by E. F. Benson
“I will not go,” said Mr. Kemp with some heat. “I do not see why I should be expected to turn out in the evening. Yes?”
Florence felt the swift on-coming of a sneeze. She fumbled in her bag for a handkerchief, and rattled richly among the nine coppers. Several violent explosions followed, and when the spasm subsided, she found her father spraying the air round him with his flask of disinfectant.
“Perhaps it would be wiser if you sat a little further off,” he said. “Yes?”
“I don’t think anything else has happened,” said Florence wheezily. “Oh yes, that new arrival, Mrs. Bliss. I saw you talking to her. How she smiles! I wonder why?”
Mr. Kemp shewed the first sign of withdrawing the blight he had been casting on this commandeered conversation.
“She told me strange things,” he said. “I could make little of them, though I must confess they interested me. She said I was perfectly well, and that pain had no real existence. To say that to me of all people appears on the face of it to be the gibbering of a lunatic. Yet as she talked I certainly did begin to feel that there was something behind it. She told me also that she was perfectly well, though I have never seen anybody limp more heavily. I scarcely think that I was as bad as that after my terrible experiences at Aix. I thought she would hardly be able to get upstairs yet she called to me from the landing, though much out of breath, that she had not felt a single twinge. Her theory is that all pain is an illusion or a delusion, I forget which, and if you only deny it, it vanishes. Ever since I came up to bed, which is a long time ago now, I have been denying it and I think — I am not sure, but I think — that I am lying a little more easily to-night than I have done since last Monday. But I must not get too much interested in it at this hour.”
Mr. Kemp yawned as he spoke.
“I am beginning to get a little drowsy,” he said. “I will not talk any more. Please go out very quietly, and turn off my light from the switch by the door. Don’t bang it.”
Florence tiptoed away to her room; though it was late, she felt wakeful and exhilarated. She had enjoyed her bridge, but it was not that alone, nor her unusually long remission from her father, nor yet the load of bullion that clinked in her bag which accounted for it. The evening had been adventurous, for Mrs. Holders had fluttered the red flag in the face of that formidable autocrat Colonel Chase: she had called in question the wisdom of his declaration, she had backed her own opinion by doubling, she had invoked the decision of Slam. And no retribution had followed, no thunderbolt had split her: the Colonel had merely paid up all round and gone to bed.
Florence wound up her watch and looked at her plump and rather pleasing image in the glass. Her hair was cropped like a man’s, and parted at the side: she wore a stiff linen collar with a small black tie in a bow, and a starched shirt with a sort of Eton jacket; her skirt was about the same length as the jacket. Then crossing her legs in an easy attitude she sat down on her bed, and thought carefully over what had been happening this evening. It was an application of Mrs. Holders’s defiance, rather than the defiance itself that claimed her attention. For Wentworth in general dumbly travailed under the domination of the Colonel, and if three hours ago she had been asked what she supposed would happen if anyone questioned his rulings and his bawlings and his tuition, her imagination would have failed to picture so impossible a contingency. Yet the impossible had now occurred and nothing had happened. The application was obvious, and she found herself wondering what would happen if she questioned her father’s right to immolate her day and night on the altar of his aches. Daring though such a supposition was, would nothing particular happen?
Florence let the hypochondriac history of the last seven years, from the time when her father had seriously taken up the profession of invalidism instead of having no profession at all, spread itself panoramically out in front of her. Her mother was alive then, and for those first two years of this lean series, the three of them had trodden the uneasy circle of hydropathic establishments. Buxton, Bath, Harrogate, and Bolton (but never Aix again) had grown to be the cardinal points of the year, and these were followed by Torquay, Cromer, Scarborough and Bournemouth for the after-cure of bracing air or sunny climate. At first they had returned to the pleasant little flat in Kensington Square after the quarterly cure to wait for the next cardinal point to come round, but her father who was in his element in boarding houses with all their good opportunities of telling relays of strangers about his ailments, soon discovered that London did not suit him, for it was airless in the summer, treacherous in the autumn and spring and foggy in the winter, and now he and Florence remained at Torquay, Cromer, Scarborough and Bournemouth till the next cure. After two years of this preposterous existence, her mother, who had always been frail and anæmic, simply came to the end of her vitality, and exhausted by her husband’s vampirism had stopped living. She had been possessed of a considerable fortune, half of which, with the flat in Kensington Square, she had left to Florence absolutely, the remainder to her husband for life. This appeared to him the most ungrateful return for all the care he had allowed her to take of him, and until his own health had completely driven all other interests from his mind he had sedulously nursed this grievance. Since then, for five years, Florence had been his enslaved companion.
