Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  The drawing-room was empty now, but for these two. Mrs. Bliss had been the last to go, smiling herself away, and Florence’s virginal heart rose into her throat, as she took the first step, and moved across to an empty chair by Miss Howard, at the thought that a place next and close to her might possibly become hers by right.

  “Oh, Miss Howard,” she said, “I must tell you how I love your pictures. And I want you to do me a great favour. I want you to let me come down with you to-morrow, and to advise me one to buy. I did get one, such a precious one, this morning, but I must have another, and I should like to have the one you recommend. Is it very bold and forward of me to ask for your advice?”

  Miss Howard was by no means surfeited with success: she was quite capable of assimilating more.

  “Of course you shall have my advice,” she said, “and it’s sweet of you to want any of my little daubs.”

  “Little daubs!” said Florence in a sudden ecstasy of irony. “Aren’t they horrid little daubs? How I envy your gift, it must be too lovely to sit down and make beautiful things like you!”

  Miss Howard had already observed a little diffident signalling going on from Florence, but this vigorous waving of the flag rather astonished her, for she had looked on Florence as too deeply consecrated to the service of an entirely selfish father to have any vivid emotional interests of her own. But as her ‘beautiful things’ witnessed, sentimentality was a magnet to her, and now she jumped to it like iron filings.

  “Oh, but how dear of you to think of me like that,” she said. “And in a way you’re right. It is lovely, anyhow, to want to make beautiful things.”

  The firelight shining encouragingly as the dusk deepened outside made admirable conditions for the growth of intimacy. Florence was naturally reserved, but like most reserved women, when once the cork came out, it made an explosive exit, and a stream of bottled-up effervescence followed.

  “And it’s not your painting only,” she said, “or your music which make you so wonderful, but you, yourself, and your self-reliance and independence. Oh, but I should envy all your gifts if they weren’t yours. How I’ve watched and admired you all this last fortnight since we came here! And this evening I simply could not help myself: I had to tell you. You may laugh at me if you like, but please don’t.”

  Florence gave a gasp of astonishment at her own boldness, wondering whether she had only made the most dreadful fool of herself. If she had, well, there it was, and she would just have to search for the cork which had popped so magnificently, and bottle herself up again. But instead of so lamentable an end to this burst of self-expression, Miss Howard’s cork showed signs of popping too: it did not fly forth with the vigour of Florence’s explosion, but there was a little fizzing at its edges.

  “Indeed I shan’t laugh,” she said. “I think it’s delightful of you to like me, and to tell me so. As for self-reliance and independence, I’ve got no one to depend on, so I must rely on myself. You’ve got your father—”

  “Would you rely on him if he was yours?” asked Florence.

  “But you’re so devoted to him. I often have admired the way you give yourself to him.”

  “I don’t,” said Florence, with all the candour of devotion. “I don’t give, he takes. We thoroughly dislike each other—”

  “My dear,” began Miss Howard.

  “But it’s true and it’s such a relief to be able to tell anybody that. I don’t think anyone was ever so lonely as I am! I long to get away from him: he surrounds me, he cuts me off. He wouldn’t miss me: anyone who would read to him, and fill his thermos flask and tuck in his rug would do just as well. I have thought sometimes of trying to get a nurse for him, and having a life of my own. It’s you with your lovely independence that put it into my head. I could do something of my own then. It isn’t as if he liked me: that would be different. In ten days now I suppose we shall go to Bournemouth, and stop there till we go to Buxton about Easter.”

  “But he may get better, and then you would settle down. Didn’t you say you had a flat in Kensington Square?”

  “Yes: but it has been shut up all these years. Besides, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he got better. And all the time we’re at Bournemouth I shall be wishing I was back here.”

  Something in this touched Miss Howard with a sense of need. Her cork began to fizz a little more.

  “So shall I,” she said.

  “No! But how perfectly wonderful!” said Florence. “Will you really? And will you say ‘Florence’?”

  “Yes, if you’ll say Alice.”

  “Oh, Alice!” said Florence.

