by E. F. Benson
Bernard dined alone with her mother and herself that evening, and Mrs. Courthope was to leave them immediately after dinner to go to a first-night performance at some theatre.
“A first night is such a nerve-racking experience,” she said. “I never miss one if I can help, and it makes me ill for a week. So much depends on a first night. Rally round. The critics, you know. So critical, so unbending; a day of judgment, and nobody cares what they think. My dear Bernard, we are just en famille. You and Celia and me. Settlements! All the hard, sordid facts of life, just when love and romance are the only things. Philip now. I must write to Philip in the morning. He must be the first to know, except of course dear Violet, and your mother, Bernard, and all the people I shall tell to-night. He must give you away, darling Celia, and I will cry. His velveteen coat in which he was married! Shall I ever forget it? The raid last night! What a funny party we had. Ah, dinner is ready, and nobody else coming. So cosy!”
This swift monologue, delivered with her usual puzzled air, served to bring them to the dinner-table, and generally summarized events. Mrs. Courthope had always a rather silencing effect on Bernard; he tried to draw one thread out of the tangled ball of topics that she presented you with, only to find it snatched out of his hand again.
“And what is your play?” he asked.
“Celia, dear, the play, the name of it,” she said. “You were coming with me, can’t you remember it? Now I shall have an empty seat next me. I wonder if it would be any good to ring up Priscilla. What a fuss they made over their bridge last night, and Mr. Meadows ready with his poem all the time, about love. What a subject! So much to say about it! Celia, dear, have you nothing to say about love, and you, Bernard? Or perhaps Olga would come with me.”
Mrs. Courthope had an idea in her mind that she was tiding over, by means of her conversation, an embarrassing hour for the engaged couple, who were now together in the presence of other people for the first time. But the moment she formulated that, and congratulated herself on her tact, she instantly became tongue-tied from sheer self-consciousness, and ate her grouse in stony silence. Hardly had she finished it, when she rose in a great hurry.
“So lost, if one doesn’t hear the beginning of a play,” she said. “I never know which is Mary and which is Charles, or what they are doing. Olga now, and her telephone number. She is either the fire of London, 1666, or just the mark of the beast. Mr. Kipling’s wonderful story! All those books! Dear Bernard! Fancy leaving you and Celia alone in this lovely way. Such happiness. ‘Oh, the little more and how much more it is,’ or something of the sort. Browning or Tennyson. So indistinguishable. ‘And the little less,’ you know, ‘and how much less it is.’ No; I have got it wrong: you must read it for yourselves. Philip used to read it to me. I have got the copy. Morocco.”
She hurried out of the room, kissing her hands to them, and closed the door as if they had both fallen into a refreshing sleep, from which it was important they should not awake. Then, a moment afterwards, she opened it again.
“Half-calf,” she said. “My sitting-room, darling Celia, just behind the door.”
Celia lay long awake that night, not restless, nor wanting to go to sleep and failing, but quiescently concentrated, striving to put down, as in some balanced ledger, her debts and her credit. Nothing new had come to her for the two hours she had spent with Bernard that evening: they only reinforced what she had experienced in the afternoon. It was as if some auditor had gone over the account and found it perfectly correct. There was still her incomprehension of the fire that blazed in him, and still her regret that she did not understand it any more than she had done at first. The knowledge that he adored his idea of her seemed verified, and also the knowledge that whatever she did, passed through that fire of his idealism and became perfect in his eyes. The pencilled figure of this afternoon had been inked in, and pronounced correct....
At this point, she, greatly interested, but emotionally untouched, became more exclusively egoistic. She gave him an “x” as in an unsolved algebraical formula, of which she herself constituted the other part. That part she could understand perfectly; it was just the combination of it with “x” forming an equation, of which the equivalent was marriage, and the mixing of herself with an unknown quantity that puzzled her. So, dismissing that puzzle from her meditations, she scrutinized that part of the equation which she knew she could understand. Her motive in accepting him was quite clear: she thoroughly liked him, she wanted to marry nobody else, and she realized by the mere hereditary instinct of thousands of generations, that marriage, to the normal girl, is as much a normal happening in life as birth or death. It was part of the “plan,” in which she acquiesced without thought of protest.
But what was her part in it, her own personal role? She had at present but to listen to a rhapsody about herself. There was but one theme in it, which was repeated over and over again. She was not in the least tired of it; it was pleasant to hear, and it was delivered with a conviction that glorified it, but already she asked herself, whether, that being all, she would not get surfeited with it. On the other hand, though she had told Bernard he must not idealize her, she could not see how a clearer view of herself would stand repetition better than an idealized one. If he came to her to-morrow and said, “I see you better now: I see you are selfish and self-centred, but still I want you,” that would not make a pleasanter tune to dance to. That would not do at all: it was just the idealization that made her surrender to him possible. Apart from the fact that if he saw her clearly he probably would not want her, there was the equally cogent fact that if he saw her clearly she would not accept him. It was just his worship, which she deprecated, that made his devotion acceptable.
