by E. F. Benson
All the time (he knew that then, and knew it infinitely better now) her level shone in sunlight like some peak far above the clouds, compared to his little wooded hill that drowsed in the grey day below them. Round him there was no gleam of that ethereal brightness in which she walked, or, at the most through some rent in the clouds, he caught a glimpse of her. She, at present, so it appeared to him, was so encompassed with brightness that, dazzled, she took for granted that he was with her, and indeed, by some device of desire and of cleverness on his part, he could convince her that through the clasp of their hands there throbbed the sweet entanglement of the soul. She interpreted his lightest action, his words, his glances, by some magic of her own; but already he knew that he, though with consummate care, was “keeping it up.” There was no element of difficulty about it, any more than there had been any difficulty about behaving to the complete satisfaction of Mrs. Trentham at her Ritz-Opera entertainments. But in both rôles, as guest at the Ritz and as “master” of Howes, there was an inherent falsity. In both he was dressed up for the part. The difference between the two situations was that in the one Mrs. Trentham was dressed up too, and in the other Silvia was not.
Peter was quite ruthless in tearing the motley off from himself, and contemplating with the candidness of a true egoist the revealed deformities. He never cultivated illusions about himself, nor strove to soften down his own uncomeliness. There he was; that was he, to make the best or the worst of. He did not on the other hand, try to depreciate his assets; he tried, in fact, to make the most of them and use them to the utmost possible advantage. He was, and knew it, a marvellous physical type, handsome as the young Hermes, and crowned with the glory and flower of adolescence. He surrendered to Silvia all that physical perfection; he gave her the wit and charm of his mind; and he was aware that with these he dazzled her much in the same way as Nellie had dazzled her. The use and the enjoyment of them, utterly at her service, was responsible for the splendid success of this solitary fortnight.
In spite of the divine conditions of these golden country days, he knew that he was not sorry to be enjoying the last of them. To-morrow he had to get back to his work, and this sword of his, body and mind, would be sheathed for intervals of absence. And then, with the sure certainty of apprehension that had stamped out these conclusions, he knew that it was not for these alone, or even for these at all, that Silvia had loved him. At the most they were for her the bright-plumaged lure, to which her attention had been originally attracted. But even in the first moments of this attention she had divined something in him, below the feathers and the fur, which she sought. Her quest had gone deeper than skin and conversation, than glances and smiles and level shoulders and firm neck, and quick response, and humour and all the lures of the male for the female. She had claimed and clasped him for something other than what certainly appeared to her as mere appurtenances. And what on his side had he looked for in her? Nothing, so he branded it on himself, except her mere physical attraction, her mere mental charm and freshness and her wealth.
But the admission of this was a branding: the hot iron hurt him, and, not liking to be hurt, he recollected the letters which, a few minutes ago, the Jackdaw had presented to him, and which — the first of them, upside down in his hand — was so honestly gummed that he could make no insertion into its flap.
He turned it over and saw the handwriting of the address. He managed then to open it.
“Isn’t it delightful to be married?” wrote Nellie. “I didn’t write to you at first, Peter, because you wouldn’t have enjoyed anything that came from outside. But after a fortnight, you ought to be able to be congratulated. Before that it would have been merely impertinent (and probably is now); but your friends have to take up the threads again sometime. All we blissful people, in fact, must remember that we are human beings, after all, and break ourselves into ‘behavin’ according’ (Mrs. Gamp, isn’t it? No, I don’t think it is). Anyhow, we shall all meet again, shan’t we, and buzz about in London, and ask each other to our lovely country houses. We’ve got to go on, Peter; the world has got to go on. Hasn’t it?”
Peter turned a page, and began to be quite absorbed in this new but familiar atmosphere. He slipped out of his present environment under some spell which lurked in these trivialities.
