by E. F. Benson
It was not likely that Cupid’s elegant flutterings which were so manifest to Mrs. Oxney should have escaped the notice of Miss Howard or obstinate Flo, and to Miss Howard they were both gratifying and embarrassing. Gratifying they could not fail to be (for there was no doubt that Colonel Chase was after her) whether she intended to be caught or not. Obstinate Flo and she made a great joke of the strenuous attentions of her swain, as they sat over their usual midnight cocoa, in the bedroom of one or the other, after Mr. Kemp had summarily been made comfortable with his rusks and milk and hot-water bottle and lemonade, and Flo who had a rough rude gift of mimicry would affix a cotton-wool moustache to her upper lip and reproduce the imaginary wooings of the suitor, and his respectful kiss when accepted and Alice would giggle and slap her and say she was a silly girl, and ask her how she herself could, but in her heart of hearts she was not absolutely sure that she couldn’t. Herein lay the embarrassment, for Flo took it for granted that their friendship satisfied all Alice’s emotional needs for ever, and it was already settled that after Mr. Kemp’s departure they were going off together to spend a fortnight alone at the flat in Kensington Square. Alice rightly interpreted this sojourn as being, in Flo’s mind, a sort of honeymoon, a symbol of eternal and exclusive friendship, but now, with Colonel Chase so obviously in earnest, she was not sure whether she looked forward to the adventure with quite the rapture of her partner. Flo was a sweet thing, and the Colonel could not possibly be called a sweet thing, and it rather surprised Alice to find that she, who had never seriously felt the need of a man, could be weighing in her mind, as she certainly was doing, the comparative merits of the permanent companionship of a friend and of a husband. Though she found it difficult to imagine herself saying ‘yes’ to the offer that she felt sure Colonel Chase was ready to make her, whenever obstinate Flo gave him a chance, she found it nearly as difficult to imagine herself saying ‘no’.
She put all this to herself as she sat to-night waiting for Florence to come in for cocoa and a chat over her fire. Florence was late, as she thought would most probably be the case, for Mr. Kemp had engaged a sympathetic nurse, and was to leave next morning by the luncheon-car train for Bournemouth: it was therefore certain that a particular suitcase would have to be packed overnight, which must contain all that he could possibly require (with an imaginative margin) on the arduous journey . . . Alice really could not come to any decision, for Florence looked down a much longer perspective than that of this little honeymoon in London, and anticipated that, at the end of it, they would settle to live together in devoted spinsterhood, as so many women did to whom either the desire or the opportunity for matrimony had not come. It was quite an agreeable prospect, and one which, a few weeks ago Alice would have welcomed. But now that the other opportunity was certainly about to offer itself, she saw that though matrimony might not be more permanent, it afforded a certain dignity and completeness which the other lacked. Then too, Colonel Chase seemed really to care for her, he bought her pictures, he listened with a rapt face to her improvisations, and more than once he had preferred to spend the evening talking to her, and trying to get rid of obstinate Flo rather than play bridge. He had even asked her to accompany him on one of his bicycle rides, and what more solid token of esteem could he give? In his judgment they would be very comfortable together, and she could not but respect the opinion of a man who so clearly was an adept in the art of comfort.
