by E. F. Benson
A look of horror came into her eyes.
“Or do I mean alibi?” she asked. “Have I said something dreadful? Celia, darling!”
Celia had decided that her neighbour did not like reading. Dinner had come to the promiscuous stage: some people were eating dessert, others were drinking coffee, others were smoking.
“Which is it, Celia?” her mother called out. “When I marry Evan to-morrow, do I have to get an alias or an alibi?”
“A divorce first, darling,” said Celia. “May I be a bridesmaid?”
Florence looked really troubled.
“Oh, but poor Philip!” she said. “He would think it dreadfully unkind of me after all these years. And what has he done? Priscilla, I shan’t marry Evan. Impossible.”
Evan gave vent to a shrill little note to express that he was piqued and baffled. He evidently got his good looks from his mother, who resembled a barmaid of great respectability, charm and stupidity.
“How tiresome you are!” he said. “I thought I was going to be settled down in life, and now it’s all upset again. Oh, do divorce your husband. Surely that party of his when he did the sword-dance is sufficient cause.”
There was a moment’s pause as he said this, and Celia’s voice was heard very distinctly, with its slow, husky utterance.
“Poor Evan!” she said to her neighbour. “He never knows what can be said and what can’t be said. Let us all talk and cover it up.”
A more effectual break was made by Florence’s rising.
“Now don’t you men be too quick about leaving the dining-room,” she said. “Plenty of time. The segregation of the sexes, isn’t it? So natural! From a rib; such a good idea! Priscilla, Olga, Frances, Constance, Consuelo, you must all come along at once. Afterwards we shall have some poetry. Mr. Meadows will read us all that his soldier friends have been writing. And bridge! Do not stop too long down here.”
Evan had opened the door and was leaning on it as Celia passed out. He gave his little falsetto scream again.
“My dear, how unkind you were to me!” he said. “I shall be huffy: I shall not speak to you.”
“That will serve me right,” said Celia gravely. “Mind you punish me.”
“My dear! Sarcasm!” said he.
The reunion of the sexes, whose segregation did not last long, developed into one of those evenings characteristic of the hostess’s house. Lord Antrobus, Lady Matcham, Priscilla Lamington, and a General just arrived from France, made a firm decision to play bridge together, and a search was made for cards. An obliging footman, when none could be found, produced a pack made up out of two packs from the housekeeper’s room, and as this was not considered adequate, Lord Antrobus sent the Government motor, which always waited for him wherever he went, in case of such urgent national need, to his club with orders to receive four markers, four pencils and two packs of cards. Then no card-table could be found, and as they all resolutely refused to play on the top of the piano, the butler relented, when he saw their earnestness, and said he would bring up the table from the still-room. Lord Antrobus had clearly a good deal to say to Priscilla, who was his opponent, and must have been holding her hand under the table, for with a cigarette in one hand she could not cut the cards with the other until she violently disengaged herself. Simultaneously Mr. Meadows, in fulfilment of his promise to read poetry, had arranged a quantity of manuscript on the top of the piano, and selected a batch from this, while Florence induced as many people as she could to sit round him in a semicircle.
“So wonderful,” she said. “All written under fire. Those terrible Germans. Shells coming over every minute.”
“The first I’ll read you,” said Mr. Meadows in a high staccato voice, is ‘Love in the Trenches.’”
“Oh, but how wonderful,” said Florence. “Think of those nice boys writing about love in the middle of the battle. Love and war! Priscilla, dear, you must attend to this for a minute. Never mind your spades just now. General, this was written in France, somewhere near Ypres, was it not, Mr. Meadows?”
“I dare say,” said Mr. Meadows. “‘Love in the Trenches’ by Evan—”
“Evan, my dear,” said Florence. “I never knew you write poetry. We must have a conference of poets. Some afternoon about half-past five, and then we can go on till dinner. Nothing but poetry.”
“‘Love in the Trenches,’” said Mr. Meadows sharply, “by Evan Thorneycroft.”
