Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  She turned to Vincent.

  “Bernard has just got back from Athens,” she said. “He will come down here to-night.”

  Even as she spoke the noise of an approaching motor reached them, which turned into the gate.

  “That is he,” she said. “The telegram must have been delayed. Let us go back to the house.”

  She was conscious of an intense irritation, which made itself felt before anything else. On the heels of that, tripping it up, followed the need of giving Bernard, somehow or other, the most delighted of welcomes. She had not the slightest idea if she could do it.

  Before they reached the house he was coming towards them in the dusk. He spoke no word at all, but simply took Celia to him, disregarding Vincent altogether, and unable to speak. She knew that she shrank from him, that at the most she could but stand passive in his arms, while the torrent of his love surrounded her. Then she shook herself back into the familiar ways again.

  “My dear,” she said. “How utterly charming! But how has it happened? Why didn’t you let me know?”

  “I sent off a telegram from Folkestone,” he said.

  “Yes: it has just this moment come. But why not before?”

  “Ah, I wanted to get across first. You were so nervous about submarines when I went out. Hullo, Vincent.”

  Celia was getting a better hold over herself.

  “You nice, thoughtful person,” she said. “Now, have you had dinner?”

  She could see his eyes gleaming in the dusk.

  “I don’t think I have.”

  “If you don’t think you have, you probably haven’t. We must come in.”

  She put her arm in his, and kissed him once more of her own accord.

  “It is quite lovely,” she said. “Is it not, Vincent?”

  Bernard, at that question, felt a spasm not of pain at all, but of complete blank. How, though in the lightest of speech, could Celia at that moment ask any one that? It was as if his heart had missed a beat

  CHAPTER IV

  Celia was lying on the sofa in her sitting-room, talking to Violet, who was waiting here till Tommy, her own Tommy now, came to fetch her. The two had had a quite delightful and rather original honeymoon here in London, for as Tommy remarked there was little sense in his going to Rivieras and poetical places with palm-trees when he couldn’t see them, so why not stop precisely where they were and always say they were not at home? So they had been not at home for a fortnight and had just emerged into publicity again.

  Violet, whom Celia had asked to poke the are, was stroking it rather than poking it. She was apparently in so maudlin a state of rapt bliss that she could not bear to hit anything.

  “But I said ‘poke it,’ darling,” said Celia, in a mixture of internal giggles and exasperation. “Hit it, smash it: it will merely go to sleep like a cat, if you go on like that. I hear it purring.”

  Violet dashed the poker into the middle of the fire. “There!” she said. “That will wake it up. And I will attend to something also besides Tommy. For instance, your baby is the most wonderful thing ever known. He’s my nephew, too: had that occurred to you?”

  “Yes, I had thought of it. You agree with Bernard then. Bernard says he knows there never was such a baby. I shall get a gramophone record with ‘Never, never, never’ on it in my voice and turn it on when he begins to talk about baby. It will save me a great deal of trouble.”

  Celia yawned.

  “You see, I’ve told Bernard there never was such a baby,” she said. “I told him so quite clearly, but he will go on saying there never was, as if he was arguing with me, and I had said there was I never said anything of the kind.”

  “Naturally you wouldn’t. The other day Tommy — no, I don’t think I’ll tell you. My dear, I do so well understand now why you never raved about Bernard. I can scarcely talk even to you, about Tommy, just because he is so wonderful, and because he’s mine.”

  Celia looked grimly at Violet. She was feeling less amused and more irritated. In old days, in that quiet subaqueous life, lived, so she thought now, in the manner of slow fat fish among water-weeds, she seldom felt the slightest inclination to be irritable, and never was mastered by it. When Philip, for instance, was absurd, his absurdities only diverted her. Now, for some reason, absurdities got on her nerves more.

  “Don’t tell me that Tommy feels the same about you, darling,” she said, “or I shall be sick.”

  Violet opened her eyes very wide.

  “Why, of course he doesn’t,” she said. “I don’t think men are made like that. When he is particularly wrapped up in me, he calls me ‘egg’ or ‘bean’ or one of the new words.”

