by E. F. Benson
SILVIA was sitting in Mr. Mainwaring’s studio one Saturday afternoon, waiting, without impatience, for the arrival from the Foreign Office of Peter, with whom she was motoring down to Howes, there to spend the Sunday. Silvia was perfectly capable of humour with regard to Howes, for she called it “the family seat.” This indeed it was, since her father had bought the Norman ruin some twenty years ago, and quite unmistakably it belonged to the Wardours. He had made it habitable while Silvia was still a child, and during the war, when he became quite fabulously rich, he made it abominable also. To that period belonged the great picture gallery.
The gathering there for the week-end was, though small, a rather crucial one. It was to introduce to each other the families which would be brought into alliance over her wedding. Henry Wardour, Silvia’s uncle on her father’s side, was to be ponderously there, and his wife elegantly so. Then there was to be Aunt Joanna Darley, Mrs. Wardour’s sister, and her husband. He, Sir Abel Darley, was a round pink profiteer, who in recognition of the considerable fortune he had made for himself by overcharging the Government for millions of yards of khaki, had been made a baronet, presumably in order to stop his mouth: if he felt inclined to brag over the gullible Government. Then there was Mr. Mainwaring to represent Peter’s side of the connection, but he was to sustain his part alone since Mrs. Mainwaring, with an impregnable quietness of negation, had absolutely refused to take part in this reunion of families.
“You’ll be eight without me, Silvia,” she had said, “and eight’s a very good number. I shall stop quietly in London and think of you all enjoying yourselves.”
Silvia’s sense of humour prevented her from forming any tragic anticipations about this party, though, as she would have been perfectly willing to confess, she did not suppose that the meeting of the clans would lead to any instinctive blood-brotherhood. But Peter would be there, and she would be there, and however outrageous and incompatible the rest of them proved themselves, they would be like the heathen “furiously raging together,” but unable to disturb seriously the foundation fact of that. She trusted to her own sense of humour and to Peter’s, to enable them both to be indifferent to what happened outside their own charmed corner. Uncle Henry and Uncle Abe, and Mr. Mainwaring and Peter would form a very curious company after dinner that night, when she and her mother and Aunt Joanna and Aunt Eleanor had left them to “punish” — as Uncle Henry would undoubtedly say — the 1870 port of which he was so inordinately fond, while the ladies would form an equally inconceivable committee upstairs. But since these things were to be, there was no use in imagining impossible situations. Somehow she conjectured that Mr. Mainwaring would impress himself more strongly on the circle downstairs than either of the uncles; he had more exuberance.
If Silvia had been set down to construct an incongruous party of eight, she could not by any fantastic selection have bettered this gathering. Aunt Joanna, for instance, nourished an ineradicable hatred towards her sister for having married Silvia’s father, and for being so much richer than Sir Abe, and even Sir Abe’s rank and her own were powerless to compensate her for this. Rich, immensely rich, Sir Abe certainly was, but she could not bear that her sister should be so much richer. Aunt Eleanor, on the other hand, Mrs. Wardour’s sister-in-law, had only reverence for Mrs. Wardour’s wealth, but what she thoroughly despised her for was her truckling (so Aunt Eleanor put it) to the smart world. Aunt Eleanor had been present at the great party, where the Russian ballet entertained the guests, and the presence of so many distinguished people made her feel perfectly sick. The true diagnosis of her indisposition, however, was that since she had tried to do for years without a particle of success what Mrs. Wardour had so brilliantly accomplished in a few weeks, it was only reasonable that she should have a violent reaction against that sort of thing. If, instead of marrying Peter, Silvia had been about to wed a peer, or somebody of that kind, Aunt Eleanor would certainly have felt it her duty never to speak to either her or her mother again. Indeed, she would never have accepted Mrs. Wardour’s invitation at all, so she had made quite plain, unless she had felt it her duty to take an interest in her husband’s relations.