There was another embarrassment entirely private to herself: neither of her suitors had any notion of it and as this topic came into Alice’s mind, she drew back a little from the fire feeling a sudden flush of heat invade her. This embarrassment was concerned with the ancestral home at Tunbridge Wells. Of late Colonel Chase, keenly interested in all that pertained to her, had often mentioned her little place, asking her gratifying questions about it, and making gratifying assumptions which were very difficult to contradict. Beyond any doubt the answers she had given to his questions and her own allusions to it, now and previously, had made it dreadfully clear to Alice that the little place as it really was, differed considerably from the little place as he imagined it to be. It was quite true that it was mildly ancestral, since her grandfather, a most respectable auctioneer, had built it (and anyone is at liberty to reckon a grandfather among his ancestors) but it was not quite what Colonel Chase and Mrs. Oxney and anybody who had heard her sigh over the cruel necessity of letting her old home, pictured it. It was quite true also that it had a rose-garden — for who, when all was said and done could deny that a bed of roses was a rose-garden? — and that there were some fine trees just outside the garden, for there were some remarkable old oaks on the common, of which so near a view was visible, and that the dining-room where the family portraits hung, looked out on to the lawn. The family portraits did hang there: there was one of her grandfather, and another of her mother, and, though the artists were not known to fame, these were portraits, for in the English language that word was invariably used for pictures of people. Besides she had distinctly said that there were no Sir Joshua Reynolds’ among them . . .
Similarly the little square of plantains, daisies, wormcasts and grass in front of the dining-room, separating ‘The Croft’ from the Station Road, could not be more accurately described than by calling it the lawn. Alice had not measured it and so could not give the actual dimensions even if anyone had asked for them. In the same way it was perfectly true that, Mr. Gradge (such was his amazing name) who had taken ‘The Croft’ on a year’s lease at a most moderate quarterly rent, and lived there with his sister were ‘my tenants’. Alice had every right to call them her tenants: while the gardener (three mornings a week) and the boy who ‘did’ the knives and coals and boots, and spent the rest of his time in the potato-patch could not, without long and tedious explanations have been alluded to otherwise than as ‘my gardeners’. Even the two cucumber frames were in a manner of speaking, a couple of glass houses. All these allusions, casually dropped here and there were strictly founded on fact; indeed they were facts, but it was also a fact, though unknown to Colonel Chase and Mrs. Oxney and all those who had reverentially heard Miss Howard allude to her sober little ancestral splendours, that ‘The Croft’ was not a Queen Anne house, but a semi-detached villa standing in the Station Road.
It was all rather awkward, and for the life of her, Miss Howard could not imagine how she had got into such a position. She had told no lies, she had hardly been guilty of any infamous exaggeration (except perhaps in the matter of the two cucumber frames), and yet she knew that all Wentworth believed her to have a beautiful little country seat near Tunbridge Wells, the glories of which she had probably dimmed rather than polished. It was like a Saga or the poems of Homer, which by untraceable processes had grown from small oral beginnings into epics. No one could analyse the psychology of such a growth any more than they could analyse the physiological growth of the grain of mustard seed into a bird-haunted tree: it grew and that was all that could be said about it. In the same way she had alluded quite casually and infrequently to the lawn and the fine timber and the rose-garden and her tenants and her gardeners, and she was credited now with a mansion and a park and a pleasaunce and a host of old family retainers. She could no doubt have instantly nipped this sumptuous growth in the bud by stating the plain fact that ‘The Croft’ was a semi-detached villa, but instead of that she had enjoyed seeing it sprout, and had watered it and tilled the ground. Now, at the thought of Colonel Chase’s wooing, the little place had become almost like an angel with a fiery sword preventing her entering that possible Paradise. For if she consented to marry him, it would not be unreasonable in her husband to want to know more of the little place: he might, still not unreasonably, suggest living there on their combined resources, when the lease of ‘my tenants’, which was only a yearly one, came to an end. Sooner or later, and probably very soon, the truth about the little place must come out, and though she had never told any real lies about it, the aggregate of information amounted to a falsehood t
hat was appalling to contemplate. Obstinate Flo, no doubt, had gleaned the same impression as the Colonel but that was a situation easier to deal with. If the worst came to the worst, and exposure was certain, she could contemplate without intolerable dismay actually telling her that she had got a perfectly wrong idea about ‘The Croft’ and had oddly exaggerated to herself its splendours, just as she (dear thing!) attributed all sorts of talents and graces to the character of her poor friend. “I think I could tell Flo that,” said Miss Howard to herself, “but I feel almost sure that I couldn’t tell Colonel Chase.”
