Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  He turned to Lady Grote, as he spoke. She knew as much about politics as she knew about the lunar theory, and very wisely hazarded no conjectures on the subject.

  “You are very suggestive,” she said. “But I think what you say is completely wrong from beginning to end. All the heads of different professions just now, like you Ministers of State, and the heads of the Church, like bishops, know nothing at all of what is really going on. Public opinion isn’t made in Whitehall, any more than Christianity is made in cathedrals. And anyone who professes to control the course of either must have first-hand knowledge of the subject. Why is the Church out of touch with the people? Simply because bishops live in palaces. And why is the State out of touch with the people? Simply because Ministers sit in their offices, in an academic manner, and are unacquainted with what public opinion is. You and they have not the smallest idea what individuals want: you have no first-hand information. Was there ever a more ridiculous assembly than the House of Commons, unless it is the House of Lords? A man is elected to the House of Commons, let us say, by the majority of one vote. He represents half of the constituents who elect him, plus one man. It is no answer to say that somebody else is elected with a majority of three thousand. He only represents the majority of the electorate. It doesn’t come out square; there is no use in saying it does. And, good Lord, the House of Lords!”

  Lord Thorley had adjusted his pince-nez again, and looked at her as through a microscope.

  “And about the House of Lords?” he asked.

  “My dear, you are not a professor, and I am not an undergraduate. You ask that as if you were trying to examine me, and determine my place by the intelligence of my answers. That is the fault of your party, which is the same as mine. The Government are like schoolmasters: they don’t seem to recollect that they were elected by the school itself. You are — to adopt Gracie’s horrid phrase — aristocratic, and you can’t understand that nowadays there is no aristocracy. I suppose I belong to it, but I am quite certain that it doesn’t exist. We are like things in the Red King’s dream. When he wakes we shall all find that there aren’t any of us. Why should there be? As you said yourself, that which the House of Lords used to represent has gone elsewhere. Germans and Jews and Hittites — whatever they are — have got it. The House of Lords is an Aunt Sally, and everybody throws darts at its silly face. And they stick there every time.”

  He wrinkled his pince-nez off his nose again.

  “My dear Helen,” he said, “I had no idea you were such a Radical.”

  She gave a little despairing sigh.

  “I am nothing of the kind!” she said. “I am no more a Radical than I am a Tory. But I do know this, that in some weird way the whole world is going into a melting-pot. We’re all going to be chucked in. What sort of soup shall we make, I wonder?”

  Lord Thorley, who had sunk back into his chair, sat a little more upright, and grasped the lapels of his coat in his hands.

  “Without calling attention to the fact that soup is not usually made in a melting-pot,” he observed, “I don’t believe in the melting-pot. Ever since I can remember the country has supposedly been on the verge of some gigantic cataclysm. At one time it has been socialism, at another a European war, at another Home Rule. At no period that I can remember has there not been some terrible thunder-cloud in the sky, and now I have seen too many thunder-clouds to believe in thunder. And if you look at a book of memoirs of whatever age, you will always find precisely the same thing. The writers invariably represent their country as on the edge of an abyss. The ground is always trembling with subterranean menaces. But when was the volcano actually in a state of eruption in England? It never has been. It has smoked and steamed sometimes; that has always been its safety-valve.”

  He looked serenely, triumphantly, at his companions, as if, in the character of a teacher, he had algebraically “proved” some problem, or as if, in the character of a conjuror, he had brought off some clever piece of manipulation. But Lady Grote shook her head at him.

  “You think you can prove things by a theory,” she said. “But unfortunately experience can disprove your theory.”

  He laughed gaily and rose.

  “That is just where we part company,” he said. “The theory itself is founded on collective experience.”

  “But the conditions now are different.”

  “That is what every age says of its own age,” he replied, “and in each case it is wrong. Behind the conditions and governing them is that great immutable force called human nature. And behind human nature is the infinitely greater force and the most immutable of all, which, by one name or another, we agree to be God!”

