by E. F. Benson
Next moment he had unlocked the drawer, and gingerly holding the dread instrument of Phoebe’s death between finger and thumb, looked wildly round for some secure asylum for the hateful thing. Long he stood there in hesitation; then, mounting a set of “library steps,” deposited it on the top of the tall bookcase which held the complete file of all the newspapers in which their tales had appeared. Then he set to work again on Eva, who presently ran her ice-boat ashore below the Star and Garter hotel. But half the morning had already gone, and he had scarcely yet made a beginning of the morning’s work.
Phoebe was unusually buoyant at lunch time today, but for once her cheerfulness failed in shedding sunshine on Philip.
“My dear, I have got over such a difficult point,” she said. “Do you remember how Moses Isaacson got Algernon to sign the paper which acknowledged that he was not Lord St. Austell’s legitimate son?”
“Yes, yes,” said Philip feverishly, trying to recall the exact happening of those miserable events.
“Well, all that was written in invisible ink, and all he thought he signed was the lease of Eagles Castle. There! And look, here is the first dish of asparagus.”
“And how about the lease?” asked Philip.
“It was written in water-colour ink, and, of course, Moses Isaacson washed it off afterwards.”
“Capital!” said Philip. “That does the trick.”
There was silence for a minute or two as the novelists ate the fresh asparagus, and then Phoebe said:
“To-morrow, dear, you will have to come and work with me in the drawing-room. The maids must begin their spring cleaning, and indeed it should have been done a month ago. We will have lunch and dinner in the hall while they do this room, and the day after they will do the drawing-room, and I will do my work with you here.”
Philip’s fingers were stealing towards the last stick of asparagus, but at this they were suddenly arrested.
“Ah, spring cleaning!” he said with assumed cheerfulness. “They just dust the books, I suppose, and sweep the floor.”
She laughed. She had Eva’s celebrated laugh, which was like a peal of silver bells.
“Indeed, they do much more than that,” she said. “Every book is taken out and dusted; they move all the furniture, and clean it all, back and front and top and bottom. But you won’t know a thing about it, except that our dear Elizabethan dining-room will look so spick and span that Elizabeth herself might have dinner in it. Some day we must do an historical novel, you and I. Think what a setting we have here!”
Though the day was so deliciously warm, it felt rather chilly in the evening, or so Philip thought, and a fire was lit in the drawing-room. Phoebe had a slight headache, and thus it was quite natural that she should go to bed early, leaving her husband sitting up. As soon as he had heard the door of her bedroom close, he went softly to the diningroom, and again mounting the library-steps, took down the razor-blade from the cache which this morning had seemed so secure, and went back with it into the drawing-room. It would have been terrible if Jane, the housemaid, who always sang at her work, should to-morrow have suddenly interrupted her warblings with a wild scream, as she dusted the top of the bookcase. Perhaps the razor-blade would have embedded itself in her hand; perhaps, even more tragically, her flapping duster would have flicked it into her smiling and songful face, and have buried it deep in her eye or her open mouth. But now this gruesome domestic tragedy had been averted by Philip’s ingenious perception of the chilliness of the evening, and with a sigh of relief he dropped the fatal blade into the core of the fire.
He went softly up to bed, feeling very tired after this emotional day. Now that his anxiety was allayed he would have liked to tell Phoebe how silly he had been, for never before had he had a secret from her. But then one of Phoebe’s most sacred idols in life was her husband’s stern masculine common sense that (like Algernon’s) was never the prey of foolish fears and unfounded tremors. He hated the idea of smashing up this cherished image of Phoebe’s, and determined to keep his unaccountable failing to himself. Phoebe should never know. Besides, it would vex her very much to be told that her present to him had occasioned him such uneasiness.
He fell asleep at once, and woke in the grey dawn of the morning to the sound, as it were, of clashing cymbals of terror in his brain.... The housemaid would clear up the fireplace in the drawing-room, and there among the ashes, like a snake in the grass, would be the keen tooth of the razor-blade. Perhaps already Philip was too late, and before he could get down a cry of pain would ring through the silent house, betokening that Jane’s life-blood was already spreading over the new Kidderminster carpet, and he sprang from his bed and with bare feet went hurriedly down to the drawing-room.
Thank God he was in time, and a minute afterwards he was on his way up to bed again with the razor-blade still dusty with ashes, but as sharp as ever, in an envelope taken from Phoebe’s table. Temporarily, he put it between his mattresses, and, since it was still only half-past four, climbed back into bed, and vainly attempted to compose himself to sleep, Already he was behindhand with work that should have been done yesterday morning, and when to-day, with the envelope containing the blade in his breast-pocket, he tried to make up for lost time, he only succeeded in losing more of it. There were other distractions as well, for owing to the spring cleaning in progress in the dining-room, he sat with Phoebe in the drawing-room, and she, quite recovered from her headache, and quite undisturbed by his presence, was reeling off sheet after sheet in her big, firm handwriting of the further trials that awaited Algernon. Sometimes she looked up at him with a bright, glad smile, born of the joy of creation; but for the most part her head was bent over her work, and but a short peal of silver-bell laughter from time to time denoted the ecstasy of invention. And falling more and more behind her, Philip lumbered in her wake, with three-quarters of his mind entirely absorbed in the awful problem regarding the contents of the envelope in his breast-pocket.