She knew well that her interminable ministries to him were not performed out of the bounty of love, but from her own acquiescence in being crushed, and now it struck her that she thoroughly disliked him. Though she had not definitely stated that to herself before, the emotion must have been habitual, for its discovery did not in the least shock her nor did it shock her to conjecture that he equally disliked her. Probably all these years, he would have been happier with a trained nurse, who was paid for being bullied and bored, and she herself could have lived instead of merely getting older. She might even have married, for women did not become certified spinsters at the age of thirty, as she was when her solitary gyrations with him began, but the idea of marriage had hitherto seemed very embarrassing to her virginal soul. No man alive could justly claim to have raised the beat of her placid blood by a single pulsation; she had no spark of envy for any woman however happily married, compared with one who had her liberty. Miss Howard for instance seemed to her to live an almost ideal existence: she went where she liked, and nobody could claim her time or her energies, she tripped and sang about the passages, so sunlit to her was the normal hour: she devoted herself to her painting and her piano, the pursuits she adored, and had no bond-slave duties to anybody. Happy Miss Howard, gifted and accomplished and free! And how handsome she was: what a charm and vivacity! Though Florence had never experienced any sort of tenderness for a man, she sometimes thought of Miss Howard with a sort of shy, sentimental yearning.
There had been moments, rare and swiftly vanishing, when Florence had seen freedom gleaming on the far horizon, for in the sad hydropathic round, her father sometimes made friends with suitable and sympathetic females, especially those who had sitting-rooms and maids and motors, and once or twice it had really looked as if something was coming of it. He was remarkably handsome with his fine aquiline face, his thick grey hair and tall slim figure, and she was sure that middle-aged spinsters and widows had given him and received from him very promising attention. She knew well the symptoms on his side, for when such friendship was ripening he adopted an attitude of wistful and tender affection towards herself; he would pat her hand (when the lady was by) and ask her what she had been doing, and thank her for being so devoted to her poor old Papa. But nothing had ever come of it, the lady who seemed within an ace of becoming her poor old Mamma, had got some glimpse, Florence supposed, of his unique selfishness, and had shaken off the glamour.
She was ready for bed now, and still under the inspiration of the revolt which Mrs. Holders had made against the authority and omniscience of Colonel Chase, she asked herself what would happen if she refused to be eternally dragged about from Spa to Spa. Naturally she could not throw off so chronic a yoke with
one comprehensive gesture of defiance; she would have to begin gently and say, for instance, tomorrow morning, that she was going out for a walk instead of coming down to the baths with him in the bus and, after doing various chemical errands for him, sitting in the waiting-room which faintly smelt of the awful effluvium of the waters, till he was ready to drive up again. Perhaps, if she could summon up nerve, she might ask Miss Howard if she might help her to carry her satchel and stool to the scene of her sketch. As she quenched her light, she heard through the door which communicated with her father’s room, a sound so regular and sonorous that, if he had not been sure he was going to lie awake for hours, she would certainly have thought he was fast asleep.