“I’m getting on beautifully,” so began the second page, “for Philip and I understand each other so well, and it’s tremendously comfortable. We seem to want just the same sort of thing. He’s awfully keen about birds, for instance, and I am becoming so. We go out with field-glasses, and see willow-wrens, and yesterday we saw a marsh-warbler. Then I like golf — you always hated it, I remember — so Philip is learning to like it too. He nearly lost his temper yesterday when he missed a short putt, and that’s always a good sign. We don’t quite agree about motoring, because I always want to go as fast as the machine can manage, and he always wants to slow down when there’s a cross-road. He talks to the chauffeur through a beastly little tube, and it’s like a funeral.
“Peter darling, what rot I am writing. Fancy my writing such rot to you. It’s the wrong sort of rot, isn’t it? There are rots and rots. You and I always used to talk rot, but it wasn’t about birds and golf. (I’m having a new sort of mashie.) But, bar rot, when are we going to meet again? Isn’t the country a sleepy place? Do come up to town soon, and Philip and I will come up, too. (You and Silvia, I mean, of course.) I want to be in the silly old thick of it again. Because when you’re in the thick of it you can make privacies, but when you’re in the privacy of the country you can’t make a thick, except when you have a great house-party, as we’re going to have next week, and that isn’t really a ‘thick’: it’s only partridges. The men go out in the morning, and the women join them for lunch, and then the men come home in the evening, and the morning and evening are the first day. But it’s all extremely comfortable — that’s the word I come back to. Mother has been here for the last three weeks, and she’s almost ceased saying that she must go away the day after to-morrow. I suppose that’s because she’s tired of hearing either Philip or me murmur something about its being such a short visit. P. and I really both like her being with us: it isn’t half a bad plan, and I expect she’ll stop till we go back to town again.
“I want you and Silvia to come over here on November 10th for the week-end. There will be hosts of rather nice people here: so many, in fact, that you and I can steal away without being noticed, and have a scamper through the wet woods (they are sure to be wet in November) and wave our tails and congratulate ourselves on being settled for life. We’ve both of us got somebody to take care of us (Yes, I mean that), and if you’re as pleased with the arrangement as I am, why, we’re very lucky people. You and I, you know, if things had been utterly and completely different, would have quarrelled so frightfully.... I saw two cats yesterday sitting with their faces within an inch of each other, scowling and screeching at each other in a perfect tempest of irritation.
“Here’s Philip come to take me out. He will sit in the chair there waiting quite placidly till I have finished this letter, not reading the paper or doing anything at all, but just waiting. He knows where there are a pair of golden crested wrens. Isn’t that exciting?... Oh, I can’t go on with him sitting there. Good-bye, my dear. Mind you and Silvia come on the 10th.”
As Peter read, he heard, by some internal audition, Nellie’s voice enunciating the sentences with that familiar intonation of light staccato mockery. The written words were but like a prompter’s copy which he held and glanced at; it was Nellie who stood there and said the lines. He would have liked to argue a point or two with her, but he knew that there was between them that deep fundamental agreement and comprehension without which argument develops into mere contradiction....
Peter thrust the letter into his pocket as steps sounded on the gravel just behind him.
“Been sitting here ever since I left you?” asked Silvia. “Oh, Peter, without your hat in this hot sun!”
She p
icked it up and perched it on his head.
“There! Oh, what a nuisance it is that this is your last day here. But what a last day. Any letters?”
Peter’s hand fingered Nellie’s letter.
“Yes: one from Nellie,” he said. “She wants you and me to go there for the week-end on November 10th. Shall we?”
“Oh, how unkind of her? What are we to do? Shall we say that Mother will be here for that Sunday? It will be quite true in its way, though it won’t mean precisely what she thinks it means.” Peter looked at her below the rim of his straw hat. She had placed it rather forward over his forehead, and as she stood beside his chair he had to incline his head sharply back, so that the muscles at the side of his neck stood out below the sun-browned skin. She came a step closer and held his throat between thumb and fingers.
“What shall we tell her?” she asked. “Speak, or I’ll strangle you.”
“Strangle away!” he said.
