by E. F. Benson
“Glance, Maria mia,” it said, “at that box next the stage on the right, where is the lady with the wealth of Golconda (I allude to diamonds) on her head. You and I have no reason to be ashamed of that tall handsome boy. Ah, behold just in front of us the adorable Miss Heaton. Miss Heaton, the box by the stage, the lady in diamonds: her name. A word, a whisper...!”
The quenching of lights gave suitable cover for the emotions evoked by this particular brand of theatrical slosh. There were whimsicalities, there was slyness, there was maidenliness and womanliness, there was the sense of looking through a keyhole; but all these qualities were soaked and dyed with slosh. Mr. Mainwaring, to Nellie’s sense, seemed to make himself spokesman for the house: he thrilled to every slyness, however subtle, and he advertised, on behalf of the rest of the audience, his appreciation. His resonant laugh proclaimed the gorgeousness of the less abstruse humours, as when the heroine, being asked to give her lover a kiss, wore a face of horror and said, “Eh, on the Sawbath!” His giggling and his slapping of his great big thigh gave the cue for more recondite deliciousnesses; he exclaimed “Brava! Brava!” at the end of a long speech; he blew his nose loudly at the blare of the Highland Vox Humana, and bestowed one splendid sob on his handkerchief when the author really let himself go and opened all the sluices of sentimentality. Mr. Mainwaring had to recover with gulps and hiccups from that, but he pulled himself together like a man, and ran his fingers through his hair to make it stand out from his interesting head.
Though these convulsions were resonant only just behind her, Nellie gave them no more attention than she would to raindrops on the window: and the doings of the stage occupied her as little, and as little the presence next her of the perfect organizer.
... A certain antagonism had grown up, had seeded itself and was rapidly propagating. A vigorous seedling was the fact of Peter’s being where he was. It was no business of hers, so she told herself, with whom Peter went to the play, and she tried to divert her mind by ironical comment. Peter, poor and parasitic, would always dance a graceful attendance on anyone who would give him dinner and a seat in the box. Peter was like that, and for his grace and politeness there was due reward. He had a trick of sympathetic listening, of intelligent interrogation that made his companion feel herself interesting. You could put him next the most crashing bore, and he would wreathe himself in smiles until the crashing bore felt herself to be the wittiest of sirens. And then suddenly the stupidity of her comments and their irrelevance failed to divert Nellie altogether.
There was the antagonism, hugely grown by now. Peter, so she made out, was as conscious of it as she, and had certainly during the last week or two contributed to its growth. He had answered Nellie’s formalities with similar politeness: he had watered where she had sown, and she wondered whether he contemplated with the dismay of which she was conscious, the lively crop of their combined husbandry.
It was the fashion, as she had once said to Silvia, to be devoted to Peter, and Silvia seemed to have “picked up” the fashion with the same ease as she had exhibited all along her social pilgrimage. She welcomed all that came up with a frolic, boy-like enjoyment, but there was, as Nellie perfectly well knew, a real Silvia, a serious Silvia, somebody with a heart and the shy treasures of it, a personality curiously ungirl-like, something eager and hungry and wholesome. She knew in advance what her way of love would be, and her feet, firm and unstumbling — Silvia would never stumble — were on the high road. Of all the saunterers that she might meet there, would she not, by the mere instinct of divination, choose the complement to her own unusual personality? The complement certainly was someone feminine but not effeminate, indeterminate in desire, somebody, in fact, extraordinarily like Nellie herself. In the way of a girl, Silvia had already quite succumbed to a charm that Nellie had not troubled to exercise: she had recognized and surrendered to it with that victorious white-flag abandonment. With what ringing of bells would she not march out to the mildest call for capitulation when a boy of that type blew his lazy horn?