“Oh, not by you at all!” said Florence reproachfully. “Why did you not tell me? Edgar, Edgar Antrobus, will you be very sweet and not argue about diamonds quite so loud, while Mr. Meadows reads us ‘Love in the Trenches.’”‘
By a mysterious and clearly pre-concerted movement the four bridge players rose to their feet, and carried the card-table away into the adjoining room. Nobody could find the switch to turn on the electric light, and the butler, who had just brought in a tray of spirits and syphons, went to help.
“‘Love in the Trenches,”’ said Mr. Meadows rather wearily.
The telephone on a table near the window began to ring, and Celia went to it.
“Yes, Princess Lutloff is here. Do you want to speak to her, or shall I give her a message?”
Olga Lutloff jumped up.
“No, let it speak to me,” she said, seizing the receiver. “Ah—”
She began to talk in a perfectly unintelligible purring tongue.
“Russian!” said Florence, in a sort of rapture. “Dear Olga, a little louder, I adore hearing Russian spoken. It is like the opera with all the interfering music left out. So mysterious, is it not, and is probably about nothing but sandwiches or soda-water. But the sound! Go on, dear Olga. Or is it some terrible news about the war? Shall I call General Dalton? Where is Mr. Akroyd? He was going to make us a speech about pacifism. What a good opportunity now that Edgar Antrobus is playing bridge. Oh, Mr. Meadows, is that really the end of that beautiful poem. ‘Love in the Trenches,’ was it not? You must bring Evan Thorneycroft to see me.”
“I haven’t begun yet,” said Mr. Meadows. He was resigned now: his slight annoyance had quite gone.
“That is delightful: then I haven’t missed any. I was afraid I had missed some.”
“‘Love in—’” began Mr. Meadows.
Celia suddenly burst into hysterical laughter: her mother sprang up looking terribly puzzled.
“But what is the matter?” she said. “Are you ill mad? Why does everybody interrupt Mr. Meadows? What a funny party we are having. Why are you laughing? Oh, here is Violet. Of course: I did say we should probably have a little dancing late, but I had no idea it was late yet. It can’t be as late as that yet. Violet dear, come and sit by me. Mr. Meadows is just going to read us a wonderful poem about love by another Evan, not this one. Why! Where has Mr. Meadows gone? He was standing by the piano only a moment ago. Oh, there he is, having some brandy and soda after his reading. Or before his reading. And you haven’t brought Tommy Bridges, Violet?”
“No: he’s dining with the boy who brought the Zeppelin down, and wouldn’t let me pick them up.”
“Oh, but they must both come,” said Florence. “Where shall I find them? We must hear all about the Zeppelin. So interesting for General Dalton. What is the name of my butler? He shall ring them up, and then send Edgar’s motor-car for them. But let us forget the war, and the poor Germans in the Zeppelin who fell all that way. We must dance here: Edgar would not let me build a ballroom in war-time.”
Edgar’s sternness in this regard was not as cruel as it sounded, for it was really quite possible to make shift with this room, the middle one of the three en suite, for it was some forty feet long, and had an admirable floor, now in a high state of polish from having been danced on most evenings, without intermission, for the last year and a half. It was already more than half-prepared for the invariable event, and a very few minutes were sufficient to roll up the rugs, and put the chairs and the little furniture it contained round the walls. A couple of violinists, a cellist and pianist had arr
ived from one of the music-halls, and a dozen more boys and girls dropped in from neighbouring dinner-parties, and the word went casually round that the raid warnings had gone, of which nobody took the slightest notice, except Priscilla Lamington, who refused to play another hand anywhere but in the basement.
So the card-table set forth on yet another journey, and Lord Antrobus supported Priscilla’s tottering steps.
“So brave of her not to be afraid of the basement cat,” said Florence enthusiastically. “Priscilla is wonderful. I should be terrified. What does a bomb matter? If it falls on you, there is no more bother. None of us can prevent a bomb falling on my house. And if it does not fall on us, there is nothing to bother about. But to march into the jaws of danger in the basement! Such courage!”
