Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “It’s been rather upsetting,” he said. “Poppy was terribly ill on her crossing, and I didn’t see her till next day, after I had settled to stop at Olga’s over the Sunday, as I telegraphed. And then she was very queer. She took hold of my hand under the table at dinner, and trod on my foot and smiled at me most oddly. She wouldn’t play Bridge, but came and sat close up against me. One thing after another—”

  “Georgie, what a horrid woman,” said Lucia. “How could she dare? Did she try—”

  “No,” said Georgie hastily. “Nothing important. Olga assured me she didn’t mean anything of the sort, but that she always behaved like that to people with beards. Olga wasn’t very sympathetic about it: in fact she came to my room one night, and simply went into fits of laughter.”

  “Your bedroom, Georgie?” asked Lucia.

  “Yes. She often did when we went upstairs and talked for a bit. But Poppy was very embarrassing. I’m not good at that sort of thing. And yesterday, she made me go for a walk with her along the beach, and wanted to paddle with me. But I was quite firm about that. I said I should go inland at once if she went on about it.”

  “Quite right, dear. Just what I should have done myself,” said Lucia appreciatively.

  “And so those last two days weren’t so pleasant. I was uncomfortable. I wished I’d come back on Saturday.”

  “Very tiresome for you, dear,” said Lucia. “But it’s all over now.”

  “That’s just what I’m not so sure about,” said he. “She’s leaving Olga’s to-morrow, and she’s going to telegraph to you, asking if you would let her stay here for a couple of nights. Apparently you begged her to propose herself. You must really say your house is full or that you’re away. Though Olga says she means no harm, it’s most disagreeable.”

  Lucia sprang from her chair.

  “Georgie, how absolutely providential!” she cried. “If only she came, it would kill that despicable scandal that she hadn’t stayed here before. They would be forced to believe that she had. Oh! What a score!”

  “Well, I couldn’t stop here if she came,” said Georgie firmly. “It got on my nerves. It made me feel very jumpy.”

  “But then she mightn’t stop if she found you weren’t here,” pleaded Lucia. “Besides, as Olga says, she doesn’t mean anything, I shall be with you; surely that will be sufficient protection, and I won’t leave you alone with her a minute all day. And if you’re nervous, you may sleep in my room. Just while she’s here, of course.”

  “Oh, I don’t think either of us would like that,” said Georgie, “and Foljambe would think it so odd.”

  “Well, you could lock your door. Oh, Georgie, it isn’t really much to ask, and it will put me on a higher pinnacle than ever, far, far above their base insinuations. They will eat their hearts out with shame.”

  Grosvenor entered.

  “A telegram for you, ma’am. Prepaid.”

  With trembling hands Lucia tore it open, and, for Grosvenor’s benefit, assumed her drawling voice.

  “From the Duchess, dear,” she said. “She wants to come here to-morrow for two nights, on her way back from Le Touquet. I suppose I had better say yes, as I did ask her to propose herself.”

  “Oh, very well,” said Georgie.

  Lucia scribbled a cordial reply, and Grosvenor took it away with the tea-tray.

  “Georgino, you’re an angel,” said she. “My dear, all the time that I was so wretched here, I knew it would all come right as soon as you got back, and see what has happened! Now let us make our plans at once. I think we’ll ask nobody the first night she is here—”

  “Nor the second either I should hope,” said Georgie, “Give them a good lesson. Besides, after the way you talked to them yesterday after church, they probably wouldn’t come. That would be a knock.”

  Lucia regarded an angle of the ceiling with that far away abstracted expression with which she listened to music.

  “About their coming, dear,” she said, “I will wager my knowledge of human nature that they will without exception. As to my asking them, you know how I trust your judgment, but here I’m not sure that I agree. Don’t you think that to forgive them all, and to behave as if nothing had happened, would be the most devastating thing I could do? There’s nothing that stings so much as contemptuous oblivion. I have often found that.”

  “You don’t mean to say that you’ll ask Elizabeth Mapp-Flint to dine?” asked Georgie.

  “I think so, Georgie, poor soul. If I don’t she will feel that she has hurt me, that I want to pay her out. I shouldn’t like her to feel that. I don’t want to leave her a leg to stand on. Up till now I have never desired quite to crush her, but I feel I have been too lenient. If she is to become a better woman, I must give her a sharper lesson than merely ignoring her. I may remind her by some little impromptu touch of what she tried to do to me, but I shall trust to the inspiration of the moment about that.”