  He stood twisting his pince-nez by the string for a moment’s silence.

  “But here’s this lovely Saturday afternoon running to seed,” he said. “May I borrow a motor, my dear Helen, and go out for a run? And can’t I persuade you to come with me?”

  “I wish I could, but my guests will be beginning to arrive before long.”

  “Dear me, yes, I forgot. I was thinking that you and Gracie and I would be passing a quiet Sunday. Do you expect many people?”

  “I think about thirty. I never really expect anybody till he arrives, for he may make some subsequent engagement.”

  “And when he arrives you naturally cease to expect him, because he is already there. So you have no expectations with regard to people, and I wish you would apply the same principle with regard to cataclysms. But I think I shall go out, if I may, and return when your guests have mostly come. Then I can plunge head first into them. Seeing guests arrive one by one always rather reminds me of wading out on a flat shore to bathe.”

  She laughed.

  “My dear, order your car, will you? and take your header on your return. But don’t ask Gracie to go with you, because she would certainly say ‘Yes,’ and I want her here for moral support.”

  “Very well. I feel no qualm about not offering you my moral support, because you would find me a broken reed.”

  He looked round the great cool loggia a moment.

  “Dear me, Grote’s ancestors were thieves with a great deal of taste,” he observed.

  He drifted away in a rather rudderless manner, lost in subtle speculations on the subject that had been under discussion. Much the most interesting of these was Lady Grote herself, for whom he entertained the greatest admiration and the strongest affection of which he was capable. That, though it lacked any ardent quality, was undoubtedly deep; its very quietness almost guaranteed that. His pulses never beat quick for anybody, but for his friends they beat most satisfactorily full. Passions of any sort, whether of temper or of temperament, were quite unknown to him: his analytic mind lived in a cool, pleasant cave with its affections grouped tidily round it, and his admirable conscience keeping a sort of sentry-go at the mouth of it, to call him out, when required, for the fulfilment of his public duties. But the moment they were over, it saluted, and let him bestow himself at ease again.

  He seldom was surprised at anything, for if anything at all startling came across him, he always felt that a better knowledge of the soil from which it sprang would have enabled him to conjecture its existence. He had been unaware, for instance, until to-day, that Lady Grote was one of the cataclysmic party, whose bogies, whenever they appeared in the public Press, he looked at with mild and easily-satisfied curiosity. The future of Ireland was of these, labour trouble was another; even suffragettes were periodically supposed to contribute a menace to the tranquillity of this decently-ordered realm, or the possibility of a European war. Lady Grote had not said which of these she thought threatening, but she had spoken of the melting-pot being on the fire....

  He found himself standing in the drawing-room in front of the great Vandyck picture of the Lady Grote of the period, who had been an ancestress of his own. Not till then did he remember that he had come indoors to order a motor-car — had he driven down from London in his own car that morning? He could not recollect whether he had
or not, and pressed a bell to order it if it was here, and, if not, one of his hostess’s. Waiting for it to be answered, he continued looking vaguely at the antique Lady Grote and thinking of the modern one.

  How baffling to the analyst was the vivid and flamelike quality of her mind! No desire for the brooding activity of thought ever touched her; she was always eager for experience and psychical adventures in living; she loved coming in contact each day with new minds; she explored them like a traveller in unknown lands, but made no maps of them, no notes even of the fresh flora and fauna. She must be forty years old now, and yet in eagerness and elasticity of mind, just as in her fresh youth of body, she showed no signs of age and of the mellowness that age brought with it. She had still about her all the delicious effervescence and experimentalism of youth: her life was passed in the foam of rapids, and never by any chance did she float into a back-water. Time, with the buffetings and adventures that it brought, wrote no wrinkles on her, nor ever so slightly bruised her: the very quality of her vitality, like a wind, swept away catastrophes from her path in a mere cloud of dust.