The raid that night was unduly prolonged, and the dance, in consequence, lengthened itself out too, for nobody had the smallest intention of leaving till the “All Clear” call had been given (except Lord Antrobus, who had been telephoned for from Whitehall, and left in a very pretty pyrotechnical display immediately overhead), and it was clearly better to dance than to listen to bombs. Through the couple of hours that followed, Florence played without flinching her rôle of inconsequent gaiety, though Celia knew that her mother, if she had yielded to her natural inclination, would have been in a state of abject terror, and yet none who saw her could have conceived that she regarded air raids as anything but the most innocuous exhibition of squibs. For there she was, hostess to a quantity of stormbound friends, and the most elementary sense of her duties prevented her exhibiting anything but her usual insouciant enjoyment. Had she been alone, she would long ago have shut the door upon herself in a small and airless cupboard under the kitchen stairs, instead of braving the terrors of the basement cat like the foolhardy Priscilla, who with Mr. Meadows to take the place of the departed Minister, continued desperately to trump her partner’s best cards, while she talked uninterruptedly in a loud voice in order, if possible, to shut out the more disconcerting noises.
The “All Clear” was the signal for every one to get home as quickly as might be, and presently Celia and her mother were alone in the sitting-room next Mrs. Courthope’s bedroom.
“Darling, I didn’t show what a dithering fright I was in, did I?” asked her mother. “It’s bad enough to be a coward, but to show it is a step worse. Poor Priscilla! All the General’s lovely aces trumped just because there was a raid. Brandy, perhaps. Would brandy do anything? If it made me sick there would not be much gained. However, if nobody guessed. Now about to-morrow. What is happening to-morrow?”
She took a big engagement book from a drawer in her bureau.
“Teeth and nails is what I have down in the morning,” she said. “And what can that mean? Ah, the dentist and the manicurist. Not so wild as it sounds. Then is there no one coming to lunch? I must have forgotten to put something down.”
“I am lunching with Bernard,” said Celia.
“And in the evening we go to the first night, and there’s a matinée.”
“He is going to ask me to marry him,” continued Celia.
“No doubt, darling. And are you?”
“I wish I knew. I think you want me to, don’t you? And I know Violet does, and I suppose he does. But I don’t know if I want to, which is quite as important as anything. Things are so pleasant just as they are.”
She sat down on the hearthrug, holding up her hands to shield her face from the fire.
“I really wish I was in love with him,” she said. “I like him quite enough to wish that. But I’m sure that I’m not. He is nice to be with: if I had to marry somebody, I should marry him. And then—”
“Yes, dear?”
“How shall I say it? What I mean is that he’s safe, isn’t he? He’s not queer and unaccountable. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Or ought I to wait and see whether I fall in love with anybody else? If so, how long ought I to wait?”
Florence Courthope’s face grew shrewder than ever, as she drew the conclusion that Celia had some one in her mind who was queer....
“My dear, you’ve seen an extremely large number of people lately,” she said. “Probably many queer ones. Such a menagerie as I have. Is there any one in your mind?”
Celia hesitated a moment. She was always so deliberate in speech, that it was practically unnoticeable.
“No,” she said. “There’s no one else I want to fall in love with. Of course there are queer people who are attractive or repulsive. It doesn’t much. matter which. If your interest is stirred, repulsion does as well as attraction. Poles of a magnet, I mean, but the same magnet. But it is always so delightful to be thoroughly interested, that you don’t consider whether you like or dislike what interests you. But if I could choose to fall in love, I should choose Bernard.”
“Darling, do you want advice,” said her mother, “or do you merely want me to agree with you? I will do whatever you wish.”
“Advice.”
“Accept Bernard then. It’s the principle of investments. You should always get as high a yield for your money as you can, provided you invest in something secure. Doesn’t that sound miserably sane and cold-blooded? But it pays to be sensible. I never was. That’s how I know. If you were madly in love with some one ridiculous, I should still beg you to consider.”
Not till then did the idea that Celia was thinking about some definite man cross her mind. The moment that it did, she felt sure she knew who it was. With extraordinary discursiveness she managed to “say her say” without mentioning a name.