CHAPTER III
The warmth and clemency of October which till now had been so pleasant, and had permitted Miss Howard to make so many notable sketches of noon and evening and night without the risk of catching a chill, completely collapsed during the dark hours, and piercing blasts from the north-east with volleys of half-frozen rain rattled on the windows of Wentworth. Colonel Chase, who often attributed much of his magnificent robustness to the fact that he always slept with his window wide open, top and bottom, had a most alarming dream that Mrs. Holders, with whom he was playing bridge in a restaurant car on a train which was oscillating very much, laid an odd-looking card resembling the ace of hearts, yet somehow different from it, on the table and said, “That card gives me the rubber doubled and redoubled.” As she spoke the oscillation increased and the card began to give out sharp reports, and he woke to find his blind blowing out horizontally into the room and cracking like a whip, while the solid walls of Wentworth trembled in the gale. He jumped out of bed, and at the risk of undermining his health by closing the window, shut and bolted it. Mr. Kemp was more fortunate, for knowing that the night air was poison to him, he always slept with his window closed, shuttered and curtained. But even so the driven sleet awoke him, and observing by his luminous clock that it was a quarter past two, took a cup of hot milk and a rusk. Warmed and comforted he turned over in bed without a single twinge from his left hip, which was so surprising that he lay awake a long time and wondered whether it was Mind. Soot poured down Mrs. Holders’s chimney, but she could not help that and instantly went to sleep again.
The gale had not abated when the guests began to assemble for breakfast, sleet still rapped at the panes, and the house was bitterly cold, for who, wailed Mrs. Oxney, could have expected so sudden and diabolical a change of weather? As soon as she got down, she ordered wood fires to be lit in lounge and drawing-room and smoking-room, for coal must be husbanded as long as the strike continued, and sent the gardener to kindle the furnace of the central-heating. But the dining-room certainly was like an ice-house at breakfast: Miss Howard’s hand shook as she poured the milk over her porridge, Mr. Kemp sent Florence upstairs to get a rug for his knees, and Colonel Chase, in an appalling temper, put on a cap, which he pulled down over his ears, a long woolly muffler and a great coat. He did not really feel cold, but it was only right that Mrs. Oxney should be filled with remorse at not having foreseen the change, and having omitted to have the central-heating put on in anticipation of it. Seeing that she was looking at him, he turned up his coat collar and gave several painful coughs.
The only exception to these suffering breakfasters was Mrs. Bliss. She was limping very badly, and it took her a long time to sidle round the corner of her table, and, leaning heavily on it, to sit down, but throughout the whole of this apparently agonising process she had a bright smile and salutations right and left. She was wearing quite a thin blouse and no jacket, but when Mr. Kemp seeing that there was a reddish tinge on her nose, a bluish tinge round her mouth, and that her hands were deadly white, said that she would surely get double pneumonia, being so lightly clad on such a bitter morning, she protested she had never been so warm and comfortable.
“And what a beautiful day it is going to be!” she said, as the gusts rattled at the window. “Such a refreshing shower! The grey rain-clouds on the hills, driven along by the breeze looked so lovely as I was dressing.”
Her teeth chattered slightly as she spoke, but she fixed them in a piece of hot roll.
“But it’s a terrible gale,” said Mr. Kemp. “I am not sure that I shall go down to the baths at all. I do not know what it is wisest to do. Perhaps if I wore my fur coat, and had a hot water bottle ready for my return I might venture. See to that, please, Florence.”
“Ah, then I did hear the sound of wind during the night,” said Mrs. Bliss. “That was it! A beautiful rushing noise. But I slept so well I was hardly conscious of it, and awoke so happy and glowing and fresh.”
“Either the woman’s mad or she’s got Esquimaux blood,” muttered Colonel Chase, as he listened to these remarkable views. He put his hand on the stack of so-called hot water pipes close to his chair and withdrew it hurriedly.
“Stone-cold,” he observed to Miss Howard. “Disgraceful! Pipes as cold as that would keep any room cool in the height of summer.”
Mrs. Oxney who had been cheered by Mrs. Bliss’s impressions of the morning, overheard this, as she was indeed meant to do, and felt miserable again. She got up, her appetite completely ruined by these scathing observations, and went over to the Colonel’s table, with a wretched attempt at cheerfulness.
“Oh, but the pipes will soon be hot, Colonel,” she said. “My sister’s gone out to see about the furnace herself, and I promise you they shan’t spare the coke. That sudden change took us all by surprise. But I’ve had fires lit everywhere, and we shall soon all be cosy again. . . . Good morning Mrs. Bliss; and you slept well I heard you say?”