Long before the act -was over Nellie had known that she would present herself in the interval at Mrs. Wardour’s box. She would, in anticipation, have much to say to Silvia: there would be plans for the next day, or regrets over the dreadful occupations that made plans impossible. There would be some flat steady compliment about diamonds and parties for Mrs. Wardour, and — there would be nothing at all for Peter. She wanted, as far as she was aware, just to take him in in the new situation which was surely forming, as clouds form on a chilly windless day. She wanted to get used to it, she wanted — or did she not want? — to put the weed-killer of familiarity on the crop of antagonism which was certainly prospering in a manner wholly unlooked for. And then, much quieted and reassured, she would return to Philip, and feel for his hand when the lights went down again. He had a good hand, cool and secure and efficient: there was the sense of safety about it, of correctness: it was all that a hand should be. Then, still secure, and vastly more content than she was now, he would take her back to her mother’s flat, and perhaps drop in for a half-hour. She would say, quite correctly, “Come upstairs and talk to mother and me for a few minutes.” She would work the lift herself, and he would be surprised at her mastery of it. Then, when they were vomited forth at the fifth floor, she would remember that her mother had gone to a bridge-party and would certainly not be home before twelve. That would give them their half-hour alone.
Nellie was not prepared for the companionship in her expedition with which Mr. Mainwaring decorated her. Standing in the middle of the gangway, he made her a sonorous and embellished little speech when, rather rashly, she revealed her destination at the end of this interminable first act.
“Peter’s friends, my Peter’s friends, are mine,” he magnificently observed, “and I feel it my duty to pay my respects to them. Oblige me, Miss Heaton, by accepting my escort to (he box that glitters with the combined distinction of diamonds and Peter’s presence. My wife — will you not, Maria mia? — will prefer to remain precisely where she is. Chocolates, my beloved? A cup of coffee? I will leave my purse with you. Refresh yourself!”
Mrs. Mainwaring declined refreshment, except in so far as it was ministered to by some advertisements of Brighton hotels which appeared on the back of the programme. There was one there which she had not previously heard of and which seemed very reasonable.
Her husband, offered the sleeve of a velveteen-clad arm to Nellie, and they proceeded upstairs with pomp and the slight odour of turpentine, which was all that was left of a dab of paint which had dropped from his brush on to the skirt of his coat as a profound inspiration seized him after he had dressed for dinner. Philip gave a slightly iced negative to Nellie’s inquiry whether he was to join this pilgrimage.
Mr. Mainwaring did all the usual things. He clapped his hand on Peter’s shoulder when the introductions had been made, and hoped, with a stately bow, that his boy had been behaving himself. He waved his hand when Mrs. Wardour pronounced the first act “very interesting,” and recognized a fellow artist. Before ten minutes were over Mrs. Wardour was committed to look in next afternoon and see “his few poor efforts.” Then he became more confidential and whispery.
“A marvellous, an incomparable type!” he said, looking at Silvia, and back again at her mother. “Who has had the felicity, the difficult felicity, of painting that glorious head? No one? I am astonished. I would be shocked if I were capable of so bourgeois an emotion. H’m!”
Beyond a visit to the private view of the Royal Academy, Mrs. Wardour had not penetrated into pictorial circles, and faintly, through the impression, volubly audible, of Silvia and Nellie talking together, Peter heard his father leading up to the series of warcartoons suitable for mural decoration. As regards that, he went walking in the wet woods, as aloof from his father as from any other magnificent self advertiser. He had heard Mrs. Wardour’s promise to go to the studio next day and to bring Silvia, and he thought that very probably the relations of Great Britain with
foreign countries might struggle through a free hour without his co-operation. Meantime Nellie seemed to be talking secrets to Silvia, and he sat, nursing his knee, a little aloof from either group. Presently Nellie would go back to her seat in the stalls, and his father would do the same, and then he would hitch his chair a little forward again....
People began to troop back into the stalls; obviously a bell had rung announcing the imminence of the second act. Nellie recognized that, and got up. As yet she had barely spoken to him.
