Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  But this trap for Mrs. Carter never brought the hunter his quarry, and quite independent circumstances led me closer. It was decreed that my sisters should have music lessons and who but Mrs. Carter was engaged to be the teacher? Twice a week she would come to the house, so now no human agency, it would appear, could prevent us from meeting. But for some time a human agency did do so, that human agency being myself, for on observing Mrs. Carter’s approach up the drive, an agony of shyness seized me, and I sat distracted in the day nursery until she had gone upstairs, and the noise of the piano from the schoolroom showed that she was engaged. Once, summoning up all my courage, I went in while the lesson was in progress, but she did not take her eyes off the copy of Schubert’s Impromptu in A flat, which Maggie was fumbling at, and I went out and listened in the garden for the cessation of the piano, on which, I determined, I would walk quite calmly towards the front door and thus meet Mrs. Carter there or thereabouts. But, alas for this faint-hearted lover, as soon as the piano ceased I walked in precisely the other direction, and it was not likely that Mrs. Carter instead of going down the drive would force her way through the laurel shrubbery in order to find me.

  I blush to record the next step of my wooing. An invincible shyness (though I was not otherwise shy) forbade my walking down the drive as Mrs. Carter was coming up, or taking any direct initiative, so I laid a lure for her. Observing her approach to the house, I regret to say that it was my custom to lean out of the schoolroom window, singing loudly. This would certainly attract her attention (indeed I think that once it did, and I rushed, panic-stricken, away) and she would say to one of my sisters, “Was that your brother who was singing?

  What a charming voice!” And one of my sisters would say, “Oh yes, he is very fond of music.” Then surely, surely Mrs. Carter would say, “I don’t think we have met,” or perhaps even, “I should like to see him,” and then my sister would come and find me (for after these bursts of melody out of the window I always fled like a frightened dove to the nursery) and say that Mrs. Carter would like to see me. I had looked on her face by now, and I pictured to myself how her kind mouth would smile as she shook hands, and she would say, “We must be friends, mustn’t we, for we are both so fond of music.” This bleating piece of Platonism came to an end somehow, and I grew to be able to contemplate Mrs. Carter’s back swaying to her pedal-playing without emotion. But I think that this warm soft Cornish climate must have brought out a sort of measles of sentimentality in me, for without pause I transferred my sloppy heart to the curate at Kenwyn, the Rev. J. A. Reeve, who subsequently was appointed Rector of Lambeth by my father, and was an intimate friend of all of us. He was a man who was habitually surrounded by an atmosphere of ecstasy, an adorer of children, and next door to a fanatic in matters of religion, beloved and blissful, living in a light that never was on sea or land. To the outward view he presented a long lean figure, walking at a tremendous pace, and perspiring profusely, with his umbrella tucked under his arm, and his hands clasped in perpetual admiration of this, inimitable world, and the saints that he constantly discovered in it under the most deceptive of disguises. There were no “miserable sinners” in his sight; the most impenitent were but rather wilful children of the Father. He had a mane of yellow hair which he tossed back as he laughed peals of uproarious appreciation of any joke at all. But whereas with the chorister and Mrs. Carter there certainly was some personal, physical attraction (though no doubt the main source of the inspiration was music), with Mr. Reeve there was no personal attraction of any kind, and the experience was of the stained-glass window order, in which I was cast for the stained-glass window, and Mr. Reeve for the worshipper. At the bottom of it all perhaps there was some grain of genuine religious sentiment, but this was so largely diluted by mawkishness and vanity, that examination fails to find more than that minute presence described in the analysis of medicinal waters as “some traces.” He used to breakfast with us after a short service in Kenwyn Church at a quarter to eight every morning, to which we children were encouraged though not obliged to go, and he was a kind of unofficial chaplain to my father, writing his letters for him half the morning with a puckered brow, but ready to burst into peals of laughter on the smallest opportunity for mirth. Every Sunday also, he came to tea before service, and afterwards to supper, and every Sunday evening after tea I went with him into a spare bedroom where, with his arm round my neck, he read me the sermon he was about to preach. I suppose my comments were very edifying and satisfactory, for he certainly told my mother that “that boy was not far from the kingdom of God.” She must very wisely have begged him not to tell me that, for I had no idea of it at the time. Once, indeed, he sadly failed me, for meeting me as I was being taken to the dentist by Beth, there to have two teeth out under gas, he said that to have gas was the same as getting drunk, and I went on my weary way feeling not only terrified but wicked as well. It is true, though scarcely credible, that the gas was administered by Mrs. Tuck the dentist’s wife, and that there was no anaesthetist or doctor present. But I daresay Mrs. Tuck performed her office very well, for I had a delightful dream about being in a balloon in the middle of a rainbow.