“Brutes!” she said. “What wonderfully attractive things brutes are. My first husband, you know. He told me quite frankly what a brute he was, so of course I didn’t believe him. Machiavelli, or Bismarck, was it? He deceived me by telling the truth. Drink, you know. He told me he drank, and I thought it was so noble of him to say so. I think he proved that everybody drank, but that every one else said he didn’t. So convincing: so disarming. But advice. If a man is very frank about himself, believe him so long as he makes himself out to be disagreeable. Of course there’s a luxury in being afraid of anything. It’s exciting and interesting. Byron, or was it Shelley? It doesn’t matter. Sticks! A man has got so many sticks to beat his wife with. But Bernard will give you all his sticks to make parasol handles with. Take Bernard. He adores you: such a good thing. You’ve not got an adoring nature, darling, and very likely you would continue not adoring anybody till you were eighty, and then it’s almost too late. Too late for real happiness. Octogenarian passion is rather ridiculous. If you had spasms for people it would be different. But you’ve never had a spasm yet, so why should you expect to be spasmodic about any one? Take a man who adores you, whom you thoroughly like. Just press the button. What do I mean? I don’t really know. Mutual grand passions are rather rare: no use waiting for them. A countess! There’s no objection to being a countess. Isn’t that vulgar? I know I sound superficial: common sense always sounds superficial, but people make a great mess without it. And you’re going to see him to-morrow. Is that the raid beginning again?”
“No; it’s only your maid stamping because you don’t go to bed,” said Celia slowly.
“That is worse than a raid. Summers has such a violent nature. Isn’t she angry! I am angry too with her, but when I get into her presence she quells me. I am afraid of nobody but her. Summers too! Sounds so warm and kind. But there’s one more thing. Make up your mind what you’re going to say to Bernard before he asks you. Don’t say, ‘Oh, Bernard: you must give me time to think.’ You’re thinking now. Tell him straight out. Like the Catechism. Just answer N. or M. ‘No’ or — or ‘Merci.’ Is it striking three? Let us pretend it isn’t. Magnets. You talked about magnets. Don’t dream of marrying a man whom you dislike, however much he interests you. Not a good investment. He ceases to interest you, and what then? Slumps. Such a word! But not a bit uglier than the thing.”
Mrs. Courthope suddenly perceived that she had given Celia enough to think about. There was s
ufficient for her mental digestion to assimilate.
“Three: such an hour,” she said. “I am the Ancient Mariner. I talk for ever. Everything so interesting, so why stop? But my hair. Summers tugs so after three. Perhaps we’d better.”
Fatalism as a creed, even though firmly believed in, as in the case of Bernard, does not guarantee the faithful against suspense and agitation. Though that mystic side of him which had held, even up to the point of sure, sober knowledge, that there existed in the world, and for him, some incarnation of the Greek head, his fatalism did not warrant belief in any particular manner in which that union should be realized. Since the moment he had seen Celia at the party in her father’s house, his conviction that she wag this incarnation had been unshakenly his, and thus the obvious deduction, as her friendship for him and his love for her prosperously flowered, was that she would become his wife, but no amount of fatalism could assure him as to the manner of the consummation. But, as has been already stated, this mystic underlying strain in him was harnessed to a fine practical grip on life, which, as Violet had said, resulted in his getting what he wanted. He had the eminent quality of being able to want strongly, and this, it must be supposed, acting like a full head of steam in an engine, turned the wheels of his life along the track he himself laid. Thus the underlying conviction, unoutlined, uncharted, that Celia was to be hid, was made more definite, took the solidity of fact, by its conjunction with his strong determination that to-day she would promise to marry him. He would hammer the iron of fatalism into the shape he required on his own anvil of wanting....
Some sense of power outside her own control was present to Celia, when, immediately after the end of lunch, Violet announced an engagement that would “tear her away.” It entered Celia’s speculative consciousness that Violet had been given her part, cues and all, by Bernard, but it seemed to matter very little whether this was so or not. He clearly intended to be alone with her, and where was the use of putting on him the necessity of making some other manoeuvre, in order to thwart his present arrangements? He had the right, surely, from the mere claim of friendship, to see her alone, to-day or another day, so why, for the mere sake of temporizing, force him, as it were, to look out another train? She made some sort of hint that if Violet was going she would go too, but there was no purpose in her to back it, and when he said, “Oh, you needn’t go just yet, need you?” it would have been a scared instinct, frightened of what was inevitable, that would have prompted her to persist in her departure.