by E. F. Benson
She declined to pursue the subject, and spoke to her maid, who was being rather severe in her handling. Simpson had been her nursery-maid when she was a child, and now, austere and grey-haired, was as devoted to her still. At home there was another French young thing to supplement Simpson, but when Helen went on a quiet visit like this, it was always Simpson who attended her.
“What’s the matter, Sim?” she asked. “Why are you being so cross with my hair?”
“I beg your pardon, my lady,” said Simpson darkly.
“Well, then, I don’t give it you. What’s the matter? Don’t you like coming back to Ashmore again? Or have I kept you up too late?”
Simpson’s severe touch melted into its usual softness.
“Eh, now, Miss Helen,” she said, “don’t talk such nonsense, my dear. As if I wasn’t pleased to sit up all night for you. But things have changed since you were here as a young lady: that’s what it is.”
“I suppose you haven’t got any nice young man to flirt with, Sim. There’s the butler: what’s the matter with him?”
“You and your jokes,” said Simpson, beaming.
“Well, there are worse things than jokes,” said she. Simpson went on brushing in silence a little.
“I can’t think why you come to a house of Huns, Miss Helen,” she said at length. “That’s what they say about them down stairs. There’s the butler whom you joked about just now. And there’s the children’s nurse who’s been dismissed this very evening—”
Helen interrupted and got up.
“Stuff and nonsense, you old darling,” she said. “There, give me a kiss, and don’t listen to such rubbish.”
“Rubbish?” began Simpson.
“Yes, rubbish. A pack of rubbish like when you and I used to play ‘Beggar my Neighbour’ in the nursery. And will you call me at half-past eight? Sleep well.”
Helen did not follow her own advice to Simpson, and for a long time that night she did not sleep at all. On getting into the Napoleon bed, she reminded herself by way of suggestion towards sleep, that she was now far away from London, away out in the peaceful, somnolent fen-country, and that for miles upon miles round her stretched quiet pastures dotted over with farm-houses to which the news of the war had scarcely more significance than the report of a storm at sea. Here and there, as in the case of the station-master at Ashmore, someone might have suffered an intimate bereavement, but for the most part crops and cattle remained paramount as the topics of life. She had left the uneasy city where at every turn she was confronted by something that reminded her of all that she wished to forget and drew an insincere sigh of relief to think how far she was away from it all.
To-morrow, after a long night, she would spend the day as she would have done in autumns of other years: perhaps Aline would drive her into Cambridge: she would visit curiosity shops, she would read, she would walk, she would sit and discuss the endless topics that sprang up so plentifully when you talked. Aline had hoped that she would stay here for at least a week: that she would certainly do, and after that, instead of going back to town, she would go down to Grote and spend October there.
It would be easy to collect Mr. Boyton and a few people of that sort who disliked the war as much as she did. She would make a Hermitage, a Boccaccio-refuge for those who had the sense to avoid the plague. The busier sort of folk should come down for week-ends, to refresh themselves with the sense that the old pleasures and interests of life still existed. They were still there unimpaired; it was only necessary to put yourself back in the old atmosphere, and shut the window against the poisonous gases that blew in from those infernal furnaces.... October mornings at Grote, with the hoar-frost on the lawns, and the mist which the sun would soon disperse, lying thin over the beech-woods, so that their smouldering gold showed through it, mornings with the clean, odourless odour of the cold night still lingering.... The days would be beginning to close in: by tea-time the house would be curtained and lit, and the sparkle of wood-fire prosper on the open hearths....
Yet though she could enumerate the details, as she might have enumerated the pieces of furniture in a room, she could not visualize them in her imagination, or from them construct a living and coherent whole. Still very wide awake and assuring herself how delicious it was to revel in this sense of remoteness and peace, she travelled back to the evening she had just spent.
It occurred to her with added force how little she knew of her hostess, and what she was like when she was not one of a crowd. Hitherto they had met but in the great world where everyone to some extent wears a mask. But, to-night, had Aline taken off her mask only to put on another, or was it the real Aline who was more English than the English, and delighted in harvest festivals, and was rude to her guests? Perhaps she would show more of herself in the days to come, and even be glad to know of the sympathy of a friend for one who at heart must be torn by the strife of two nations to both of which she belonged.... And thus she was back at the very subject which she had come here to escape.
Robin....
Probably Sir Hermann had received some hint that Helen had hoped for a ventilation of the war-impregnated atmosphere of London, for when she came down to breakfast next morning he let the daily paper, from which he had been reading aloud to Aline, slip on to the floor as he rose to greet her, and did not recover it. He was dressed, in view of to-day’s programme, in a brand new homespun suit of Norfolk jacket, with a leather pad on the shoulder and knickerbockers, and there was a marked air of high elation both about him and Aline. Giggles and slight connubialities took place between them as they assisted each other in giving Helen some kedjeree; Aline put her face on to Hermann’s shoulder, and said how good the homespun smelt, and he kissed her car and said it smelt of him. This was slightly embarrassing for a third party, and Helen was glad at this moment to welcome the appearance of Mr. Boyton. But the astonishing high spirits of their hosts continued. Sir Hermann, usually rather silent, bubbled with small talk, and they be-dearested each other in every sentence. It could hardly be that the prospect of sport for the one and harvest decorations for the other could account for this sparkle, and, adopting a more probable conjecture, Helen asked if there was good news in the paper.