These disagreeable reflections were interrupted by the arrival of Florence in a blue dressing-gown and slippers.
“Darling, what ages I have been,” she said, “and I thought that I would get ready for bed first, so that when I left you I could just hop there, and lie thinking of you and our talk without the interruption of undressing. Dear me! Have you been impatient because I was so long? Do say you have: do tell me that you were furious with me for not coming sooner. But I couldn’t help it: Papa has been too tiresome for anything.”
“How naughty you are about your father,” said Alice. “But tell me about him: I want to be naughty too.”
Florence gave her a loud kiss, and assumed her father’s voice.
“Mind you put in a pair of old gloves at the top of the suitcase, Florence,” she said, “for I shall have to go from my carriage to the luncheon car, and anything I touch on the way will be grimy. And my cachets: the ones I take in water after a meal. You had better pack the bottle of them in my portmanteau and give me a couple of them, done up in a screw of paper, which I can put in my waistcoat pocket. And remember to give me a telegraph form addressed to yourself, for in the bustle of departure you may have forgotten something, so it would be well to have a telegraph form handy. I regret that Nurse Babbit only joins me at the station: it would have been wiser if she had slept at Wentworth to-night. My thermos flask with some hot coffee in it must be seen to in the morning, and do not forget to give me some small change for tips . . . Darling, what a duck he is, and how glad I am that he’s going to Bournemouth tomorrow. Now for a happy talk. How sweet of you to have made some cocoa for me! And how weird Colonel Chase-Alice — is not that a good name for him? — was this evening. He can’t see that you and I only want to be left to ourselves. You were delicious with him when you said you knew he wanted to go and play bridge: O. F. knew that you meant that you wanted him to. What do you bet he doesn’t buy another picture of your’s tomorrow? He’s crazy about you, and who wouldn’t be.”
Alice would have let all the Colonels in the British Army go crazy about her and remain unrequited for ever, if she could only have felt towards Florence as Florence felt towards her, for she had the perception to see that the worshipper has a far more exciting time than the image that he worships. She felt no atom of condescension or graciousness towards her worshipper but rather envy at her potentiality for rapture. How amazingly Florence had expanded in the warmth of her own emotion! A fortnight ago, in spite of her sturdy and manly appearance, she had owned a squashed and middle-aged soul; now though she was still essentially the same, all that had been repressed and nipped in her had opened like a flower. Self-expression had vivified her . . .
“I’ll bet you any picture in the Green Salon that isn’t sold,” said Alice, “that Colonel Chase-Alice (how wicked of us!) doesn’t buy another. He hasn’t got much longer: we close the day after tomorrow.”
“Oh, how I love you saying ‘we close’,” said Florence. “But I shan’t love the closing: no more sitting surrounded by your pictures and hoping that no visitors will come in and interrupt.”
Alice did not feel that she had ever quite shared this hope, for after all she had not taken the Green Salon only for the purpose of uninterrupted conversation with Florence.
“Dear little Green Salon!” she said. “I have become so much attached to it. Then what a day’s work there will be: we shall have to pack up all the pictures that have been sold and send them to the purchasers.”
“Miles of string, reams of corrugated paper like Colonel Chase’s forehead, oceans of ink, books of labels,” said Florence appreciatively. “How I shall enjoy it, simply because we shall be doing it together. Everything that we do together is so lovely, just for that reason. . . . And then we go off alone with no one to bother us for a month in London.”
“I thought you said a fortnight,” said Alice.
“I shall say a year if you’re so tiresome,” observed Florence, who had said a week originally and then had lengthened it into a fortnight, and now for the first time mentioned a month. “And then I must go to Bournemouth for Christmas. Papa insists on that, for he says that he and I have always spent Christmas together, though for that matter we have always spent every other day together. Christmas means as little to Papa as I do: all there is to it, is that he doesn’t feel even as well as usual on Boxing Day, because he cannot resist two helpings of rich plum-pudding. But I know that by that time Nurse Babbit will be suiting him so well, that afterwards I shall be free. So you must come back to me in London again, and we will settle what we do next.”
