by E. F. Benson
This song has nothing to do with Heine’s hero, who can still be glad that he is alive. These are not sighs of hopeless passion, they are not young vows breathed to one who will not listen; this is only the sorrow of a very old man, who loved a little daughter, who in turn loved him, and it is all over; he is unhappy, but she has ceased to suffer; at that he is glad; and now he sits alone, and will sit alone till he has ceased to suffer too. Such things are very common.
It is a good thing, is it not, that he is very old; he will have less long to suffer. But it is strange to be glad that Death is probably not far off.
This old man wanted so little, yet he had scarcely enough; only enough for two to live on somewhat sparingly, and very frugally. Now he has enough; there will be no more doctor’s bills; no more nursing expenses. But it was very pitiful to hear him say “Good-bye, dear lamb, dear lamb,” after he had prayed with her for the last time.
This little story, I imagine, will touch very few, fewer, perhaps, than will feel the sadness of the death of this little girl’s dog. So many want a little more subtleness in sorrow than truth can always give them. The sorrow of a dumb thing is more bizarre, more out of the way; the sorrow of an old man is so common, and old men are less attractive than intelligent dogs. Thus many people, I expect, will pass this story over for precisely these reasons, which led me to write it.
CARRINGTON
THERE is a beauty in old faces, which the young for all their insolent abundance of loveliness cannot rival, which is the result of having accepted old age, and the circumstances attendant on it, of being able, mentally speaking, to sit down contentedly, instead of walking or trying to run, and of enjoying peace of mind without the effort of attaining it.
Mrs. Carrington was sitting in her housekeeper’s room at Langley, with her hands crossed before her on her lap, looking into the fire. She must always have been beautiful, but old age had added to her face the quality I have tried to describe above, and which always seems to me to be, in a way, the crowning grace of beauty. She had in her eyes that indwelling look which the old have when they are happiest, and she was very happy. She had seen two generations of Davenports grow up at her knee, and she had felt absolutely widowed when her latest, her Benjamin of babies had flown. Reggie had always been much more dependent on her than any of the others; he had been weak and sickly till he was ten, and after a year at school, which it was hoped would have put more grit into him, he had been ordered abroad by the doctors for two years, and he was due home again to-night. The carriage had started for the station an hour ago, and Carrington’s eyes had followed it till it was out of sight, and she had then sat down by the fire, too happily expectant to take her sewing up, or do anything more than sit and wait quietly for the fulfilment of her happiness.
Round her room was all that was dear to her; small presents which the children had made her from time to time, little records of her own even uneventful years. The old nursery tea-things were set out on the table, which though they had dwindled down to two teacups, one with a broken handle, and four plates, were more than sufficient for Carrington’s present purpose. “Eh, he’ll be cold and hungry when he comes in,” she had said to herself, “the tea will be over in the drawing-room; he shall have it up here with me.”
The silence which had been broken only by the lapping tongues of the flames as they licked the bars of the grate, began to be gradually overscored by the faint rumbling of carriage wheels. Carrington smiled to herself as if a pleasant thought had also overscored the vague, happy music of her mind, and set the kettle back on the hob. In a moment or two the contented song began again, and she poured the hissing water into the teapot. The wheels were more audible now, and the frosty ring of the horse’s hoofs could be heard like a triplet passage across ground bass. She left her room with a smile on her old lips, and went gently through the swing-door that led to the top of the stairs. Here for some reason, scarcely known even to herself, she paused. Hitherto she had always been the first to welcome him in his homecomings, waiting in the hall for the door to be opened, or opening it herself. But now for some cause she stopped at the head of the stairs. She heard the front door open, but she could not see it, as the banisters over which she was leaning were just above it: then a “Hullo Wilkins,” the rattle of a stick on the table, and the small thump of a hat on the floor, and a light curly head crossed the hall below. He had gone into the drawing-room; through the door, before it closed, there was borne to her the murmur of pleasant welcoming voices, and then all was silent again. A few minutes afterwards a footman came upstairs carrying a portmanteau, and she heard the subdued sound of a bell ringing distantly. The butler reappeared, and went into the drawing-room, passed out again, and again came across with a tea-tray in his hands, on which was a silver teapot, a few plates of bread and butter and cake, and one teacup.
