clear stainlessness of the sea, the purifying breath of great winds that had been his theme, now instead the satyr crouched in the bushes, the snake lay coiled in the heather. It was from the slime and mud and from among blind crawling things that the water-lily sprang, and where before the enchantment of life moved him, he felt now only the call of putrefaction and decay. The lethal side of the created world had become exquisite in his eyes, and the beauty of it was derived from its everlasting corruption, not from the eternal upspringing of life. Lust, not love, was the force that kept it young, and renewed it so that the harvest of its decay should never ceased to be reaped. His mind had become a mirror that distorted into grotesque and evil shapes every image of beauty that was reflected in it, and rejoiced in them; it seemed to him that all nature, as well as all human motive, was based upon this exquisite secret that he had discovered. But it would never do to state it with what he considered the bald realism of those ludicrous sea-pieces he had written at Silorno; he must wrap his message up in a sort of mystic subtlety so that only those who had implanted in them the true instinct should be able to fill their souls with the perfume of his flowers. Others might guess and wonder and be puzzled, and perhaps see so far as to put down his book with disgust that was still half incredulous; but only the initiated would be able to grasp wholly the message that lurked in his hints and allusions. His style, underneath this new inspiration, had developed into an instrument of marvellous beauty, and often, when he had written a page or two, he would read it out aloud to himself, in wonder at that exquisite diction, and all the time he felt that he was reading aloud to Martin, and that Martin had dictated to him.
He was employed thus on this particular morning down at the bathing-place. He had already had a long swim, and, without dressing, lay down on the short turf and got out his writing-pad, when his new servant, who had taken William’s place, came down with a telegram for him. He was a very good-looking boy, quick in movement and swift to smile, and already Archie wondered how he could have regretted the departure of plain middle-aged William. Only last evening Archie, idly glancing through a field-glass, had seen the boy far off in the meadow beyond the lake in company with an extremely pretty housemaid whom he had often noticed about the passages. The two had sat there some time talking, and then Archie saw the boy look quickly round, and kiss her. He liked that immensely; that was the way youth should behave. He almost hoped that it was Thomas who had taken from his table one of those new ten-shilling notes that he had missed. He mustn’t do it too often, for that would be a bore; but Archie liked to think the boy had taken it, and perhaps converted it into a decoration for the pretty housemaid. Anyhow, Thomas, with his handsome face and his kissings in the meadow, and his possible pilferings, was an attractive boy, and clearly developing along the right lines.
The boy hesitated a moment, seeing Archie dripping and naked.
“I beg your pardon, my lord,” he said, “but there came a telegram for you, and I thought I had better bring it down.”
“Certainly, but why beg my pardon?” said Archie. “Don’t be prudish. I daresay you’ve got arms and legs as well as me, haven’t you?”
Thomas grinned with that odd shy look that Archie had noticed before.
“Yes, my lord,” he said.
“Then what is there to be ashamed of?”
Archie opened the telegram and read it, and suddenly bit his lip to prevent his laughing.
“Is there an answer, my lord?” asked the boy. “I brought a form down in case.”
“Well done. Yes, there is an answer.”
Archie hesitated a moment before directing the form to Helena. Then he wrote:
“Deepest sympathy with the terrible news. Command me in all ways. Your devoted Archie.”
“Send that at once, will you?” he said.
When the boy had gone Archie read the telegram again, which was from Jessie, and told him that Lord Harlow had been killed at the front. Then he smothered his face in his bent elbow, and lay shaking with laughter.
CHAPTER XIII
On a September morning, some fortnight later, Archie was waiting in the drawing-room at Oakland Crescent for Helena’s entry. He had seen her twice since her husband’s death, and it struck him now that she always kept him waiting when she asked him to come and see her, and ascribed to that the very probable motive that she expected thereby to increase his eagerness for her coming. Certainly he wanted her to come, because he was much interested and amused in the conventional little comedy she was playing, and he looked forward to the third act, on which the curtain would presently ring up. In the interval he sat very serenely smiling to himself, and tickling the end of his nose with three white feathers that he had received in the street to-day. That always diverted him extremely; a rude young woman would come up (she was invariably square and plain, and had a knobby face like a chest of drawers) and say, “Aren’t you ashimed not to be serving your country? You’re a coward, you are,” and then she would give him a white feather. He had quite a collection of them now; there were nine already which he carefully kept in his stud-box, and these three all in one day were a splendid haul.
He had, to occupy his mind very pleasantly, the remembrance of his previous interviews with Helena, which formed the two existing acts of the comedy. In the first she had come in, looking deliciously pretty in her deep mourning, and, with her head a little on one side, had held out both her hands to him. They had stood with hands clasped for quite a long time, and then Archie kissed her because he was rather tired of holding her hands, and because he enjoyed kissing anything so pretty. That had caused a break, and they sat down side by side, and Helena made some queer movements in her throat, which seemed to Archie to be designed to convey the impression that she was repressing her emotion. But they did not quite fulfil their design; they looked rather as if they were due to the desire to pump up rather than keep down. Then Helena gave a long sigh.
“Oh, Archie,” she said, “I am utterly broken-hearted. It was so sudden, so terribl
y sudden. I shall never get over it. Think! We had been married only a fortnight, and next day I got a letter from him, after I knew he was dead. Such a sweet little letter, so cheerful and so loving.”
Archie expected something of this sort: its conventionality, its utter insincerity, amused him enormously. And, wanting more of it, he said just the proper sort of thing to encourage her to give it him.
“Oh, my dear,” he said, “but how you will love and cherish that letter! I don’t suppose you were once out of his thoughts all the time he was in France.”
She shook her head.
“I am sure of it,” she said. “Ah, what a privilege to have been loved as I was loved by such a noble, manly heart. I must always think of that, mustn’t I?”
Archie took her hand again. The touch of those soft, cool fingers gave him pleasure; so, too, did the answering pressure of them.
“Yes, indeed,” he said. “And you must remember, too, that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
She repeated the quotation in a dreamy meditative voice.
“Yes, that is so true: it does me good to think of that,” she said. “And I mustn’t think of him as dead really. He is just as living as ever he was. He was so fond of you too. We often spoke of you. And his quaint, quiet humour!…”
That was the general note of the first act: it had been short, for the conversation suitable to it was necessarily limited. The second showed a great advance in scope and variety of topics. Also the tempo was quite changed: instead of its being largo, it was at least andante con moto.
This time, after again keeping him waiting, she had entered with a smile.
“What a comfort you are, Archie!” she said. “I have been looking forward to seeing you again. Somehow you understand me, which nobody else does. I feel all the time that neither darling Jessie, whenever I see her, which isn’t often, for she is so busy, nor daddy quite understand me. I mean to be brave, and not lose courage, not lose gaiety even, and I think — I think that they both misjudge me. They expect me to be utterly broken. So I was at first, as you know so well, but I tried to take to heart what you said, and force myself not to despair. I feel I oughtn’t to do that: I must take the burden of life up again with a smile.”