  Celia sat up, frowning.

  “Then I won’t be sick,” she said, “but I wish, oh, I wish that Bernard was like Tommy! Bernard never called me egg: I am to him as Tommy is to you. I’m so wonderful that I can hardly bear it sometimes. And then there’s baby. It’s impossible that both baby and I are the most marvellous creatures in the world. It would be too much happiness for one man.”

  Celia put her feet off the sofa, took up the poker, and stabbed at the fire.

  “Bum, you brute,” she said. “You see, I’m not made in the Madonna-mould. I don’t want to have a blue robe, and sandals, and seven stars in my hair. Stars don’t suit me. I hate hurting Bernard. Bernard is really the best fellow in the world, but when I hurt him, as I do sometimes, if only he would squeal or if only he would hurt me. But it seems that he can’t. He loves in the same manner as you love, and it’s inhuman. If I say it’s a wet morning, he thinks I have marvellous perceptions. If I make bad-tempered remarks, he thinks and says that I’m the pearl of incisiveness. Oh, my dear, why doesn’t he tame me like the shrew? Instead — oh, I resign my divinity. It bores me.” Violet’s face passed from an expression of surprise to one of perfect comprehension.

  “I see,” she said. “What has happened is that Vincent has been here, and you’ve fallen into the mistake of taking him seriously.”

  “Of course Vincent’s been here,” said Celia. “Thank goodness, he does that. But you mustn’t think he has been telling me all this. What would that matter? The thing that matters is that I have found it out for myself. Vincent doesn’t write me prescriptions for emotions — I make my own. Really there’s nothing so foggy as devotion. You and Bernard move about in a thick, choking fog of — of yellow sentiment. Doesn’t Tommy get bored when you tell him how wonderful he is?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Violet placidly, “and then we play bézique. You don’t like cards, I know, so I suppose you send for Vincent. But does that make it any better? He adores you, too, in his own way.” Celia shook her head.

  “No, you’re wrong there,” she said. “He admires me — why shouldn’t he? And he likes me, but he’s not one atom in love with me, if you mean that. It’s his not being in love with me that makes him such a treasure. He likes me for what I am, instead of loving me for what I am not. And he makes me think about other things than myself. I like getting out. He is the wind that drives the fog away. I rather dislike the process, but I like the result. He makes me think and not feel — no, not quite that.” Celia had a moment’s temptation to tell the truth about her growing intolerance of Bernard’s adoration, just for the sake of smashing up the smooth, mild picture of herself which represented her to Violet’s no less than to Bernard’s vision. Violet conceived of her, as she would have been herself in Celia’s circumstances, as mother of her husband’s child. Nothing in her case would have been able to cast the slightest shadow on her happiness, and she was unable apparently to perceive that it could be otherwise with Celia. She made a smiling photograph of her... and as the image occurred to Celia she lost a little of her normal self-control.

  “Oh, the photographer, with his poses!” she said. “Mamma told me the other day how they used to take photographs when she was young. They put a stand behind you with a clamp for your head, and arranged your hands. Then you had to get your mouth right: it had to be gently
simpering in neat lines. ‘A little more expression, please, Miss,’ the photographer used to say, as if you could get expression from extending the comers of your mouth. Then there was a formula you had to say: ‘Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prisms.’ After you had said that your mouth was sufficiently like the proper photographic expression. You had a thoughtful, wistful mouth from saying so many p’s. And then they took the cap off the lens, and you waited till they had counted ten, and when they printed it off, it was supposed to be you. Oh, aren’t I — I mean am not I — drivelling?”

  “Yes, darling,” said Violet, not quite so placidly.

  “Then once again you are wrong. I’m not drivelling at all. I’m talking parables, and when you enter in the Kingdom of Heaven, that is to say, when you have a baby, perhaps you may understand my parable. Or shall I tell you the meaning now?”

  “Oh, do tell me,” she said. “I love hearing anything that is about you.”

  Celia’s rebellion against the supposed perfection of her life broke out.