  That autumn lessons began again, and until I went to a private school next Easter I suffered under the awful rule of a German governess, not our kind Miss Braun of Lincoln, but a dark-eyed and formidable woman who, I was firmly convinced, must truly have been the terrible Madame de la Rougierre in the tale of Uncle Silas which I was reading then in small instalments, being too frightened to read much at a time. She cannot have been with us long, for before I went to school the beloved Miss Bramston came back, not originally as governess but for another and a tragic reason.

  The Christmas holidays of 1877 were the last when the whole of the family of six, with my father and mother and Beth, who was absolutely of the family also, were together. My eldest brother Martin was then seventeen, and so great a gulf is fixed between that age and ten, that never, till the day I saw him last, did I form any clear idea of him. Here, then. I must abandon the standpoint I have hitherto maintained, namely, that of speaking of the events of these early years through my own personal recollection of what impression they made on me as the jolly days slipped by, and mingle recollection with subsequent knowledge.

  At the age of fourteen Martin had won the first open scholarship at Winchester, and had now mentally developed into an extraordinary maturity and wisdom. He took an amazing interest in the political affairs of the day, in classics he was considered to be perhaps the most remarkable scholar that Winchester ever had, and as witness to his innate love of learning there was a library which he had himself acquired, and which must have been unique for a boy of his age. Already at Lincoln he had “spotted” an Albert Dürer woodcut pasted on to the fly-leaf of some trumpery book at a penny bookstall, and had breathlessly conveyed the treasure home, and he and my father used to exchange original Latin versions of hymns. But this precocity of scholarship did not in the least check his boyishness, which verged on the fantastic, for once he appeared in school with four little Japanese dolls attached to the four strings of his shoelaces, and gravely proceeded with his construing. There are notebooks full of his exquisite ridiculous drawings with appropriate text in his minute handwriting: there are poems as ridiculous, and behind it all was this serious limpid spirit....

  He went back that January to Winchester, and Arthur to Eton, and one day, early in February he had a sudden attack of giddiness, and then followed an attack of meningitis. My father and mother were sent for; he was then unconscious. Arthur went there from Eton, but my mother decided that we younger children should not go and instead Miss Bramston came down to us in Cornwall. The rest I will tell by means of two letters which my mother wrote to Beth. I found them, after my mother’s death, forty years after, in a little packet of papers which had belonged to Beth, and consisted of letters from all of us which she had always kept.

  “WINCHESTER,

  Friday (Feb. 8, 1878).

  DEA
REST BETH,

  I must write you a few lines to-day. Our dear one is no better at all. Nothing can be done for him but to watch him and to give nourishment and to pray and trust in God. Everything possible is done for him; he has two nurses, day and night. We go in and out of his room from time to time. He lies quite peacefully, mostly sleeping, and evidently quite unconscious of any pain. There is no sign of pain about his face. He knows us now and then, we think, but he does not speak. He takes a little nourishment from time to time, but with difficulty. Sir William Jenner has been sent for, though there does not seem anything he can do.

  Dearest Beth, it is such a comfort to think that you are with those dear ones at home. I don’t know what they would do without you, or how we could bear to think of leaving them unless they had you. We are both quite sure that it is better they should not come. They could not be with him, and it is no use their hearing details. We ought to and must keep before their young minds just the Love of God, whether He shews it in giving our darling back to our prayers, or in taking to Himself so beautiful and holy a life.