Silvia was conscious of a vein of caricature in this flitting survey, but ridiculous people made caricatures of themselves without the collusion of the observer. Mr. Mainwaring was a caricature too: she could not think of him quite seriously. Probably most people, if you regarded them from a strictly individual standpoint, had a touch of caricature about them, for if you rated yourself as a normal person, everybody else must be a little out of drawing. But she looked at the caricatures with the friendliest amusement; she loved them (and here in particular was her mother included) for being, so entirely different from her — for being, in fact, precisely what they were. Humorous observation was, with her, less a critical than an appreciative process, and now, as she waited for Peter, she wanted definitely to include Mrs. Mainwaring in her fascinating gallery. But for this last fortnight, since her engagement to Peter, she had found herself increasingly unable to give her this genial amused observation. More and more did Mrs. Mainwaring baffle and elude her. There was, so far as Silvia could notice, nothing humanly ridiculous about her, and, what was even more disconcerting, the girl found herself ever more incapable of attaching herself to her. To attempt to do that resembled, in some uncomfortable manner, the notion of attaching yourself in the dark to a hard smooth surface; you could nowhere get hold of her or find projection or crevice in which to crook or to insert a finger tip. The more closely Silvia looked at her, the more strenuously she attempted to get into any sort of psychical contact with Mrs. Mainwaring, the more directly was she baffled. She could not, for herself, give up as insoluble the mystery of that lady’s mental and spiritual processes; there must be, if you could only lay your hands on it in the dark, some key to her future mother-in-law, something that explained, for instance, her unwearied study of the advertisements of hotels. No one could be as completely tranquil and emotionless all through as Mrs. Mainwaring appeared to be. Twice only had her mind slipped for a definite instant into the open, like a lizard emerging into the sunlight and flicking back again; once when, on the first visit that Silvia and her mother had paid to the house, Mrs. Mainwaring unveiled a glance of malicious hostility in the direction of the great cartoon. Less definite, but like in kind, was the habitual, though veiled, hostility with which Silvia felt that Mrs. Mainwaring regarded herself. It did not flame, but she knew that she was right in conjecturing that it incessantly smouldered. And that enmity, to Silvia’s sense, was of the same quality, though smouldering, as that which had leaped in that swift little tongue of flame towards the cartoon: what puzzled her was the kinship between the two. From the context of that moment in the studio, it seemed to be Mr. Mainwaring’s work which kept him in London (and her therefore with him) that had kindled that odd swift spark. Or was the origin of it a little deeper down than that? Did some shut furnace of impatience at her husband, so floridly symbolized there, some deep-seated core of incompatibility suddenly flame out then? If so, what was the kindred nature of her hostility to the girl? Was it that she was taking Peter away from the home which his presence there just rendered tolerable? But apart from those two “escapes,” so to speak, of genuine feeling, the origin of which, after all, was only a matter of conjecture, Silvia had no clue to Mrs. Mainwaring at all; she was practically featureless and even without outline. She could not sketch her at all, or delineate from her as model, one of those genial caricatures, such as her friends so freely supplied her with material for. Such features and such outline as she could perceive were tinged with bitter suggestions....
Silvia did not find the waiting for Peter in any way tedious; there was plenty in the studio to furnish a larder for thought, though what most occupied her was her alert attention for the sound of his light footstep coming down the passage. But apart from that food for reflection was abundant. To-day the end of the studio where the cartoon had hung was empty, so that if Mrs. Mainwaring’s
resentment was inspired purely by that work of art, she might now regain her tranquillity again. Silvia would see it this evening, for her mother, following up the idea with which it had first fired her in connection with the empty walls of the picture gallery at Howes, had a few days ago made a purchase of it.
Mr. Mainwaring had been very glorious on this occasion; at first he had hysterically refused to part with it. It was his chef-d’œuvre, and while he had a couple of pennies in his pocket, he was, though poor, too proud to think of selling it. Then, lest that refusal should be taken too seriously, he almost immediately declared that it should be his wedding present to Silvia. He let himself be hunted out of so untenable a magnificence, and finally he so far humiliated himself as to accept a fancy price for it. As Mrs. Wardour knew (he reminded her, to make certain) that it was the first of a series of six, upon which he was contented to stand or fall in the verdict of posterity, it seemed probable that, at some future time, the walls of the picture gallery at Howes would be far less empty than they were to-day.