“Very little from France,” said Sir Hermann, “ and on the East front the Russians have suffered a severe defeat.”
Aline beamed over her bacon.
Yes, poor things,” she said. “It does not look much like a victorious march down the Unter den Linden.”
“No: the steam-roller is skidding a little,” said Sir Hermann. “I hope you slept well, Mr. Boyton? You will not change your mind and pick some partridges for these ladies?”
Aline laughed.
“Listen at his ‘ Pick some partridges!’” she said. “And I must go and shoot some flowers for the harvest festival. Will you be back to lunch, dearest? Do come home for lunch. I hate your being away all day.” —
“That will not be possible,” said he. “We are going to motor out to the very edge of my property, and at half-two Mr. Tempest and I will be eating a sandwich six miles away.”
“Do not catch cold, dearest. Will you not keep the motor, and then you and Mr. Tempest can lunch comfortably inside it?”
“No, it is not necessary. Yes: here is the paper, Mr. Boyton, though I am afraid you will find nothing very cheerful in it. There is the Times, too, and the Telegraph. I do not like the Russian news at all.”
“No, it is terrible: we will not think of it,” said Aline. “Dearest Helen, what shall we stay-at-homes do? I must just go down to the church and take some flowers, but after that I am quite at your disposal. Is it not a divine morning? Such a morning makes me feel twenty years old again. I have to remind myself that I am a staid old matron, with three great boys and a bear of a husband who will not take his lunch with me.”
The sun was warm along the south side of the house, and while Aline went to see her husband and Mr. Tempest start, the two others strolled out on the flagged walk. Mr. Boyton,
as usual, was a little acid in the morning: what is called “a good night’s rest” always disturbed his temper.
“Our charming hosts seem in the most extravagant spirits to-day,” he said. “Personally, I have to break myself to myself every morning, and that depresses me. When on the top of that I come down and find little smiles and pinches and intimacies going on, and in the escape from them into the daily papers am confronted with this appalling disaster to our Allies, I merely descend into the pit from which I was digged. Then there was the renewal of the odious proposition that I should wade through turnips all day.”
Helen made a desperate attempt to be consistent with her object in coming into the country.
“Ah, don’t remind me of the paper and anything it may contain,” she said. “Let us spend one of those idle days, when we were all so engrossingly busy from morning till night. All the resources of civilization are at our disposal; how shall we use them to the best advantage?”
“Let me fly to the lift, and spend the morning going up and down, listening to German chorales,” suggested he. “What I dread is the invasion of the children, and the long acts of homage and admiration that that will entail. I think we should be safe in the lift.”
Once again she tried to imagine herself all October at Grote with Mr. Boyton, and one or two other unoccupied people in rotation. Would it be as difficult to plan the occupation of those days as to plan the hours of this? She longed to take the paper from his hand, and just give one glance at it, to see how serious the Russian defeat was. But she put that away from her.
Mr. Boyton, like a lemon-squeezer, continued to drip with acid expressions.
“I envy the superb vitality of our hostess,” he said. “Yesterday evening I felt that she in her own delightful person embodied the whole spirit of the Entente, and yet this morning, in spite of the bad news, she has attained to heights of elation rarely witnessed. What a superb thing it is to be able to dissociate yourself entirely from such disasters. Let us do the same, my dear lady, and sing chorales in the lift. Or shall we tranquillize ourselves in the cooling-room?”
Helen found herself suddenly disliking Mr. Boyton. He was offending against the obligations implied by the acceptance of hospitality in these reflections, and she could no more go on listening to them than she could last night have encouraged Simpson to develop her ideas about the house of Huns.
“Oh, it’s a waste of time to go indoors,” she said. “When I am in the country I like to be out. I wonder if Aline would take me into Cambridge. Ah, there she is.”
Mr. Boyton had a sense of having been snubbed; he had made humorous though sub-acid remarks about sitting in the lift or the cooling-room which had been received without appreciation, and he had spoken in praise of his hostess’s vitality and power of self-detachment from disagreeable events. No one could have accused him of a double meaning, unless the second of the meanings was not floating about in his mind ready to crystallize. He felt, no doubt, that there was some such crystallization in Lady Grote’s mind: otherwise she would have endorsed his praise of Aline’s vitality. But if there was, why did she not respond, and let their private suspicions rub noses together? Instead, she failed to see humour in his fun, and professed by her silence a blank ignorance of crystals. A failure in these little social successes was always bitter to him, since they constituted the joy of life to him, and with the ill-breeding that always jumped out if he was scratched, he proceeded to be petulant and embarrassing.
“Dear lady,” he said to Aline, “your two guests were singing a hymn of praise in honour of your vitality and control. Never, we decided, were you inspired with a more charming animation than this morning, though you, like us, must have been so terribly depressed by the bad news. What is your secret for this magnificent power of isolation? We come as despondent neophytes to you.”