Somehow she felt unreasonably disappointed, she had expected something very different. She had so often pictured to herself his return as she would wish it to be. A brief visit to the drawing-room — a demand for tea — an announcement that it had been already sent away — an eager proposal that he should have it upstairs with her — all this was so common in her thoughts that any violation of it seemed, quite illogically, a cruel privation.
Carrington went slowly back to her room, took the kettle off the hob, and placed it in the grate. There was already enough tea made for one. Her eyes had lost their quiet happy light, and she poured out a cup of tea with a rather uncertain hand. She had been at pains to get a couple of buns with pink sugar on the top from the stillroom, but she did not eat those: they had been consecrated, as it were, already, to some one else.
Instead of sitting by the fire, and feeding on her own thoughts, she took up a piece of plain sewing, and worked steadily at it. Her tea stood untasted.
Reggie Davenport was a particularly nice boy, with a special fondness for helpless things, like kittens and ugly half fledged birds, and old people. His emotions took the form of impulses, and he was entirely thoughtless, which on the whole is better at that age than being thoughtful, and possibly priggish.
He went into the drawing-room in the first instance, because it was entirely natural and laudable in him to wish to see his mother, and he stayed there because he was asked a great many questions, which he enjoyed answering. He talked about kangaroos and rattlesnakes, and how awfully sick he was on the Indian Ocean, and how beastly ugly all niggers were.
Meanwhile Carrington was sitting by her fire, feeling that her last chick was further from her perhaps than she had ever imagined him to be when he was in Australia, and that her eyes were too dim even to do her plain sewing.
She waited and waited, but there was no sign. Once she went to the top of the stairs and listened. Laughter and pleasant voices came to her in muffled tones from behind the closed door. She crept back to her room: the fire was nearly out, and it was chilly and uncomfortable. She went to the window and drew down the blind which she had raised two hours before, in order to watch the lamps of the carriage, as it went to the station to bring him home. Not caring to light the fire again, she wrapped a shawl round her, and took up her sewing. She was never idle, except when she was very happy.
After a time the dressing-bell rang, surely he would come now if only for a minute. But the clock went ticking inexorably on, twenty minutes to eight, a quarter to, ten minutes to. Then there came a burst of laughter, in which a half treble and entirely boyish voice predominated. Some one came rushing upstairs three steps at a time, and the door at the top of the staircase banged.
Carrington’s room opened into a small cross passage, intersected by the main passage from the head of the stairs. When she heard the door bang, she rose gently from her chair and stood by her half-opened door. The steps came quickly along the main passage, and across the square of intersection passed a slim young figure. He neither stopped nor turned his head, but went quickly on to his room, and she heard the door shut behind him. Her two wrinkled old hands made a sud
den movement towards each other, and then fell limply again to her side. Never had mistress waited for her lover more faithfully than she, and this was all: a light elastic step, and an unturned head.
Her disappointment was that of dumb unreasoning animals, or of children, or of the old. They are the same in kind, for animals and children cannot reason, and the old do not. Disappointment comes, and it is there. She did not consider that his first thought was naturally for his mother and father, that it was an axiom that he should stay talking to them, until he would certainly be late for dinner, unless he ran upstairs three steps at a time, and banged the door of his room behind him. And this unreasoning suffering is more pathetic than any other: it lives only in the present bitter moment. Yet what was it after all? Simply that a boy of thirteen did not go to see his old nurse during the first hour that he was in the house.
But her desire would not be denied. She went softly up to his door and tapped. From within there came a sound exactly as if someone was kicking off a pair of boots. She tapped again.
“Hullo, who’s that?”
“Eh? its only me,” said Carrington, turning the handle.
“Oh, you can’t come in,” in hurried tones. “I’m half undressed. Wait a minute.”