  They kissed and then neither of them knew what to say next in a situation which was new to them both. In slight embarrassment Alice, still holding Florence’s hand, began out of habit to warble something.

  “Oh, sing something or play me something,” said Florence. “Sit down at the piano and make something beautiful. Improvise.”

  It was a relief to do something, and Alice went to the piano.

  “Shall I?” she said. “Just anything that comes into my head?”

  “Please, and may I sit where I can see you as well as hear you?”

  Alice made her light butterfly excursions up and down the keys and from the lounge outside Colonel Chase heard these familiar noises. His mind was now made up to begin his romantic wooing, and the sooner he took it in hand the better. He softly opened the door and stole in: there was Miss Howard with her eyes dreamily fixed on the ceiling, looking really quite attractive, and there was that tiresome Miss Kemp gazing at her as if she was some beautiful vision, and herself, so thought Colonel Chase, as if she was some large swooning frog. He sat himself where he could look at Miss Howard too, and put on the sort of face which concert-goers wear when they listen to slow movements by Beethoven, an expression of remorse and reverie. So there they all sat till the stream of inspiration ran dry, and ended in a minor chord. Miss Howard sighed, they all sighed.

  “Beautiful!” said Colonel Chase. “Very fine. Dear me! A great treat.”

  Miss Howard raised her eyes from the contemplation of the minor chord, and smiled at Florence, quite ignoring the Colonel.

  “Did you like it, dear?” she said.

  “Don’t stop!” said Florence.

  So Miss Howard went on again in another key, while her two lovers settled down to see each other out. In the middle of the next improvisation a maid came in to tell Florence that her father wanted her, but she did not move and only whispered ‘Hush: presently.’ Then the evening paper was brought in for Colonel Chase, and he let it lie unread, and gazed at various points of the ceiling, and strangled a yawn. At the end, which did not come off for a long time, for a perfect flood of half-forgotten fragments poured into Miss Howard’s mind, she closed the piano and got up with a gay laugh.

  “Florence, darling, you shan’t work me and bully me any more,” she said, and perched herself airily on the arm of Florence’s chair.

  “Too lovely, darling,” said Florence. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you indeed,” said Colonel Chase with an air of correcting Florence. “Exquisite. What a gift. Never shall I forget your accompaniment to my ghost story.”

  This was a pretty direct hint that he should be asked for his ghost story, but nobody expressed the slightest desire to hear it.

  “What a delicious frock you’ve got on,” said Florence, as if Colonel Chase was non-existent.

  “Do you like it, dear? So glad,” said Alice. “But gracious me, look at the time! I believe the dressing-bell must have gone, and we never heard it.”

  “Something better to listen to,” said Colonel Chase, very handsomely.

  “Dearest, we must fly then,” said Florence, and away they flew, arm in arm, leaving the baffled Colonel, alone with his evening paper. He searched his memory in vain for an occasion on which his compliments and attentions had met with so indifferent a reception.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The tonic of this declared de
votion proved itself to be a wonderful stimulant to Florence in her revolt against parental tyranny: it was as if she was taking a course of psychical strychnine, and every hour almost saw some fresh insubordination. She told her father that she had not been able to come to him when he had sent for her just now because Miss Howard was playing to her and that when she had finished, it was time to dress for dinner: and she paid him the briefest of bedside visits that night, leaving him to drink lemonade or eat rusks, or concentrate on the power of Mind, or go to sleep or lie awake just as he pleased, and off she went for a long talk till after midnight with Alice. She flowed into confidences, she babbled and expanded in new found freedom of speech after these sealed up and suppressed years: it was the richest joy to reveal to Alice all the little flutterings of her soul which hitherto had groped in dusk and silence.