And then suddenly a belated tide of shyness, of clinging to her own privacy invaded her. She guessed that if she loved him the sacrifice of that would be a fervent, eager offering on Love’s altar, that she would long to see the flame of it mounting into an air which was in itself immune to all sense of taint. But if, without that compulsion of charity, “she gave her body to be burned” in an alien fire?... Yet if she, if every girl, young and marriageable, was to wait till they found the ideal of their dreams, it was likely that most of them would have to be the prey of the octogenarian passion that her mother found ridiculous.
It was perhaps some remembrance of these moments alone in the dark, when all thought, instead of being cool and tranquil, has a touch of feverish distortion about it, that affected the untroubled frankness of her demeanour to Bernard when he paid a short morning visit. There was a certain timidity of eyes that glanced at him, and as quickly looked elsewhere, a quiver of tremulousness in her touch that, while it inflamed him, yet gave to his ardour a new tenderness. He could hardly have construed this change in her otherwise than as an indication that her desire to love him was beginning to suffuse her liking for him. The comrade-like sincerity of her manner, clean and dear-cut of outline, was beginning to melt, and the thawing of it (so ran his interpretation) troubled her. He could not have imagined that anything in the world could be so exquisite as this touch of shyness about her, as she came down slowly, hanging on her step with eyes downcast, from the solitude of her maiden mountain-height. He would not have had her quicken her pace any more than he would have hurried on a sunrise for which he watched. No hand, however loving, could touch it without in some manner marring it. It seemed that she was waiting for it with him; soon, like Brünnhilde awakened by his kiss, she would hail the sun.
She sat there, after their first greeting was over, smoothing and stroking the petals of some flowers he had brought her. There were sprays of mimosa and yellow tulips forced under glass into premature blossoms, which lacked the vigour of sunny open-air growth.
“They are lovely,” she said, “but making flowers blossom in the winter is like keeping children up when they ought to be asleep.”
“A perfect simile,” said he. “I will bring you no more flowers till it is time for them to awake of their own accord.”<
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She found herself wishing he had not said “A perfect simile.” That was an instance, small but genuine, of his idealization of her. Had Violet said precisely the same thing to him, had anybody said it but Celia herself, he would not have remarked on the perfection of the simile: indeed, he would probably have demurred to it, and said that forcing flowers was more like waking children up too early, than keeping them up too late, for it was anticipating the spring, not prolonging the summer. But because she had said it, it was perfect. Though, confessedly, she basked in appreciation, it was the winning of appreciation which she coveted, rather than the secure enjoyment of it. The devotion that flowed perennially and of its own accord, without any striking of the rock on her part, seemed to her, in her failure to understand love, to be less satisfactory as a diet than clear-sighted, unidealized appreciation accorded with judgment. Already, even at this third interview only with him, as her accepted lover, she saw approaching her, like a tide coming up over level sands, a possible tedium in hearing this perpetual attribution of perfection. She did not burn with him, no mutual flame mounted....
And yet this very idealization of herself by him was precisely that which rendered him so safe, so secure. She could always be certain of enchanting him; it was by no effort on her part, nor had it ever been, that he saw in her exactly that which quenched the thirst of his soul. He would invest with the glory of his own love all the little cheap trinkets of affection and liking (she sincerely felt this for him), which she might give him, turning them to gold by the magic touch. She could not do less than bestow these on him, though, unhappily, she could not do more. She must not feel shy of him, or, if she did, she must suffocate all sign of it: she must give him the cheap tokens of friendship, being sure that he would transmute them into things beyond price; above all, for her own defence, she must build a breakwater against that encroaching tide of tedium. If she was to many him (and she had no doubt about that), she must do her utmost to ensure the success of the transaction, and strive for his happiness and her own, for no success was possible unless both of them, on their respective levels, were possessed of a certain assured sufficiency that would form a firm basis below the shifting needs and variable impulses of life. Her co-operation was certainly needed in laying this solid foundation, and like a diver, descending through the sea to build subaqueously the wall that should shut the sea out, she plunged below all her criticisms and misgivings, in order to get to work on it. Her shyness of him had got to be dismissed; so, too, had her doubts as to the possible tediousness of being always considered perfect; so, too (and here was the greatest moral loss in this jettison), had that impulse of honesty which yesterday had made her tell him that she did not love him.
She stripped off from one of the plumes of mimosa two little tufts of blossom and pointed leaf.
“Come closer,” she said. “I must make you smart with a buttonhole. Besides... we must go shares in everything now. What you give me is partly yours. Oh, what a small buttonhole! There is scarcely room for your decoration.”
Before she could guess his intention, he had pulled out a knife, and slit the edge of his buttonhole, to make room for the yellow sprays.