A hand was cautiously thrust round the door, innocent of any sign of shirt cuff about the wrist.
Carrington’s two wrinkled old hands closed upon the soft smooth fingers, and she did not trust herself to speak.
“How are you, Carry?” asked a cheerful voice, “I nearly came up to have tea with you, only Ma wanted me to stop. I must go on dressing now, or I shall be late. I shall come up to see you when I go to bed.”
Carrington went back to her room, with her hunger only partly filled. It was different to what she had expected somehow. But she had heard him kick off his boots, she had touched his hand, and nothing could deprive her of that Reggie ate a remarkably good dinner, and felt hugely sleepy afterwards. He went up to his room to get some “rum things,” as he called them, which he had bought at various places, and his bed looked so extremely inviting that he put his candle down on his dressing table, and lay down, intending to go back to the drawing-room in a minute or two. A quarter of an hour after this, Carrington came upstairs beaming with anticipation. She trotted backwards and forwards from the housemaid’s cupboard to her fire-place and laid the fire again. In a few minutes the cheerfullest of blazes was crackling on the hearth. She had not thought it worth while to light her fire when it went out before, but this was altogether a different matter. She swept the old ashes neatly under the grate, drew two chairs up close, and went to wash her hands. The most precious of her possessions lay on the table; this was a cedar box, with a lid that frequently defied both persuasion and force. It is almost needless to say that this was a present that Reggie had made her during a fitful fever of carpentering. But a case of jewels would have pleased her less.
Carrington’s clock remarked that it was ten; then a quarter past; then eleven. The fire was kindly still, though not so uproariously cheerful.
Meantime Reggie had awoke, and had found the most alarming quantity of suppressed sleep still in his system, had thrown off his clothes, and tumbled into bed, without giving one thought to anything in the world, except the immediate and imperative necessity of going to sleep again.
As eleven struck, Carrington got up and went to his room.
He was lying on his back in dreamless sleep. One arm was thrown carelessly outside on the counterpane, and his breath came evenly between parted lips. His candle stood still lighted on the dressing table, and his clothes were in a mixed untidy heap on the floor. Carrington stood by the bed for a moment, half afraid of his waking, half longing he should wake, and then quietly took up his candle and left the room.
JACK AND POLL
THE worst of possessing a parrot is that its so-called owner is always conscious of his own glaring inferiority in point of ability and knowledge, though ability is perhaps too superficial a word to apply to the deep malignant wisdom implanted in its breast. To begin with, parrots live on an average, if they have been properly acclimatised, about a hundred years. During the whole of this period they get wiser and wiser up to the end. Eventually a parrot dies of stomachic disorders which leave its clearness of head quite untouched. That is a severe handicap for any man to labour under. The other day only, though I am becoming more accustomed to parrots than I ever thought I should be, the full irony of the situation burst upon me. Personally, I have not nearly reached middle age, my parrot I believe to be about sixty-five, and it has probably thirty more years to live. Thirty years ago I was not nearly born, yet even then, this venerable fowl was considerably older than I am now, and infinitely wiser than I ever shall be. Yet by some left-handed arrangement of the order of things, I am legally the owner and master of it. I fully feel the absurdity of my position, but there is no cure. It is no good presenting the bird to Mr. Gladstone, for in the infinity of the wisdom of a parrot, the difference between the ability of the Prime Minister and me, which to judge by human standards is oppressively great, becomes as nothing. Mathematicians tell us that a million is not appreciably nearer infinity than a unit. This incredible truth illustrates, in a way, what I am trying to point out.
More than this, a parrot is born into this world with an instinctive knowledge of its own utter aloofness and its dazzling pre-eminence. Not that a parrot ever is dazzled, it is only we who are dazzled when we think of it. A parrot is never surprised, it is never amused, it is never humble, and it is never kind. Parrots will submit, it is true, to be handled by a certain number of human beings without causing a hooked beak to meet in their fingers, but it is not kindness that prompts this concession; it is only a far-reaching contempt bred of an unwilling familiarity.