Florence’s complete confidence that Colonel Chase hadn’t a chance still seemed rather premature to Alice, and this complete ignoring of this possibility made his prospects appear brighter. Certainly Alice had not determined she would not marry him. . . . And then she thought of the revelation which must be made to him about the ancestral home, and his prospects grew dark again.
“Yes, we’ve got to talk about that,” she said rather vaguely.
“Oh, and I’ve got such a delicious plan for us to do one day when we’re in London next week,” said Florence. “I know you’ll love it. I will give you one hint, and then you shall guess. It will mean a day in the country at a place you adore.”
A rather sickening sense came over Alice that she could make a pretty good guess, but she hoped she was wrong.
“Darling, how can I guess just from that?” she said. “Is it Epping Forest where I did that picture of the trees reflected in the lake, which you liked?”
“No, but there are trees,” said Florence, “and pictures too, and roses, only I suppose they won’t be out now. I’ll give you another hint: Alice’s Wonderland. There! Now you can guess.”
This made Florence’s plan absolutely certain, and so Alice said she hadn’t the slightest idea what it was, while she cudgelled her brains to think of any decent excuse for not going with obstinate Flo to the ancestral home.
“Darling, aren’t you a little slow?” asked Florence. “Where else could it be but ‘The Croft’? How I long to see the Park (“Has it come to that?” thought Alice) and the lovely rose-garden and the dining-room with the portraits, and your old nursery from which you used to see the sunsets, and learn to love them.”
Though Alice had felt that she could perhaps tell Florence the truth about the ancestral home, whereas she could not tell Colonel Chase, the idea of going there with her was a nightmare.
“Oh, that would be fun,” she said wretchedly. “But the house is occupied you see; my tenants are there, and I don’t even know them. All arrangements between them and me were made by my — my agents.”
“Oh, but they will surely love you to come and look round,” said Florence. “Or — oh — what a selfish little beast I am: would it be painful to you to see your lovely home in the hands of strangers? I never thought of that.”
Alice was delighted that she had thought of it now, for it made an admirable excuse. She had only to admit to Florence this tearing of heart-strings for her to be overwhelmed with compunction at having suggested so cruel an ordeal.
“I’m quite silly about ‘The Croft’,” she said. “I know how stupid it is of me, but it would hurt just a teeny little bit. But what does that matter. Of course we’ll go.”
Florence slid to the ground by her side, and clasped her knees.
“What a pig I am not to have thought of that,” she said. “I
’ve got no sensitiveness, no perception: oh, what a lot you’ve got to teach me! Of course we won’t go! But someday I must go alone: you won’t mind that, will you darling? I must see your kinderscenen — that lovely Reverie by Schumann (or was it Schubert?) you played me — I must see your scenes of childhood — I love everything that tells me more about you.”
The prospect opened up by these pretty sentiments was hideous. If obstinate Flo intended to show a touch of her quality in this passion for seeing ‘The Croft’, what would happen to all those pretty sentiments when some taxi-driver at Tunbridge Wells whom she directed to take her to ‘The Croft,’ set her down after a career of about fifty yards at the third house on the left in Station Road? That was too ghastly to contemplate: it would be better, thought Alice, if this fell determination persisted, to tell her straight out that ‘The Croft’ was not what it seemed, and would not repay a sentimental journey. . . . She thought it all over after Florence had said an affectionate good night some half-dozen times, and had come back after each to tell her something she had forgotten about, and resolved to make this odious disclosure when it could no longer be avoided. She had an uneasy dream in which she and Florence and Colonel Chase all went together hand in hand to stay at ‘The Croft’, and found it to be a cottage in a brickfield with only one bedroom. She woke in agonies of embarrassment.