“I would sooner you spoke,” she said. “I don’t want to murder you just yet. So unpleasant for mother.”
“Whether it’s unpleasant for me or not doesn’t seem to matter,” said Peter throatily, for Silvia increased the pressure of her hand.
“Not a bit, darling,” said she. “I shall squeeze tighter and tighter until you tell me what we shall say to Nellie.”
“Brute!” said Peter. “Don’t do it, Silvia. You’re hurting me frightfully.”
He wrinkled up his forehead and drew in his breath quickly, as if in great pain. Instantly Silvia took her hand away.
“Oh, my dear, I haven’t really hurt you?” she asked with compunction.
“Once upon a time,” said Peter, “there was a woman who believed every word that her husband said.”
Silvia sat down on the edge of the long chair.
“Was? There is one,” she said. “If you told me you hated me, I should believe you.”
“I hate you,” said Peter promptly.
“You didn’t say that,” said she. “Your mouth said it. What are we to tell Nellie? Seriously, I mean. It will be nearly our last Sunday here, if we go to London in December.”
Peter made a short calculation.
“Dear Nellie,” he said, “we are so sorry we can’t come, because November 10th will be our last evening but twenty-one alone here, as we go up to town the next month. Will that do?”
“It sounds perfectly sensible,” said Silvia. She’ll understand: it wasn’t so long ago that she was married. Then you’ll write that, will you?” she added hopefully.
“I will if you really wish it,” said he; “but it’s not very sane. You see... well, some time we’ve got to begin behaving like ordinary human beings again. And, after all, Nellie is a very old friend of mine, and a very intimate one of yours. She’ll think it rather odd.”
Silvia sighed.
“A whole Saturday to Monday,” she said. “How selfish Nellie is. I never knew that before. But perhaps we had better go. Shall I answer it for you?”
Peter got up.
“No; I must write to her in any case,” he said.
“What else does she say?” asked Silvia. “No message for me?”
Peter could not definitely remember any, but there was sure to have been such.
“Of course: all sorts of things. Come for a stroll, Silvia. I’m getting chilly in the shade of my straw hat. There’s another thing I want to talk over with you. Let’s go down by the lake!”
“Hurrah! I love being consulted. What is it?”
“It’s about my father. Oh, by the way, the Jackdaw asked me where he should be put, and I said the state-rooms. Is that all right?”
Silvia pinched his arm.
“When are you going to understand that you are the master?” she said. “Oh, Peter, it will be lovely for him having the state-rooms. He’ll like it tremendously. Won’t he? I wish I had thought of it. It wasn’t that, I hope, that you wanted to consult me about.”
“No. Now, before I consult you, I want to ask you a question or two, which you must promise to answer not tactfully, but truly.”
“Not even a little tact, if I find it necessary?” she asked.
“Not an atom. Do you like that cartoon of his?” Silvia glanced sideways at him.
“Well — I don’t find I go and look at it for pleasure,” she said. “Not often at least, not every day. Do you like it?”
“I think it’s the most colossal piece of rubbish I ever saw. Now try again to express your opinion.” Silvia gave a sigh of relief.
“Oh, I do agree!” she said. “It’s the most appalling. Now, isn’t it?”
“Question number two,” said Peter. “Do you think you will like the others any better? Do you, in fact, look forward to seeing the whole wall of the gallery covered with allegorical Mainwarings?”
“Not in the very smallest degree. But we’ve got to have them, haven’t we?”
“I don’t think so,” said he. “In fact, from a letter I have received from my father, I gather that he doesn’t consider he made a contract for them at all. It’s clear from what he says that somebody else wants to buy them at a higher rate, considerably higher, than your mother paid for the first. In fact, he alludes to the price she paid for it as a pittance. By the way, what did she pay for it?”
Silvia looked sideways at him again.
“Do you really want me to tell you?” she asked. “If you don’t mind.”