“I must get back to my Philip,” she said very properly. “Good night, darling Silvia.”
Peter had gone to open the door for them. “Come to the flat, Peter,” she said, without turning her head, as she passed him. “I shall go straight home.”
The words were just dropped from her, as if by accident or inadvertence, but the moment she had spoken them she knew that this had been in the main the object of her visit to the box: it was this which she had primarily wanted. The merest hint of an affirmative nod on Peter’s part was sufficient answer.
The play came to its happy concluding treacliness, and they went out. Philip and Nellie, of course, were among the first into the vestibule, where he instantly caught his footman’s eye. The Wardour group must have left their box slightly before the end, for Peter was seeing them into their motor, thanking Mrs. Wardour for “such an awfully nice evening” and excusing himself from being given a lift, as after a day in the office he liked walking home — yes, all the way to South Kensington. How nice it would be to see Mrs. Wardour at his father’s house next day.... He lingered a moment on the pavement, and as Nellie passed him on her way to the motor, just nodded again, without seeming to see her.
Philip’s first concern, as they slid off into the traffic, was that there should be air, but no draught for Nellie. Perhaps if he put her window quite up and his half down.... Was that comfortable? And a match for her cigarette? After which he slipped her hand into his, and after a moment’s delay she returned the pressure.
In a flash of general, comprehensive consciousness Nellie was aware how comfortable and well-ordered the whole evening had been, and realized that all days, evenings and mornings and afternoons alike, would to the end of life, owing to the very ample “settlements” which she understood to have been made, be padded and cushioned like this. She was conscious at the same moment that her appreciation of that lacked acuteness; she would just as soon, to take an example, be walking with Peter along the pavements, where nobody cared if she felt a draught or not, as be having it all her own way in unjostled progress.... The flash of this perception was instantaneous, measured only by that moment’s delay in response to Philip’s hand, for he instantly began to tick again, as she put it to herself, a pleasant tick, a good, reliable, firm tick.
“A charming play, was it not, dear?” said he. “And that delicious humour of his.”
Well, if Nellie was going to be comfortable all her life, it was only fair that she should contribute, should put her penny into the placid bag.
“Delicious,” she said. “I am sure it will have a great success. And how interesting to be there on the first night.”
She broke off suddenly, and clasped Philip’s arm. “Ah — we nearly ran over that man,” she cried. Philip remained quite calm. He would obviously be an admirable companion in a shipwreck or a thunderstorm or a railway accident. This was, delightfully, a new point about him, and Nellie found, on the discovery of it, that she must have been collecting his good points, for with the collector’s zeal she hastened to net it and add it to her specimens.
He pressed the hand that she had laid on his arm,; and looked out of the window which he had opened on his side of the motor.
“My dear, there is nothing to be alarmed about,” he said. “The man is quite safe, and has not forgotten his usual vocabulary. You need never be afraid with Logan; he is the most careful of drivers, and has an extraordinary command of the brakes.” Nellie collected this new genus Philip; sub-species, Logan. It added a little bit to the completeness.
“Logan is quite trustworthy,” he went on; “you need never have a moment’s qualm when he is on the box. We were discussing the play. I should like to see it again. Does not that strike you as the true criterion as to whether you have essentially enjoyed a play? If there is only mere glitter, one does not want to repeat the experience. But there was gold, I thought, this evening.”
He was silent a moment, patting her hand, and Nellie divined his mind with a rather terrible distinctness. She had been very considerably agitated for that moment, and he assumed (how wisely and how consciously) a complete oblivion of that. The best method of reassuring her after the little testimonial to Logan was to be unaware of any fluttering incident. A manly calm was the efficient medicine for feminine alarm. He went on talking; about the play as if nothing agitating had occurred....