Suddenly, brighter than the noonday outside, an idea illuminated him, and he got up.
“I shall take ten minutes’ stroll, my dear,” he said. “Solvitur ambulando, you know, and you have given me a difficult chapter to write!”
She recalled herself with an effort to the real world.
“I think I won’t come with you, darling,” she said. “I am afraid of breaking the golden thread, as you once called it. Let me see...” and she grabbed the golden thread again.
At the bottom of the garden ran a swift chalk-stream that had often figured in their joint works, and towards this Philip joyfully hurried. He picked up half a dozen pebbles from the gravel path, put them into the envelope which contained the instrument of death, tucked the flap in, and threw it into the stream. There was a slight splash, and he saw the white envelope shiningly sink through the water until it came to rest at the bottom. He returned to Phoebe with the sense that he had awoke from some strangling nightmare.
For a couple of days after that Philip enjoyed the ecstasy which succeeds the removal of some haunting terror. Basking in the sunshine of security, he could look down on the dark clouds through which he had passed, and feel with thankfulness how completely (though narrowly) he had escaped the misty fringe of some trouble of the brain, the claws and teeth and pincers of a fixed idea. The simple expedient of throwing the razor-blade into the stream had entirely dispersed those clouds, and till then he had never known the sweetness and sanity of the sun. Then, with tropical rapidity, the tempest closed in upon him again.
He and Phoebe had driven out in their motor-car one afternoon, and had dismissed it two miles from home in order to have the pleasure of walking back through the flowery lanes. Philip was something of a botanist, and since he was now engaged on the chronicling of the reunion of Eva and Algernon, which unexpectedly took place in a ruined temple near Rome, he wanted to refresh his memory by the sight of the glories of the early English summer, in order to deck the flowery fields in which the ruined temple lay with the utmost possible
lavishness of floral tapestry.
“The ruin stands for the trial they have passed through, my dear,” he explained to Phoebe, “and lo, all round Nature breaks into gladness!”
Phoebe gave a deep sigh.
“I think that’s lovely,” she said. “How you embellish my dry skeleton of a tale, darling, covering it with strong muscles and lovely supple skin. We are happy, aren’t we? I wonder if Algernon and Eva were really as happy, even at that moment, as we always are!”
They had come near to the stream that flowed by the bottom of the garden, the bank of which was a tangle of flowers.
“Loosestrife, meadow-sweet, marsh-marigold, willow-herb,” said Philip. “Delicious names, are they not?”
The sound of shrill juvenile voices was heard, and turning a bend in the lane, they came opposite the pool where Philip had thrown the razor-blade. There on the bank were half a dozen small boys in various degrees of nudity, and rosy from their bathing.
“Little darlings!” said Phoebe sympathetically. “What a jolly time they have been having in the water!”
“Willow-herb, marsh-marigold,” murmured Philip mechanically, looking round for the traces of blood on the stream-bank....
He took a firm hold of himself, and managed to walk across the wooden bridge that led to the bottom of the garden with some show of steadiness. But he almost reeled and fell when, looking into the pool, he saw the razor-blade, its encompassing envelope having been destroyed by the water, shining on the pebbly bottom of the stream like tragic Rhine-gold.
When they had had tea, he made some lame excuse of studying flowers a little longer and slipped down again to the stream. The boys had gone, and taking off his shoes and socks, and rolling his trousers up to the knee, he waded out over the sharp pebbles to where his doom flickered in the sunshine. With the aid of his stick he propelled it into shallower waters and picked it up. Then, shivering from the brisk water, and tearing his socks as he pulled them over his wet feet, he returned with it to the house in a state of more miserable dejection than Algernon had ever been, even when he sat down on the ruins of the Roman temple, unaware that Eva was just about to come round the corner with April in her eyes.
For the next week Philip carried the razor-blade about with him in a stud-box that during the day never left his pocket, and at night reposed under his pillow. He made several attempts to get rid of it in a way that commended itself to his conscience, which seethed with scruples and imaginary terrors, burying it once in the garden, and at another time throwing it into the ash-bin. But the sight of his terrier digging in the potato patch for a suitable hiding place for his bone, caused him to disinter it from the first of these, and the second entailed a dismal midnight visit to the dust-bin, when, one evening, Phoebe casually alluded to the dustman’s approaching visit.
On another occasion he was fired with the original notion of embedding it in the interstices of the rough bark of the ilex at the end of the garden, well out of reach of curious fingers, and with the stud-box in his pocket, climbed with infinite difficulty up into its lower branches. But while wedging it into a suitable crevice the bough on which his weight rested suddenly gave way, and he fell heavily to the ground, while the blade flashed through the air like Excalibur and plunged into a bramble-bush. It was, of course, necessary to get it out, and this prickly business, combined with a sprained ankle, brought him almost aground in the shoals of despair. He began contemplating enlisting as a private in the British army, though well over the military age and of obese figure.