It was craftily done: he had put Lady Grote in a difficult position, for she could scarcely dissociate herself from these compliments or from the innuendo that underlay them. That was his method of “punishing” those who appeared to snub him. He had not had occasion to punish Lady Grote before, and was rather surprised at his own audacity. He was punishing his hostess as well for being allied by birth to the nation which had spoiled his autumn plans, and for having high spirits in the morning.
His calculation miscarried. Helen Grote merely stepped forward between him and Aline, and took Aline’s arm.
“Take me up to the nursery to see the children, Aline,” she said. “I’ve fallen in love with Freddy. Let’s go at once, may we? And while you’re doing your flowers, I have some letters to write.”
Mr. Boyton remained planted on the flagged path....
The inauspicious days went by, days flooded with summer sun, refreshed by the calmest breath of autumn, cushioned by all that wealth could supply of material comfort, and curtained from the blasts of war by the miles of sleepy country. But never had Helen passed hours so uneasy, nor made a scheme of which the execution so frustrated the design.
Instead of finding peace in this withdrawn corner, she had been finding only an infinitely greater dreariness than even in the work-rooms of Graeie Massingberd; instead of capturing forgetfulness, she was seized with an unremitting restlessness that would not allow her placidly to enjoy. Whether she read or talked, it was as if some remote telephone kept sounding that she knew brought a summons to her. Twenty times a day she resolved to devote herself entirely to anything that amused or interested her; but no sooner had she tried to fix her mind on it, than the penetrating tinkle diverted her attention again. And would her projected retirement to Grote, she asked herself, be productive of any better results than this? Would Mr. Boyton and his perennial flow of slightly ill-natured comment be any more amusing there than here? She began to wonder whether she would spend October at Grote after all. She could not see herself there, and yet in her present mood she could see herself nowhere.
She longed to taste the sharp, sweet savour of life again, and had thought it would return to her palate if only she could shut out the things that in London reminded her every moment of the war. She was eager to be alive again, but her eagerness found nothing on which it could fasten. She longed to get her teeth into life, but the old topics, the old interests, were like dust or like cotton-wool in her mouth.
A great chasm seemed to have opened in the world, and she found herself clinging to the edge of it. It had opened at her very feet, and she was clutching the precipitous margin of it. Far away across the abyss were the memories of past years, and if she turned her head to look at them there was no clearness about them. They were unreal and unsubstantial, covered with wreaths of mist. Barren and bleak was the edge she was clinging to, hideous was the desolated prospect that lay beyond it. But the edge seemed firm enough; it bore her weight....
CHAPTER XI
HELEN GROTE was seated between Robin and Jim Lethbridge in the first row of stalls at a revue at the Monarchy. She had given up the attempt to find coherence in the plot of it, and, indeed, Robin had told her that she was on the wrong tack altogether, because revues did not have plots.
“Get in the proper mood, mother,” he said. “Don’t expect anything at all, and enjoy what you get. Oh, what a ripping scene! And there’s Diana Coombe in khaki. Hi! Jim! Don’t you wish there were some Tommies like that in the regiment?”
Jim gave a great shout of laughter by way of reply, for Arthur Angus, owner of the yacht with a crew of treble-voiced seamen, fell flat down as he stepped ashore, and without getting up began to sing.
“Oh, ripping!” said Jim. “Robin, there’s the dance coming now.”
Lady Grote was rather disappointed.
“Oh, have you been to it before?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me, and I would have got tickets for something else.”
Jim laughed.
“I’ve been eight times,” he said; “this makes the ninth. I’ve bet Robin five pounds that I shall go twenty times before they pop me over to France. Wouldn’t it be pu
trid luck if I went nineteen times and then went out and got shot?”
For a moment both Jim and Robin grew stiff and wooden-faced, for a very mountainous female dressed in Union Jacks sang something quite unspeakable about the heroes and the “boys” in khaki. Robin said “Good God!” under his breath once or twice, and the house, which contained a large number of soldiers, received her compliments in chilling silence, so that she was not encouraged to proceed with some encore verses.
“But do tell me why you like it so enormously?” said Helen, to distract Jim from this embarrassing lady.
“Oh, it’s the tunes a good deal, and then Arthur Angus is so awfully funny, and it’s all so muddled up and silly. It’s gay, you know, and when you’ve been superintending a lot of fellows digging trenches for practice all day in the rain, you want something that will take your mind off that devastating job.... Now there’s the dance.”
If Lady Grote had by some incalculable chance found herself alone at this preposterous revue nothing would have kept her in her seat for five minutes. But the infection of the two boys’ enjoyment took hold of her, and she found herself laughing because they laughed, and enjoying because they enjoyed. She even at Robin’s instigation tried to think the great Diana Coombe was an alluring and beautiful creature. Robin was clearly known to her, for she threw him discreet little smiles and glances (which quite accounted for his insistence that they should have seats in the front row). Presently she appeared to retire from the army and came on again as a French marquise, which she resembled about as much as she resembled a soldier, with Arthur Angus as her marquis, receiving guests at the door of an outrageous drawing-room, and saying: “How do you portez-vous?”