On an easel near where Silvia sat was the portrait of herself now approaching completion. To her there was something uncanny and arresting about it, for, by accident or design, the artist had caught some aspect of her which secretly she recognized as a piece of intimate revelation. She herself inclined to an accidental derivation, for certainly in all but one point it was a flamboyant and uninspired performance, a chronicle of a green “jumper” and a scarlet skirt, a haystack of dyed hair, and a rouged, simpering mouth. Her head was turned full to the spectator, looking over the shoulder, in precisely the same pose (a favourite trick of the artist’s) as that in which the German Emperor listened to Satanic counsels. But in the eyes, in the badly drawn outstretched hand, clumsily posed, Silvia saw some unconscious rendering of the “boy’s key.” She acquitted Mr. Mainwaring of all intention and of all inspiration; he had certainly not meant that. He had, through faulty drawing, given a certain brisk violence to her hand, a certain domination to her eyes.
And then she heard the click of the street door, and the quick light footstep for which she had been waiting. She wondered if she could ever get used to the mere fact of Peter’s return from however short an absence.
He kissed her, holding her hand for a moment.
“It’s too bad of me to have kept you waiting,” he said. “I couldn’t help myself. There was a messenger starting for Rome. Haven’t they brought you tea?”
“No; I thought I would wait and have it with you.”
Peter rang the bell.
“And my father’s gone?” he asked.
“Yes; mother called for him and drove him down. I’ve brought my little Cording car for us.”
“Just you and me? That’ll be lovely,” said Peter. “Do I quite trust your driving, though?”
“You may drive yourself, if you like,” said she.
“No, thanks; I trust that far less. I must see if my bag is packed. Tell Burrows we want tea at once.”
“Can’t I help you to pack it, if it isn’t done?” asked Silvia.... Somehow she would have liked to do that, to fold his clothes, to squeeze out his sponge.
“No; it’s so sordid,” said Peter. “Besides, it’s probably done already.”
“If it isn’t, call me,” said she. “No man has any idea of how to pack.”
“And you want to teach me?” asked Peter, lingering on the stairs.
Silvia hesitated only for a moment.
“No, you darling,” she said. “I don’t want to teach you anything. I just want to do it.”
“Why?” asked he.
She came closer, raising her face towards him, as he leaned over the banisters.
“Your things,” she said. “Your sponge, your coat....”
That pleasure was denied her, for Burrows had already bestowed Peter’s requirements in his bag, and he came downstairs again. Silvia had given his father a sitting for the portrait this morning, and he stood frowning in front of it.
“Trash! Rubbish!” he said at length. “And the worst of it is that he has got into it some infernal resemblance to you. It’s a caricature.”
“Oh, we’re all caricatures to each other,” said she. “with just a few exceptions.”
“What a heathenish doctrine. Why am I a caricature, for instance?”
You aren’t. You’re one of the exceptions. But tell me what your father has caricatured of me in that?”
Peter looked from her to the portrait and back again.
“All of you,” he said. “The reality of you: the rest is quite unlike. You haven’t got mouth and nose and forehead and hair and chin the least like that. But the person inside is horribly like you.” Silvia put her arm through his.
“Horribly?” she said. “Thanks so much.”
“I didn’t say — just then — that you were horrible,” said he. “I said horribly like you, your parody, your caricature. I wonder how I dared ask such a masterful young woman to marry me.”
“You knew it would be good for you,” said Silvia. “It was far more daring of me to accept you.”
“There’s just time for you to remedy your mistake,” said he. “Positively the last chance.”