Perhaps he would find some opportunity in Flanders of throwing it, suitably weighted, into a German trench. Only the thought of Phoebe left alone and making up interminable plots, with no one to turn them into narrative for her, kept him from this desperate step.
Meantime his work halted and languished, for sleepless nights and nightmare days miserably affected his power of composition, his style and even such matters as punctuation and spelling. Phoebe grew anxious about him, and recommended a holiday, but he had the wisdom to know that the only thing that kept him on the safe side of the frontier between sanity and madness was determined application to work, however poor the output was. He felt that he might just as well pack his boxes and go straight to Bedlam instead of making a circuitous journey there via the Malvern Hills.
It was when his condition was at its worst that there gleamed a light through the tunnel of his despair. The editor of the Yorkshire Telegraph, who wanted another story by the Partingtons, with the shortest possible delay, wrote to him suggesting in the most delicate manner that life in New York would present an admirable setting for a tale, especially since the United States had come into the war, and offering to pay his passage to that salubrious city if he would favourably consider this proposal. And all at once Philip remembered having read in some book of physical geography, studied by him in happier boyish days, that the Atlantic in certain places was not less than seven miles deep....
He read this amiable epistle to his wife.
“Upon my word, it sounds a very good plan,” he said brightly. “What do you say, Phoebe? It will give me the holiday of which you think I stand in need.”
Phoebe shook her head.
“Do you propose that I should come with you?” she asked. “Why should a holiday among the submarines do you more good than the Malvern Hills?”
The thought of the deep holes in the Atlantic grew ever more rosy to Philip’s mind. Even the hideous notion of being torpedoed failed to take the colour out of it.
“My dear, these are days in which a man must not mind taking risks,” he said.
She smiled at him.
“I know your fearless nature, darling,” she said; “but what is the point of running unnecessary risks?”
“Local colour. There is a great deal in Mr. Etherington’s remarks.”
“I don’t agree. I should think with our experience we ought to be able to describe New York without going there. We didn’t find it necessary to go to Athens, or Khartoum, or Mexico.”
“True,” said he; “but perhaps my descriptions might have gained in veracity if we had. That was a tiresome letter to the Yorkshire Telegraph about the spires on the Acropolis. If we had been there, we should have known that there weren’t any.”
He fingered the stud-box in his pocket for a moment, and his fingers itched to drop it over a ship’s side.
“My part of our joint work might gain in true artistic feeling,” he said, “if I described what I had actually seen. Art holds the mirror up to nature, you know.”
“Yes, darling; but do you think Shakespeare meant that Art must hold the mirror up to New York?” asked she. “I fancy there is very little nature in New York.”
He took a turn or two up and down the room, while the box positively burned his finger-tips.
“I can’t help feeling as I do about it,” he said. “And, Phoebe, one of our earliest vows to each other was that each of us should respect the other’s literary conscience!”
She got up.
“You disarm me, dear,” she said. “Apply for your passport, and if they give it you, go. I only ask you to respect my feminine weakness and not make me come with you among all those horrid submarines.”
They sealed their compact with a kiss.
By the time Phoebe had interviewed her cook, her husband had already written his letter applying for his passport, on the grounds of artistic necessity in his profession. She read it through with high approval.
“Very dignified and proper,” she said. “By the way, dear, there will be no work for us this morning. We are going over the factory for explosives with kind Captain Traill. You and I must observe the processes very carefully, as we want all the information we can get for ‘The Hero of Ypres.’”
He jumped up with something of his old alacrity.
“Aha, there speaks your artistic conscience,” he said. “And don’t let me see too many soft glances between you and kind Captain Traill.”
Phoebe l
ooked hugely delighted and returned the compliment.
“And there are some very pretty girls working there,” she observed slyly.
An hour afterwards they were padding in felt slippers round the room where bombs were packed with a fatal grey treacle, one spoonful of which was sufficient to blow them and the whole building into a million fragments. A new type of bomb was being made there, consisting of a cast-iron shell fitted with a hole through which the grey treacle was poured; an iron stopper was then screwed into the hole. There were hundreds of those empty shells, which slid along grooved ways to where the treacle was put into them, and they then were passed on to the girls, who fixed their stoppers. It was all soft, silent, deadly work, and Philip recorded a hundred impressions on his retentive memory.
Phoebe and Captain Traill were walking just ahead of him, when suddenly a great light broke, so vividly illuminating his brain that he almost thought some terrific explosion, seen and not heard, had occurred. Stealthily he drew from his pocket the stud-case, stealthily he opened it and took out the razor-blade. Then, bending over an empty bomb-case as if to examine it, he dropped the blade into it. It fell inside with a slight chink, which nobody noticed.
A couple of minutes afterwards the bomb-case had passed through the hands of the dispenser of treacle, and had its stopper screwed in.
“And where are all those little surprise packets going?” asked Philip airily.
“To aeroplanes on the west front,” said kind Captain Traill. “We’re sending off a lot to-night. Perhaps that one” — and he pointed to the identical bomb which Philip had had a hand in filling— “will make a mess in Mannheim next week.”