“Well, she gave him a thousand guineas for it, Peter. I rather wish he hadn’t called it a pittance; it makes mother seem mean. He was quite willing to accept it. And I don’t suppose — do you? — that he sells much at that sort of price?”
“And the rest of the unspeakable six at the same price?” asked Peter.
“I suppose so. Mother understood so,” said she. “And does she want to have them?” asked Peter. “No. I don’t think she does, very much,” said Silvia. “She spoke to-day of ‘my cartoons’ — wasn’t that darling of her? — when I said your father was coming this evening. But I think I could explain to her that she needn’t have them; if I do it the right way, she won’t think she wants them. But what about the one we’ve got?”
“Sell it back to him at the price she gave for it,” said Peter.
Silvia seemed to consider this simple proposition rather intently.
“Yes, perhaps she would do that,” she said, without much conviction as to its probability. “Oh, Peter, haven’t we got rather odd parents?”
“I have; but why have you, except in so far that it was odd to give a thousand guineas for that monstrosity? I’m delighted at the prospect of getting rid of it, not only, and not chiefly, because it’s an atrocious object, but because I hate the idea of my father imposing upon your mother and then talking about a pittance. He would have jumped at selling it in an auction room for a quarter of what she paid. I wonder who can have offered him more for it. Oh, by the way, Aunt Eleanor has bought his sketches for the cartoons.”
Silvia burst out laughing.
“Then Aunt Joanna has bought the cartoons themselves,” she said. “But don’t suggest that to mother. Or rather, if you want me to talk about it all to her, I won’t. Aunt Joanna, you see, wants to, what they call wipe mother’s eye. I’m quite certain of it. And if mother got wind of it, she wouldn’t part with that wretched picture for a million.”
“But how odd—”
“Yes; that’s her oddness. I said we had got odd parents. And I doubt — at least, there’s no doubt about it at all — whether she will let your father have back the one cartoon that she has got for what she paid for it. She doesn’t want any money, and she’s as generous as she can be, bless her, but she won’t be ‘done.’ The picture is hers, and she won’t let him have it back at a penny less than he is going to receive for it. Oh, let’s talk about something more interesting. Anyhow, you and I don’t want the cartoon we’ve got, or any more like it. But people are so queer, and I love their queernesses: they are part of them. After all, the queernesses in peo
ple are exactly what makes their individuality. You’re queer, I’m queer.”
“Why am I queer?” demanded Peter.
“I’ve told you so often,” said she.
Peter guessed at that what his imputed queerness was. It was true that she had told him often, but it was true also that there was a thing which a lover was never tired of repeating.
“Never: never once,” said he.
“As if I wasn’t doing it all day,” she said. “Taking advantage, I mean, of your queerness — not merely telling you about it directly, but being so much more direct than just telling you. What’s your queerness, indeed, if it isn’t that you allow me to be queer, just because you are?”
“You’ve changed the subject,” said he. “You’re talking about your queerness now.”
“It’s all the same queerness,” she said.
Peter could squint more atrociously than most people, and now, looking at Silvia, he allowed himself to contemplate the end of his nose. Silvia couldn’t stand this trick, and a nonsensical ritual had built itself up upon it.
“Oh, Peter, put your eyes back!” she cried.
“I can’t. They’ve stuck. Push them back for me.”
He shut his eyes, and Silvia stroked the lids from the nose outwards.
“They will stick some day,” she said, “and then I shall divorce you.”
Peter looked at her straight again.
“Go on about the queerness,” he said.
“Yours or mine?” she asked.
“You said they were the same.”
“They are in a way. But your queerness is much the queerest. For it was I whom you loved. What I did wasn’t queer; anything else would have been not queer, but imbecile.... Peter, don’t ever be tired of knowing how awfully I love you. If you’re not there, the thought of it frightens me; there’s something crushing about it. But when you are with me, the only thing that frightens me is the thought that it shouldn’t be so. But why on earth you’re like that — like me, I mean — that’s what is so incomprehensible. Me, you know: this bit of nothing at all.”