  “It isn’t about me,” she said, “it’s about what’s supposed to be me. You take a false view of me, so does Bernard. He never saw me correctly, any more than you did. You both made me in your own image.... Oh, it’s all useless.”

  She walked across to the window, in some stress of restlessness that demanded movement. The pale afternoon sun shone on her face, making her half close her eyes, and the searchingness of it but seemed to glorify her youth, and made the trouble there seem no more than some childish petulance which would presently vanish with the granting of a childish desire. Then she turned back into the room again, and the trouble grew.

  “It’s useless,” she said, “but I’ll try. Probably it won’t do any good, but things can’t be worse with me than they are.”

  “Worse with you?” said Violet.

  “Yes. It is no use taking up my words like that. We’re not in a play where you want to emphasize things to make the audience understand. I said ‘worse.’ Now haven’t I everything that should make a woman happy? Health, wealth, a husband who adores me, and a baby whom I ought to adore? Is there any other equipment you can suggest? I know there isn’t. Well, I’m not satisfied with all these things. I mean that I’m not satisfied with any of them. I’ve said ‘Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prisms’ till I’m sick of it — there’s the parable coming in again — I’ve posed, and — and the head-rest hurts me. That’s why I want you to put your head into it for a moment, and see what it feels like, and imagine what it would be if you could never get your head out of it. And the cap is off the lens all the time, all the time. I mustn’t move: the least movement would spoil the photograph.”

  Suddenly, in the midst of her flooding egoism, Celia stopped. There close in front of her was Violet’s bewildered face, and the triumph of the egoist in making herself felt was stricken with a compunction that was quite as real.

  “And what the devil has made me say this to you?” she said. “But that’s the beast I am. I think I wanted to hurt you. I wanted to show you how wrong you are about me anyhow, and didn’t care whether I hurt you or not. No, let us be honest. I wanted to hurt you because you loved me. That’s the worst of all, isn’t it? It’s sheer blasphemy: it’s railing against love. My dear, what wouldn’t I give to be again the colourless creature I used to be! I used to sit and purr in the sun, when other people loved me. Now I get up and spit at them.”

  “Not at Bernard,” said Violet quickly.

  Celia looked at her with eyes like those of some dumb animal seeking to understand. She had troubled and disturbed Violet by every means in her power, and yet here was Violet, quick and sure as an echo, only anxious to hear that Bernard had not been hurt. And once again her own want of comprehension irritated her. All the world knew the answer to the riddle except herself.

  “Leave out Bernard,” she said. “I’m talking to you. I don’t care for — for anybody, I think. I don’t give: I only take. And when I’ve got it, I yawn.”

  “Bernard is the person who matters,” said Violet. “Ah, it’s always Bernard!” said Celia. “Don’t I matter? My heart’s empty. Aren’t you sorry for me with my stuck head, and my drilled lips, and the photographer with the lens?”

  Violet threw back her head in entreaty.

  “Oh, Celia, do love him!” she said. “It isn’t as Bernard alone that he matters, it’s as your husband. I want your happiness as much as his. Perhaps I want it more. I don’t know.”

  Celia was intent on this analysis of what she did not understand.

  “Tell me this,” she said. “Supposing Tommy got tired of you and fell violently in love with me. What would you feel towards me?”

  Apparently the mere mention of Tommy was sufficient to rouse a touch of idiocy in Violet. Her smile was quite idiotic, but she had a coherent answer to give.

  “I should hate you, darling,” she said, “and I should love you for being loved by Tommy.”

  “But the upshot?” said Celia. “And what would you have for Tommy?”

  “I should hate Tommy for loving you—”

  Violet suddenly squealed, putting her hand to her eyes.

  “It’s the silliest game,” she said. “I won’t play it any more. It’s a nightmare game. You’ve been talking in a bad dream.”

  Celia’s restlessness took hold of her again. She fingered the tassels of the cushion on the sofa: she pulled the hearthrug straight.