  Next morning she did not wait to accompany Mr. Kemp in the bus down to the bath, but started off earlier to walk down with Alice to the Green Salon. There a very pleasing tussle took place for Alice, after selecting Dewy Eve for her, as the most creditable Howard that still remained unsold, absolutely refused to be paid for it. She would really be very much hurt if Florence (obstinate Flo!) would not accept it, and so with a squeezing of Alice’s hand obstinate Flo did accept it, and instantly bought Gloaming (which made a beautiful ‘pair’) on her own account. Alice said this was a very shabby trick, but Flo was firm, and so two more red stars were needed. A third was presently required, for Alice determined to give June’s Glory to Mrs. Bliss as a slight recognition of the services rendered by Mind. After lunch Florence gave the leap-frog boy the daily wage, and sent him off to amuse himself as he liked, while she enjoyed the office of custodian, sitting on his high stool with the nearly exhausted toilet-roll and the pill box of the few red remaining stars (slightly sticky) in order to be doing something for her new friend. There was not much to do, for visitors were few, but, as compensation, they had the Green Salon almost entirely to themselves.

  Mr. Kemp, all that day, naturally felt himself the victim of a series of atrocities, for he had to get in and out of the bus without Florence’s aid, in the afternoon he had to read to himself instead of being read to, and fall asleep alone, and personally to ring the bell before doing so, to ask a maid to bring him his second thickest rug. Then again the move to Bournemouth was to take place in only nine short days from now, and it was high time to begin looking up the journey, and settling whether it would be more comfortable to leave Bolton in the morning and lunch in the train, thus arriving at Bournemouth in time to have tea and rest before dinner, or leave Bolton directly after an early lunch and only get into Bournemouth at a quarter to eight at night. Then there was the further alternative of sending Florence on in the morning with the luggage, while he followed later. This would save him waiting about at draughty stations while she got luggage labelled and collected, and she would have time to unpack for him at Bournemouth before he arrived. True, he would be obliged to open and shut windows in the railway carriage for himself, and personally take a taxi for crossing London, but if he provided himself with plenty of small change, he believed he could manage it. These studies in comparative fatigue were very puzzling to pursue alone; it was scandalous of Florence not to be at hand, for she knew so well what sort of thing tired him most.

  As he turned over the pages of his Bradshaw, the small print of which, he was sadly afraid, would very likely give him a headache from eye-strain later on, he lit upon a series of stations printed in rather larger type: these were Bolton Spa, Reading, Basingstoke, Southampton, Bournemouth. He gazed at this revelation in astonishment, for there appeared to be trains from here to Bournemouth by these lines and junctions, which would convey him there without a single change. He had for several years now gone at the end of his Bolton-cure to Bournemouth, but Florence looked up the trains, and they had always travelled up to London and changed stations there. At the moment of this dazzling discovery she and Miss Howard came prattling into the lounge, having closed the Green Salon for the day.

  “Florence,” he said excitedly. “Please verify this for me at once. There seems to be a train which goes from here to Bournemouth without change, and all these years you have taken me up to London. Look: 11.35 a.m. from Bolton.”

  Florence held out a casual hand for the Bradshaw, and continued speaking to Alice.

  “Let’s have tea at once, dear,” she said, “and then we can have a stroll afterwards: you must have a little more walk, so good for you. What is it, Papa?”

  “I beg you will attend,” said he shrilly. “At the top of the page there.”

  Florence, not attending, dropped the Bradshaw and the page of the epoch-making discovery was lost.

  “How careless you are,” said Mr. Kemp. “Now we shall have to search for it all over again. And I don’t know where you’ve been this afternoon, not near me, anyhow. I’ve had to forage for myself whenever I wanted anything.”

  “You’ve foraged very successfully if you’ve really found such a wonderful train,” she said. “Whereabouts was it?”

  Mr. Kemp’s excitement was very excusable: even his ill-temper might be pardoned, for it was a long time since so important a railway discovery had been made.

  “Pick up the Bradshaw and give it me,” he said. “Very stupid of you. And I don’t know the page: it wasn’t on the ordinary Bolton page.”

  “Try the index,” said Florence, “if you want to look it up yourself. Won’t you bring it into the drawing-room? Tea is ready, and we’ll find it there.”

  “Certainly not,” said he. “I could not touch my tea, till I’ve found it again.”