  But we must not, and do not give up hope. Though as far as man knows or sees there is nothing to be done, and the doctors dare not give us hope of recovery, yet just where man is most powerless, God does work, often, and we continue to pray to Him in hope for our darling’s restoration. While there is life, we will not despair.

  Dearest Beth, God keep you all: the thought of you is such a comfort to us. Pray yourself continually, — encourage them all to pray. One of the Psalms to-day begins, ‘I waited patiently for the Lord, and He inclined unto me, and heard my calling.’

  All our heart’s love is with you all always.

  Your most loving

  MARY BENSON.”

  This is the second letter:

  “DEAREST FRIEND AND MOTHER BETH,

  Be comforted for Martin. He is in perfect peace, in wonderful joy, far happier than we could ever have made him. And what did we desire in our hearts but to make him happy? And now he will help us out of his perfect happiness. He died without a struggle — his pure and gentle spirit passed straight to God his Father, and now he is ours and with us more than ever. Ours now, in a way that nothing can take away.

  Dearest Beth, we are all going to be more loving than ever, living in love we shall live in God, and we shall live close to our dear one.

  One is so sure now, that sin is the only separation, and that sting is taken out of death by Jesus Christ. My heart aches for the dear ones at home, but I know you are à mother to them, and will support and comfort their hearts, and keep before them that God is love, and that He is loving us in this thing also. And I want them to think of Martin, our darling, in perfect peace for ever, free from fear, free from pain, from anxiety for evermore, and to think how he will rejoice to see us walking more and more in Love for his dear sake.

  We cannot grudge him his happiness.

  Dearest Beth, our boy is with God: he knows everything now, and will help us. The peace of God Almighty be with you.

  Your own child, your fellow-mother,

  M. B.”

  There is nothing that could tell so simply and completely, not only what my mother was, but what Beth was, as this letter which my mother wrote on the morning after the death of her eldest son. It gives the soul of them both, of my mother that she could write it, and of Beth the “fellow-mother,” to whom it was written.

  When I was old enough to understand my mother told me about the day on which that second letter was written. She had, so she said to me, a couple of hours of the most wonderful happiness she had ever experienced on that day, when she realized that though God had taken, yet she could give. Her inmost being knew that, and when she came back to us a few days later, there was no shadow on her, for all that she said to Beth was the simple untouched copy of the writing on her heart. But even now I can remember my father’s face, as he stepped from the carriage into the lamplight, for it was the face of a most loving man stricken with the death of the boy he loved best, who had been nearest his heart, and was knit into his very soul. Often has my mother told me that though he accepted Martin’s death as God’s will, he could not, out of the very strength of his human love, adapt himself to it. His faith was unshaken, but the deep waters had gone over him, and years afterwards, when he saw the martins skimming about the eaves of the house at Addington, he wrote about them and his own Martin a little poem infinitely touching; and never, so I believe, did some part of him cease to wonder why his Martin had been taken from him.

  CHAPTER V. PRIVATE SCHOOL AND HOLIDAYS

  AFTER Easter, 1878, I was sent to a private school presided over by Mr. Ottiwell Waterfield, at Temple Grove, East Sheen, and remained there three years. The house and grounds vanished entirely somewhere about 1908, under the trail of the suburban builder, and now hideous rows of small residences occupy their spaciousness. For the purposes of a school numbering some hundred and thirty boys, the original George I and Queen Anne house had been largely supplemented with dormitories and schoolrooms, and a modem wing as large as the house ran at right angles by the edge of the cricket field. But the part where Mr. Waterfield and his family lived had not been touched: there was a fine library, drawing-room, and his study (how awful was that place!) en suite, a paved hall, with a full-sized billiard table and a piano where a frail widow lady called Mrs. Russell gave music-lessons, and the French master, whose name really was M. Voltaire, conducted a dancing-class as well as teaching French and being, I think, slightly immoral. A passage out of the hall gave on to the private garden of Mr. Waterfield, where there were fine cedar trees, and a broad oak-staircase led up from it to the bedrooms of the family.