This frank kind of chaffing talk, as between friends rather than lovers, had grown to be characteristic of their privacy. Silvia delighted in it: it had the charm of some cipher about it; the blunt commonplace words held for her a secret meaning known to the two utterers of them, which was only to be expressed by these symbols. When she feigned to misunderstand Peter, and thanked him for calling her horrible, there lay below her foolish words a treasure which words were quite powerless to express. Or when he just now wondered that he had dared to ask her to marry him, she felt that he conveyed something which no amount of impassioned speech could have indicated so well. From the hilltops there flashed the signal that no voice could convey. Then sometimes, as now, she had to use another symbol, which again was only a symbol, and with her hands tremblingly, eagerly, shyly clasping him round the neck, she drew his head down towards her, not kissing him, but simply looking close into his eyes.
“Positively the last chance!” she said. “Oh, Peter, what a fool I am about you. Doesn’t it bore; you frightfully?”
“Frightfully,” said Peter, keeping to the first code of symbols.
“You bear it beautifully, darling,” she said. “Oh, shall I ever get used to you? I hope so: I mustn’t go on being such a donkey all my days. No; I don’t think I do hope so. Being a donkey is good enough for me. Hee haw! Oh, let go: here’s Burrows coming with the tea. She’ll think it so undignified.”
It was, as a matter of fact, she who had to “let go,” as Burrows entered, followed by Mrs. Mainwaring. Silvia had before now tried to call her “mother,” but the experiment somehow had not succeeded. Mrs. Mainwaring answered to it quite readily, but she received it, so the girl thought, much as she might have received an unsolicited nickname.
“Why, Mrs. Mainwaring!” she said. “I didn’t know you were in.”
Mrs. Mainwaring paused just long enough to let it be inferred that if Silvia had made any inquiries as to that, she would have obtained the information she sought.
“Yes, dear, I have been reading upstairs since lunch time,” she said. “I came to have a cup of tea with you before you started. I hope you will have a pleasant drive.”
Silvia tried to approach.
“Ah, do come too,” she said. “Change your mind, and come with me. Heaps of room.”
“Thank you, dear, I think I will keep to my original plan,” said she. “I like a quiet Sunday sometimes. I shall go to church, and perhaps in the afternoon hear a concert at the Queen’s Hall. The time will pass very pleasantly.”
There was an aura of correct armed neutrality about this, accompanied as it was by that cold sheathed glance, furtive and hostile, that caused some half-comic, half-impatient despair in the girl at her aloofness. Mrs. Mainwaring, so it seemed to her, wanted nobody except herself; she wanted just to be le
t alone.
“Father went off all right?” asked Peter.
“Yes; Mrs. Wardour kindly called for him after lunch. A beautiful car; so roomy. There was another lady and gentleman there: I think Mrs. Wardour said it was her sister and her husband. Your father insisted on going in the box seat with the driver. He made a great noise with the motor horn, which sounded like a bugle. He was in very high spirits.”
The neutrality exhibited in this speech was almost too correct to be credible. Nobody could have been so neutral. Even Mrs. Mainwaring could not quite keep it up, and something very far from neutral lay, ever so little below the surface, in her announcement of her husband’s high spirits. Her neutrality towards Silvia was not so deadly as that towards her husband....
Peter laughed. There was neutrality there too, but it was more contemptuous than deadly, and quite good humoured in its contempt.
“Oh, they’ll have a noisy drive,” he said. “And if Mrs. Wardour drives him back on Monday, you’ll be aware of their approach, mother, while they’re still a mile or two away.”
Mrs. Mainwaring had one of those fine-lipped mouths (very neat and finished at the outer corners), about which it is impossible to say whether they are smiling or not without consulting the conditions prevailing round the eyes. But as Peter spoke she very definitely ceased to smile.
“Monday?” she said. “I thought Mrs. Wardour was so kind as to ask him to stop till Tuesday.”
Peter got up: he noticed nothing about his mother, having long ago given up any attempt to comprehend her.
“Tuesday, is it?” he said. “I’m back on Monday,”, anyhow: otherwise what would happen to our foreign relations? Shall we start, Silvia? I’m ready when you are.”
Mrs. Mainwaring rose too.
“Yes, indeed, you had better be off,” she said. “You won’t have too much time. Then I shall expect you on Monday, Peter. Tell your father—”
She stopped.
“That you don’t expect him till Tuesday?” asked he, without the slightest indication of any mental comment.