  “Very well: bring it in when you’ve got it,” she said, “and I’ll see if it’s right.”

  She joined Miss Howard in the drawing-room, where others were assembling, while Mr. Kemp in the lounge fruitlessly searched the innumerable pages, and it was not till daylight began to grow dim and tea cold, that his tragic face appeared at the door.

  “And here’s Mr. Kemp at last,” said Mrs. Oxney pleasantly. “Why how late you are, Mr. Kemp, and whatever’s happened? You look so worried.”

  He explained the nature of the catastrophe.

  “Most disastrous,” he said. “I distinctly saw the train, and I’ve searched and searched but can’t find it again.”

  “Well, I’m no use,” said Mrs. Oxney. “Bradshaw’s a sealed book to me, and always has been. How anybody can make it out, I don’t know. Send away that tea, Mr. Kemp, and have a cup of fresh.”

  “I don’t really want any,” he said. “11.35 a.m. from Bolton. I saw it, and then my daughter dropped the Bradshaw.”

  “Things do fly out of the hand sometimes,” said Mrs. Oxney. “And what’s the Colonel been doing?”

  The Colonel had been walking, and the record on the pedometer (he glanced darkly at Mrs. Bliss who only smiled in return) was satisfactory. Florence and Miss Howard, seated in a remote window-seat took no notice of anybody, and presently they got up and moved to the door.

  “We’re going for a little stroll, Papa,” she said. “Miss Howard is taking me to the place where she painted Gloaming. Do you want anything done for you in the town?”

  “I beg you will not go out till you have found the train,” said he. “My eyes are getting very tired: I feel I shall have a headache soon. Go on looking for me, Florence; read every page carefully.”

  “I’ll find it when I come in,” said Florence. “Don’t fuss, Papa.”

  He could only gasp in sheer astonishment at the idea that he could be thought fussy.

  The two friends went down across the garden and the fields below it, to the site of Gloaming. It was gloaming already: they would see the spot just as it had looked when it inspired Alice, though she had painted it in the morning. There was a nail-paring of a moon in the West, and they duly curtsied to it and sometimes Alice sang staves of song, and sometimes they walked arm-in-arm and then exuberantly chasséed for a few steps. This dawn of emotional attraction, rendered and r
esponded to, excited and rejuvenated Florence the repressed and unconsidered: she suddenly found the drab of her dull and monotonous existence shot with colour: she expanded and blossomed with the warm sense of giving herself to someone who wanted her not for service, but for free comradeship. Her virginal heart seemed to sprout with fresh growth under these fruitful showers. She skipped and chasséed beneath the sickle moon, rather out of breath but enraptured.

  “It’s a new life, darling,” she panted, as, quite exhausted they dropped to a more sober pace, “and it has gone to my head: I’m tipsy with it. Obstinate, tipsy Flo! And I’ve got, oh, such a delicious plan in my head, but I shan’t tell you a single word about it for fear it shouldn’t come off.”

  “Oh, you must tell me, Flo,” said Alice. “I must share it with you. Please!”

  “Not if you said please a hundred times.”

  “Obstinate Flo!” said Alice, pretending to pout. “I don’t like you any more. You shall be Miss Kemp again. Good evening, Miss Kemp.”

  “Good evening, Miss Howard. So pleasant just to have met you before I go away to Bournemouth next week.”

  “The same to you. . . . But do tell me the plan. Please, please, please, please. . . . Oh, here’s the place where I painted the trumpery little sketch you were so obstinate about. Obstinate Flo: O. F.”

  “Which stands equally well for Old Fool,” said Florence.

  “Well, it’s not my fault if it does. The stream, do you see, and the woods beyond, and just the top of the steeple of St. Giles’s. It was just a month ago, at the time of the last new moon. Dear slim girlie of a moon, little did I think that when next you came round, I should be here again, but not alone!”

  Florence replied with a hug first.

  “But I think your sketch is far more beautiful than the original,” she said. “You’ve left out that ugly siding, with the roof of the station, and filled it with poetry instead!”

  Alice put her head a little on one side and half closed her eyes.