Mrs. Bliss beamed on her.
“Beautifully! So comfortable! And so enjoying my breakfast. Delicious! And the rain is clearing. I shall have such a refreshing walk down to the baths, and up again.”
Mr. Kemp was thrilled at this astounding programme. Was she sane, he wondered, or was it Mind? Or was she (in another sense) a mental case? Here, anyhow, was this smiling lady, who, in spite of blue lips, said she felt warm in this refrigerating dining-room, and who, making slow sad work about traversing the smooth level of the floor, intended to walk down and up the steep hill between Wentworth and the pickling establishment. It was a good half-mile each way, and he would have considered himself hale and hearty again, if he had been able to accomplish so arduous a feat. He had visions of Mrs. Bliss falling in front of the wheels of a motor as she crossed the road, or dying of exposure as she pursued her way with those minute and halting steps and frequent stoppages through this sleet-sown blizzard. That would have annoyed him, as he wanted to hear more about Mind and its method. He intervened with some agitation.
“Better not, far better not, Mrs. Bliss,” he said. “The baths which can be so remedial are very fatiguing; my doctor, and I’m sure yours, recommends the minimum of physical exertion, while the course is going on. I avoid all physical fatigue while I am here.”
She laughed merrily.
“Dear Mr. Kemp,” she said, “you still think that you are an invalid, whereas I know that I am in perfect health and harmony. Did you demonstrate last night, reminding yourself that all is Mind?”
Mr. Kemp remembered the singular fact of his having turned over without a twinge: all those twinges which he suffered as he dressed had expunged it. He had finished his breakfast, and nodded to Florence to indicate that she might go away, for he wanted to pursue last night’s subject, and though he would have welcomed any conviction that he was well, he did not want Florence to get hold of that idea first, or his thermos flask might be left permanently empty, and his smaller tin for rusks unreplenished. But Florence, with the fumes of last night’s revolutionary debauch still lingering in her brain, paid no attention to this familiar signal.
“If you’ve finished your breakfast, Florence,” he said, “you will kindly go upstairs and bring down my hat and coat, fur coat I think, so that I shall be ready to start. Goloshes of course. And a hot water bottle when I get back
.”
Florence waved a minute red flag. This was beginning gently.
“Presently, Papa,” she said, “there is plenty of time.”
Mr. Kemp was naturally very much shocked at this answer, for never before, to the best of his knowledge, had Florence shown such mutinous independence, and his staring at her, with deep disfavour, which usually had so subduing an effect proved on this occasion to have none. Instead of hurrying away she turned to Mrs. Bliss.
“Do go on telling my father about illness being a delusion,” she said. “It would be lovely if you could convince him of it.”
Mrs. Bliss was delighted to do so; nothing could possibly be easier than to convince anybody of a self-evident proposition, but owing to the apparently piercing cold of the dining-room, they adjourned to the lounge. The two victims of this tiresome delusion concerning rheumatic joints were for the moment so completely taken in by it, that they took a long while to hobble along the slippery parquet, and Florence certainly saved Mrs. Bliss from the delusion of falling down. When they got there, they found that this gale was causing the chimney to behave as if it was upside-down, and clouds of pungent wood-smoke came pouring out of it. Mr. Kemp then suffered from the further delusion that wood-smoke was very trying to the eyes, and sat with his handkerchief over them, though Mrs. Bliss, with the tears pouring down her cheeks asserted that she felt no inconvenience whatever from it. Her immunity served as an excellent text for her homily, and while Florence and her father as if overcome with emotion, held their pocket-handkerchiefs before their eyes, she told them how wood-smoke could not possibly have any effect on those who realised that all was harmony in Omnipotent Mind.
As if to endorse her words, the chimney began to draw better, and having surreptitiously wiped away her tears, she told them to put down their handkerchiefs and calmly but firmly deny the delusion of that stinging sensation. Sure enough they found they had been the victims of Error.