  He never made inquiries into the truth of scandals about his friends; such things did not interest him, but for as long as he had known her the world’s tongue had never ceased wagging about her affairs. Whatever they had been, they had in no way coarsened her or made her common: she remained the high-bred, exquisite woman, perched on a pinnacle of what he must suppose was called social standing. His passion for analysis did not trouble to exert itself over what that meant. In this prosperous, thoughtless, democratic day there was no end to the ingredients which composed it. She was a power, a centre, a comet....

  Years ago there had been an awkward time, when Robin was quite a small boy. Grote had wanted to take very extreme steps, most ill-advised steps in Lord Thorley’s opinion, with regard to it. He had interested himself in that, and eventually he had persuaded Grote to be reconciled with her again. No good could come of it, only harm all round, especially for the boy.... Naturally he had never spoken to Helen of what he had done on that occasion; probably to this day she was ignorant that it was he who had saved the situation.

  Besides Grote himself... and then with a slight sense of disgust, as if he had seen an objectionable paragraph in a book. Lord Thorley turned over that page in his mind. All the rest, as far as he personally knew, was mere scandal and gossip. He had no means of judging its truth or falsity; he only knew that the subject-matter of it was unattractive to him, even positively distasteful.

  It seemed that the bells in this house were answered with truly artistic deliberation, and going again to the side of the chimney-piece to repeat the summons, he observed that he had merely turned on the lights of the glass chandelier that hung in the centre of the room. He had been vaguely conscious of a good deal of sunlight about, and had even wondered where it came from.

  “Dear me, dear me!” he said to himself, as he pressed the correct button. “I must really try to be a little more observant in practical affairs. Helen would never have done that. It is distinctly a waste of nervous force to attend too closely to trivial matters, but I suppose there is a compromise to be arrived at.”

  CHAPTER IV

  IT was not long after Lord Thorley had got clear of the house — it turned out on inquiry that he had driven down from London that morning, and thus he went forth in his own motor-car — that Lady Grote’s guests began to arrive, and for the next couple of hours she had to remain in the loggia, receiving them. There was a buffet set out against the wall, where they could get tea or hock-cup, and a variety of foods and fruits to refresh them after the strain of the half-hour’s journey from town, in the saloon carriage reserved for them on a couple of trains stopped for them at Grote, so that they should not have the inconvenience of travelling by the more leisurely services. There motor-cars had met them, with omnibuses for their servants and luggage, so that the journey even on this hot day could not be considered an intolerable ordeal, and they arrived very smart and talkative and hungry.

  Week after week, on Saturday afternoon, from the beginning of May till the end of July, this crowd of those whose names were all for some reason or another much on the lips of the world in which she lived, descended on her like a flock of brilliantly plumaged birds, and made the social history of the current season. There was very little process of selection in her invitations, for with so numerous a party it really mattered little if it contained utterly incongruous elements, for all were fused by the agreeable fact that it was a cachet and a distinction to be here at all.

  She made no rule of asking husbands and wives together, for with her usual commonsense she argued that they generally saw enough, if not too much, of each other already, and these parties were rather of the nature of a slipping of the domestic chain. Besides, it was easily possible in those free-and-easy days, which were characteristic of the first decade and a half of the twentieth century, that a man admired somebody else beside his wife, and a woman looked not without favour on a man who had not the good fortune to be her husband. But never did she ask two men who admired the same woman to any very special degree, nor two women who happened to be setting their modish hats at the same man. She was much too good-natured to take pleasure in awkward situations, and it was the rarest thing in the world for her party not to split up into the most amicable groups and couples, which could be shaken together again into one shining piece of quicksilver by the arrival of mealtimes. No kind of precedence in the way of rank was observed, for she rightly considered that a stray duchess might easily bore or be bored by a stray duke, and boredom was not among the objects of her parties.