  Already, darkly in the glass of fiction and under the title of David Blaize, I have hinted at some of the habits of the young gentlemen who led a life, alternately uproarious and terror-stricken, in the other part of the house, but now more personal details can be indulged in. By far the most salient feature in the school, even as the sun is the most salient feature in the day, making it precisely what it is, was Mr. Waterfield himself. He seems now to me to have been nine feet high, and he certainly walked with a curious rocking motion, which was convenient, because if you were where you should not be, you could detect his coming long before he could detect anybody. He had a square grey beard which smelt of cigars, a fact known from his practice, when he had frightened the life out of you by terrible harangues, of saying, “Well, that’s all over, my boy,” and kissing you. I believe him to have been about the best private schoolmaster who ever lived, for he ruled by love and fear combined in a manner that while it inspired small boys with hellish terror, yet rewarded them with the sweet fruits of hero-worship. He exacted blind obedience, under peril of really infamous torture with a thick ruler with which he savagely caned offending hands, but he managed at the same time to make us appreciate his approbation. The ruler was kept in a convenient drawer of the knee-hole table in his study, and was a perfectly brutal instrument, but the approach of the ruler, like a depression over the Atlantic, was always heralded by storm-cones. The first of these was the taking of the keys from his trousers-pocket, and then you had time to pull yourself together to retract an equivocation, to confess a fault, or try to remember something you had been repeatedly told. The second storm-cone was the insertion of the key into the drawer where the ruler was kept. You had to be of very strong nerve when that second storm-cone was hoisted, and divert your mind from the possible future to the supine which you could not recollect, for when the key was once inserted there might any moment be a sudden startling explosion of wrath, and out flew the ruler. Then came a short agonizing scene, and the blubbering victim after six smart blows had the handle of the door turned for him by somebody else, because his hands were useless through pain. The ruler was quite rare, and probably well deserved; anyhow it was the counter-balance to the hero-worship born of Mr. Waterfield’s approval. For more heinous offences there was birching, but that had certain compensations, for afterwar
ds you took down your breeches and showed the injured parts to admiring companions. But there was nothing to show, as Mrs. Pullet said about the boluses, when you were caned. Besides you could play cricket quite easily, shortly after a whipping, but no human hand could hold a bat shortly after the application of the ruler.

  The top form (called the first form, not the sixth form) had certain specified lessons every week taken by Waterfield, and he did not teach regularly in other forms. But he was liable to make meteoric appearances soon after the beginning of a lesson in the big schoolroom where the next three forms were at work, and take any lesson himself. A hush fell as he strode in, and we all cowered like partridges below a kite, while he glared round, selecting the covey on to which he pounced. This was a subtle plan, for you could never be sure that it would not be he who would hear any particular lesson, and the chance of that made it most unwise to neglect any preparation altogether.

  The school got its fair share of public-school scholarships, so I suppose the teaching of the other masters was sound, but I cannot believe that a stranger set of instructors were ever got together. Rawlings, who taught the first form, used habitually to read the Sporting Times in school with his feet up on the desk until the time came for him to hear us construe. Daubeny, the master of the second form, had no thought but for the encouragement of a small moustache; Davy of the third form used mostly to be asleep; Geoghehan of the fourth form (called “Geege”) had lost his right arm, and used always to have some favourite in his class, who sat on his knee in school time and was an important personage, for he could, if you were friends with him, always persuade Geege not to report misconduct to Waterfield. One such boy, now a steady hereditary legislator, I well remember: he pulled Geege’s beard, and altered the marks in his register, and ruled him with a rod of iron. Geege was otherwise an effective disciplinarian, and had an unpleasant habit, if he thought you were not attending, of spearing the back of your hand with the nib of his pen, dipped in purple ink. Then there was a handwriting specialist called Prior who gave out stationery on Saturdays. His appearance was always hailed by a sort of Gregorian chant to which the words were, “All boys wanting ink, go to Mr. Prior.” Then came Mr. Voltaire, the gay young Frenchman, and these with one or two more of whom I cherish no recollection all lived together at a house in East Sheen called Clarence House, and were, I think, a shade more frightened of Waterfield than we.