  “I want to wake from my bad dream,” she said. “If it’s a dream, I’m asleep, and I want to awake. If I’m not dreaming, it’s far worse. Oh, prick me, hit me, pull me! I’m walking in shadows, dear Violet, and I want to see the light. There’s the sun somewhere. If you’ll only show it me, I won’t spit at it. I would give anything to love Bernard. But how?”

  Certainly there was no “game” about this, and with the vanishing of that, faint-heartedly conjectured by Violet, the intensity of nightmare supplied its place.

  “You don’t love him?” she asked with the quietness that always accompanies crisis. For her a crisis had come: Celia on her pedestal was tottering....

  “I said I would give anything to love him,” said Celia.

  The hues of nightmare lit up Violet’s brain.

  “Why, if you don’t know what love is?” she asked. “Or do you know? Do you want to feel for Bernard what you—”

  “Put it to me,” said Celia.

  “Yes. Do you love any one else? Do you know what it feels like at all?”

  Celia stood quite still for a moment, her hand poised in the adjustment of some gimcrack silver thing on the table near her.

  “I think so,” she said. “It seems to me so.”

  “Then what are you going to do? Are you meaning to go on deceiving Bernard?”

  Celia dropped the ornament that she was holding, which fell crashing on to other little silver nonentities.

  “Oh, you loving people are harder than millstones,” she said. “You want to pound to pieces every one who finds difficult that which is so easy to you! Shall I then undeceive Bernard instead? You, who are a graduate in love, teach me what to do. Don’t I want to love Bernard? Of course I do. What could be nicer?”

  “Nicer!” said Violet.

  Celia quietly put back the ornaments she had displaced.

  “If that’s your tone,” she said, “you had better go away. You don’t want to help me. You want to repeat what I say in sarcasm—”

  Violet jumped up.

  “Ah, my dear, no,” she said. “But when you said it would be ‘nicer’ to love Bernard. Nicer! Nicer! Just think.”

  Celia took a step back, away from her outstretched hands.

  “You showed your heart then,” she said. “You betrayed your contempt of me. That is all.”

  Violet advanced towards her again.

  “You can’t send me away like this,” she said quietly, “simply because I shan’t go. Don’t you see that it’s you I’m sorry for, as well as Bernard? You cut me to the heart, dear,
when you say I don’t want to help you. Oh — oh, I wish I was wiser! But tell me this: does Vincent love you? Are you sure he does not?”

  Celia stared.

  “Vincent? I never spoke of Vincent,” she said. “You have been talking of him all the time. At least I thought so.”

  “How did you guess?” asked Celia.

  “There was no question of guessing. I just found that I knew.”

  Half an hour ago nothing had been further from Celia’s mind than letting this escape her — but first in one direction, then in another she had shown light, till the reconstruction of the whole was inevitable. Some of these lights she had flashed out like angry flames, as if stabbing Violet’s darkness with them: others she had put out like signals inviting rescue. Both instincts had been there, contradicting and yet supplementing each other. She sat down again, and went on quite quietly, speaking quite sincerely, and yet all the time feeding her egoism.

  “I want to do the best I can,” she said. “That anyhow is what my will is.... Now at the outset you must understand this quite clearly. Vincent has never made love to me in the very remotest degree, and I never cease to rebel against what I feel for him. With my mind I rather dislike him — isn’t that queer? — I think he is brutal, cynical, self-seeking, but below that, in spite of that.... And then there’s Bernard, whom I quite unreservedly like. He’s generous, he’s noble, utterly unselfish, but below that and in spite of that.... But my will, my intention is right: I maintain that; don’t bother to reflect that I’m a transcendent egoist. I know that perfectly well. But if you can help me, you must take me as I am, not as if I was anybody else. I try not to be egoistic, but that’s only tiring and doesn’t have the slightest effect. Indeed it makes me feel like a black cat trying to be a white cat: it makes me blacker than ever. What am I to do? I’m trying to be a white cat now. I am trying to concentrate my mind on Bernard. But it slips off. Poor black pussy!”

  “And when you say ‘Poor black pussy,’ you are thinking entirely of yourself,” remarked Violet.

  “Miaow!” said Celia hopelessly.