  For herself she proposed to be taken in to dinner to-night by Kuhlmann, an immense tenor at the Covent Garden opera about whom all London raved. He had soft, purring manners, and at heart was about as civilized as the average wild-cat. There was no Frau Kuhlmann, as far as she was aware, but people said that there ought to have been a great many. He had sung the part of Walther last night at the opera, and Helen Grote, in spite of Lady Massingberd’s firm assertion that she did not know one note from another, had nearly fallen out of her box from sheer emotion in the Preislied.... And Grote should take in Gracie Massingberd, to show that his wife paid no attention to ridiculous things that people, she believed, were saying, and Mr. Boyton should take in the Duchess of Lindfield, because he adored duchesses, and she flattery, and Lord Thorley should take in Mrs. Trayle, who had written the mystical play that nobody understood, but everybody considered quite wonderful. Lord Thorley had been nine times to see it in the hope of understanding it; the seventh time he thought he had understood it, only to become aware at the eighth that he had done nothing of the sort. But perhaps the authoress could throw some light on it on behalf of so earnest an inquirer.

  Then there was Mrs. Lock water, who was asked here because she was simply the most beautiful creature ever seen, and so deserved her place. She seldom opened her mouth, but was an admirable listener, with a bad memory, so that it was perfectly safe to tell her anything. She would obviously fall to the arm of the great portrait-painter, Geoffrey Bellingham, who neither listened nor stopped talking in long, abstruse sentences, from which he could not always extricate himself. When this happened, he began again and put it all differently. These periods were packed full of wit and wisdom, if you only could extract it; but the style of his speech resembled that of refractory ore from which it was difficult to win the gold. All this was obvious, and for the rest she could easily see, between tea and dinner, who gravitated to whom.

  It occasionally happened, though rarely, that some guest or other showed no signs of gravitating to anybody, in which case this most complete of hostesses singled him out, at whatever personal inconvenience, for her own especial attention. To-day there seemed to be no such present, and as the loggia filled up and emptied again, with fresh arrivals and previous arrivals who strolled out together after tea, some down to the river, some to the tennis-courts, there were no signs of detached units. M
ost of her guests, as was natural in the middle of the season among those who spend three months in an incessant interchange of meetings with others, were already acquainted, many were friends, and there were none who found themselves in any way on alien territory.

  The French Ambassador, a tall, emaciated person, whom no one could ever have suspected of being the first of European gourmets, had shown an unmistakable preference for Lady Instow, whose chef he had already tried to seduce into his service; and Mr. Boyton, as by some inevitable law that governs the movements of heavy bodies, had been already drawn into a reverential orbit round the Duchess of Lind field, who, according to her custom, was swiftly denuding him of cigarettes. But to Mr. Boyton a cigarette of his own smoked by a duchess was worth a hundred cigarettes smoked by himself, and he came near to being vexed when Lady Grote, observing this marauding process, told a footman to put a case of cigarettes on a table close to her Grace. But he found some little consolation in shutting up his own ease and supplying himself from this, for these were, at any rate, titled cigarettes. He also felt a quiet and secret pleasure in being the only snob of the old school present: thus he had a fair field to himself, and no one disputed his desire to talk to a dull duchess. For the rest, he was a stout, middle-aged gentleman, with hair of a suspiciously uniform honey-colour parted in the middle.

  He had a wife, a fact which nobody here present probably knew, who kept his house in Hampstead in a wholly admirable manner. She was the only person in the world who loved him, and would have perished with terror had there been any serious reason to suppose that she would be asked to the tables at which her Arthur was so deservedly popular, for he had an apt and amusing tongue ready to trim itself with sycophancy when exposed to the high lights of such a firmament. His eminence consisted in the fact that he was always there: he crawled, he climbed, he flew. But he invariably got there. A hostess asked Mr. Boyton as a matter of course: he was there to eat his dinner just as naturally as the footmen were there to give it him. He sang for it, too, making himself invariably agreeable to those who were worth the trouble. And as he saw no others, he never proved a disappointment.