Swiftly as the car slid down Piccadilly Nellie’s brain was just a little in advance of it, and before it slowed up at the house of flats she was mentally on the doorstep. Earlier in the evening she had contemplated Philip’s admiring ascent with her in the lift, her own surprised recollection, on their emergence, that her mother would not vet be in. But now that picture had been whisked off the screen altogether; there would be no ascent with Philip, no sudden remembrance of her mother’s absence. A subsequent engagement, not so conventional, had been proposed by her and assented to with a nod so imperceptible that it had been repealed.
Philip had so often spent a final half-hour like this, that, as the motor stopped, he almost assumed it.
“And may I come up for a few minutes?” he asked.
She laid her hand on his shoulder as if to press him back on to his seat.
“Don’t find it horrid of me, dear,” she said, “if I say ‘no.’ I am a little tired, do you think? But what a lovely evening we have had. You come and fetch me in the morning, don’t you? Good night, my dear.”
The most ardent of lovers could hardly have insisted, after this little collection of sentences, each unmistakably clinking with some sort of final “ring,” and it was out of the question for Philip to repeat a request which, in any case, had habit rather than craving to back it. He would certainly have liked to sit with Nellie and her mother — so he supposed — for a quarter of an hour, discuss the play a little more, quietly sun himself, contentedly basking in Nellie’s presence, and consider himself a very fortunate fellow; but if she was a little tired, it would have been unthinkably intrusive to beg her to take a part and let him take a part in a séance that she had no wish for. But she lingered a moment yet in order to give no impression of being in any hurry; then, forbidding him to get out of the motor, she disappeared, with a final gesture as of but a short separation, into the house.
Her mother, as Nellie knew would be the case,; had not yet returned from her card-party, nor would she be likely to do so for a full hour yet, and her, absence, in relation to the visitor she now expected, took for itself a totally different aspect. She had limitless opportunities and facilities for a tête-à-tête with Philip, and her mother’s absence, if it had been he who had come admiringly up with her as she; managed the lift, would in no way have been a special, even a desirable, condition. She and Philip were so often alone together, and, before many days were passed, would be so exclusively alone together, that the gain of another such hour was, frankly, quite imponderable. But for the last fortnight she had scarcely had a private word with Peter, and whatever it was that she had to say to him in this visit she had bidden him to, and whatever he had to say to her (that he had something to say was probable from his reiterated acceptance of her request), it was quite certain that these things could not be satisfactorily said, even, perhaps, be said at all, before any audience whatever.
Nellie had no definite knowledge, in any detail, of even her own contribution to the coming interview; all that she knew was that when, half an hour later or an hour later, she would click the door on his departure, she must somehow have looked mi
nutely, with his eyes to help her, at the antagonism which had so odiously flourished. She intensely hoped that it could be rooted up altogether and put on to the rubbish heap of mistakes and misapprehensions; but whether her hope had much of the luminosity of faith about it was not so certain. Too much depended on what he had to tell her, and she did not fall into the error of forecasting the upshot before she knew what contribution he was to make towards the preliminary process.... Then, with an internal vibration — partly of suspense, partly, she admitted, of eager anticipation — she heard the faint tingle of the electric bell. The servants, no doubt, had gone to bed, and she went to the door herself.
“Hullo!” said Peter.
He stood there a moment, after the door was opened, without moving, his eyes agleam, and a smile hovering over his mouth. Often and often had they met in precisely similar fashion, he, as he passed the door on his way home, giving one discreet little ring, which Nellie would answer if she felt disposed to see him. Sometimes her mother would be in; but oftener, if in, she had gone to bed, and the two would sit over the fire, or, on hot nights, seek the window-seat and spend an hour of desultory intimacy, as two boys might, or two girls. But tonight there was some little effervescent quality added to the meeting; the spice that a combined manoeuvre, however innocent, brought with it. Both realized, too, that a talk, which must attempt to readjust their old relations or fit them into the changed conditions, lay ahead, and, for the moment, each brought gaiety and goodwill to the task. The best evidence for that was the assumption of the old relations pending the readjustment....