But why, it will be asked, do I keep a parrot, if I feel thus towards it? For several reasons. In the first place, it is good to have a high and impossible standard to live by; a parrot’s presence is therefore stimulating and healthy. Again, though I cannot amuse my parrot, my parrot can, in lighter moments, amuse me. It does not amuse me, because it thinks I like to be amused, on the contrary, if I make it clear that I want to be amused, it will freeze me with a cold unblinking eye, until I creep away ashamed. When it amuses me, it does so of its own essential sense of humour, it makes jokes because it is witty, in obedience to the imperious necessities of its own unfathomable mind. Like the Master of Ballantrae, I sometimes wish it was kinder, but if it was kind, it would not be a parrot. Again it may at any moment say things, which, though they were better unsaid, I would sooner it said to me, than to other people, because I understand it, and in a way I love it— “Aimer c’est tout comprendre.”
Is it then quite inaccessible to our little human needs and longings; will it never love anybody? At heart, never. But in spite of the nirvanic remoteness of its nature, it is not quite untroubled by human emotions. It is intolerably and inordinately greedy, and it pleases me to compel it to come down from its high standard under the influence of this emotion. It will never care for me, I know, but I can make it pretend to, if I trifle with the sugar basin. That is something. As long as it retains the slightest desire for sugar, I can make it give me Judas kisses, I can make it bark like a dog, and I can make it call itself “Pretty Polly,” which is nonsense, for it knows that it is not pretty as well as I do, and has no pleasing illusions whatever on that score. In a word, for the time being, I am its master, it knows it, and it hates it; and it knows I am not really its master, and it knows I know it knows it. We quite understand each other.
Several times a day then, I am in the temporary position of being its master, on those occasions when its abilities are temporarily eclipsed by its appetites. But I feel all the time that it is not a true position; though I can force it to my level, and even below it, through its material needs, it never really regards me for a moment as its equal. I have a mysterious dominion over sugar, and for a share in that, it is willing to talk to me and to bark fo
r me, but it no more admits my superiority than I admit the superiority of my banker to myself. But he has in his keeping certain or uncertain sums of money which I have to ask him for, and in the same way the parrot has to ask me for lumps of sugar; that he regards the sugar as really his, is certain from his behaviour, when he is left alone with it.
I only once felt really wiser than this bird. That was on an occasion when it got into the garden, and climbed laboriously by beak and claws, for its wings are cut, up a high tree. It enjoyed it thoroughly for a time, and was good enough to tell me so, in a way that is peculiarly its own. It calculated the exact height at which I could not reach it, standing on a chair, having previously ascertained that the step-ladder had gone to be repaired, and sat on a small bough there, and talked to me. First of all, it assumed a pious air, which sat remarkably badly on it, and said, “Let us pray.” Then it barked at me, and said “Poor Puss”; it was rather excited, and I think it was trying to be sarcastic by talking nonsense to me, as if to a child. Then it whistled several tunes, and asked itself whether it wished to go to bed. Then it pretended that elm bark was good to eat, though it must have known it was not, and spread its clipped wings as if it intended to fly away. This was in order to frighten me, for it laughed in a hoarse manner afterwards. I suppose it thought it was funny.
Of course I couldn’t stand this, so I retired to a tree where its coarse gibes could not reach me, and read a book. The bird thereupon came down a little lower, and staggered along to the very end of a small branch, where it looked at me scornfully through the leaves. Then it made a real fool of itself. It began nibbling at the branch between the tree and it, without having the slightest idea that when it had bitten it through, it would itself fall heavily to the ground. I warned it solemnly what would happen, for I was afraid it would hurt itself if it fell. Of course it thought it knew best, and went on, only pausing to blow its nose contemptuously at me. Naturally in a minute or two it did fall heavily to the ground, and said “Damn” very distinctly and decidedly. But before I could get to it, it had scrambled up the tree again, and pretended it had fallen down on purpose. But it was no use, it knew perfectly well that it had made a real fool of itself.