“Oh, my dear, how destructive,” she said. “Look at those little jagged ends of stuff! And what a lot of extra trouble you’ve given me now! I’m going to be an old-fashioned sort of wife to you, Bernard, I think, and mend your socks and sew on your buttons, and at the present moment I shall begin by hemming your buttonhole for you.”
“You shall do nothing of the kind,” said he. ‘I want my flowers.”
“You shall have them when I’ve made your coat tidy again. Now sit still, or you will get pricked. I’m beginning to find out all sorts of things about you. In the first place, you are destructive and wasteful, for I believe it’s a new coat. Then again you have got no firmness of character, for you said in a loud, rude voice that I shouldn’t mend your coat for you, and next moment you sit there like a lamb. Then you are a coward: it was because I threatened to prick you that you gave in. These are dreadful discoveries. If I had known as much about you yesterday, I should never have said I would marry you. I”
“Ah, there’s just one subject you mustn’t jest about,” said he.
Celia stopped, with needle poised.
“Oh, and what’s that?” she asked.
“You know quite well.”
Celia gave him one upward glance, and turned to her sewing again.
“Then you needn’t tell me. Don’t tell me. And I shall add to your faults a passion for giving unnecessary information.”
“I didn’t give it you, darling.”
“Well, then, I shall add to your faults a passion for withholding necessary information. It’s no use attempting to wriggle out of it. Evasion, excuses, these are more of your faults. Goodness, what a list!”
“And is there nothing on the credit side?” asked he.
“Yes, but I shan’t tell you what it is. It would make you conceited. Scissors? I haven’t got any. Would you think it very vulgar of me if I bit the cotton off?”
“Not irretrievably,” said he. “But I wish you would tell me what is on the credit side. There’s only one thing you could say that would make me conceited.”
Celia put her face down to his coat and bit off short the cotton of her sewing. She could hardly accuse herself of deliberate insincerity in this agile nonsense which she had been talking, because it was the merest froth of conversation, such as might float on waters deep or shallow alike. At the same time she knew, though she did not choose to weigh the knowledge, that this mere chatter, this sewing of his coat for Bernard, bore a very distinct meaning for him. He was interpreting it in accordance with his needs: he saw in it a token of the intimacy he longed for. Her whole instinct told her that he was tremulously content, and there was no difficulty at all to her in contenting him. But she knew that a certain falseness was penetrating into their relations, which she deliberately disregarded, feeling merely that if he gilded those base-metal little tokens of hers the responsibility was his.
“Only one thing I could say that would make you conceited?” she asked. “My dear, what a mailed monster of modesty you must be. There’s another fault: a man shouldn’t be too modest. I was only going to say that on the credit side there was just this, that — that in spite of all your faults, I find you rather nice.”
He drew her close to him.
“And didn’t you know that was exactly the one thing?” he whispered.
“Was it? But there are lots of people I find rather nice.”
“You may find anybody nice, as long as you find me so,” said he.
She was silent a moment, and picked up the mimosa sprigs again.
“And now that the housewife’s work is over,” she said, “the florist can begin. Tell me, what are you going to do to-day?”
“I must go down to Whitehall; in fact, I ought to have been there half an hour ago. But I telephoned to say that I should be late.”
“Then be a little later. What would you do if I asked you not to go down there at all and stop and talk to me instead.”
“I should ask you if you really meant it.”
“And if I did?”
He laughed.
“You know quite well you could make me do anything you liked,” he said. “That’s what it comes to.”
She finished her decoration, and once more put her head down to smell the mimosa. This confession of her power over him pleased her.
“And if you radically disapproved of what I asked you?” she said.
“My darling, why this moral catechism? As if you would ask me anything that you knew I disapproved of.”
She sighed.
“I might,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be awkward? But I’m not going to ask you to desert the British Empire to-day. You’re dining here this evening, aren’t you? There’s one of Mamma’s greater menageries and music. What fun it all is!”
He got up.
“It’s
more fun to be tidied and mended by you,” he said. “Yet — yet it isn’t fun at all. It’s too ravishingly serious.”
He extended his hands to her and raised her from the sofa where they had been sitting. Gently, and as if unconsciously, she let herself lean against him a little, as she gave a final adjustment to his buttonhole.
“And how is the Greek head this morning?” she asked. “I’m a little frightened of my prototype: I feel I have to live up to it.”
“Ah, you’ve got it the wrong way round,” said he. “You, the essential, you are the prototype of the head. As a proof, I haven’t given one thought to the head since I showed it you. It has sat in darkness ever since. It has played its part. I’ve finished with it. There’s just the marble and the sculpture of it left and that’s all. I think I shall give it to the British Museum.”
“Oh, you must not do that! It’s far too private to put in a case for all the world to look at.”
“Private?” he asked.
She raised her face towards him, smiling, with half-closed eyes that joined in her smile. She knew very well that what she was about to say would bear a significance for him, as coming from her, which she had no real part in.
“Surely,” she said. “After all, it was the head that made you seek for me and find me.”