  Georgie came round to Lucia’s view of the value of vindictive forgiveness, while for himself he liked the idea of calling a Duchess by her Christian name before Mapp and Co. He would not even mind her holding his hand if there were plenty of people there.

  “It ought to be a wonderful party,” he said. “Even better than the party you gave for Olga. I’m beginning to look forward to it. Shall I help you with writing the invitations?”

  “Not necessary, dear, thank you,” said Lucia. “I shall ask them all quite casually by telephone on the afternoon of our dinner. Leave it to me.”

  Poppy arrived next evening, again prostrated by seasickness and far from amorous. But a good night restored her, and the three took a morning stroll in the High Street, so that everybody saw them. Lucia, absolutely certain that there would be a large dinner-party at Mallards that night, ordered appropriate provisions. In the afternoon they went for a motor-drive: just before starting Lucia directed Foljambe to ring up the whole circle of friends, asking them to excuse such short notice and take pot-luck with her, and not a word was Foljambe to say about Duchesses. They knew.

  While the ducal party traversed the country roads, the telephone bells of Tilling were ringing merrily. For the Wyses were engaged to dine and play Bridge with the Mapp-Flints, and Susan, feeling certain that she would not meet the Mapp-Flints anyhow at Mallards, rang up Elizabeth to say that she was not feeling at all well and regretted not being able to come. Algernon, she said, did not like to leave her. To her surprise Elizabeth was all cordiality: dear Susan must not think of going out, it was no inconvenience at all, and they would arrange another night. So, with sighs of relief, they both rang up Mallards, and found that the line was engaged, for Susan Leg, having explained to Diva that she had made a stupid mistake, and had meant to ask her for tomorrow not for to-night, was telling Foljambe that she would be charmed to come. Diva got the line next, and fussing with this delay, Elizabeth sent Benjy round to Mallards to say how pleased. Then to make certain, they all wrote formal notes of acceptance. As for Irene, she was so overcome with remorse at having ever doubted Lucia’s word, and so overwhelmed by her nobility in forgiving her, that she burst into tears, and forgot to answer at all.

  Poppy was very late for dinner, and all Lucia’s guests had arrived before she appeared. They were full of a timid yet eager cordiality, as if scarcely believing that such magnanimity was possible, and their hostess was graciousness itself. She was particularly kind to Elizabeth and made enquiries about her sketch. Then as Poppy still lingered she said to Georgie: “Run up to Poppy’s room, dear, and tell her she must be quick.” She had hardly got that pleasant sentence out when Poppy entered.

  “Naughty!” said Lucia, and took her arm to introduce the company. “Mr. and Mrs. Wyse, Miss Leg (Rudolph da Vinci, you know, dear), Miss Irene Coles — the picture of the year — and Mrs. Plaistow: didn’t you have one of her delicious teas when you were here? And my Mayoress, Mrs. Mapp-Flint, I don’t think you met her when you stayed with me last week. And Major Mapp-Flint. Now everybody knows everybody. Sherry, dear
Poppy?”

  Georgie kept his hands on the table during dinner, and Poppy intermittently caressed the one nearest her in a casual manner; with so many witnesses and in so bright a light, Georgie liked it rather than otherwise. Her attempt to stroll with him alone in the garden afterwards was frustrated, for Lucia, as bound by her promise, instantly joined them, and brought them back to the garden-room. She was induced to play to them, and Poppy, sitting close to Georgie on the sofa, fell into a refreshing slumber. At the cessation of the music, she woke with a start and asked what the time was. A most distinguished suavity prevailed, and though the party lacked the gaiety and lightness of the Olga-festival, its quality was far more monumental. Then the guests dispersed; Lucia had a kind word for each and she thanked them all for having excused her giving them such short notice.

  Elizabeth walked home in silence with Benjy. Her exaltation evaporated in the night-air like the fumes of wine, leaving behind an irritated depression.

  “Well, there’s no help for it,” she said bitterly, as he fumbled with the latch-key of the Vicarage. “But I daresay before long — Do be quick.”

  Half an hour later at Mallards, Lucia, having seen Poppy well on the way to bed, tapped discreetly at Georgie’s door. That gave him a terrible fright, till he remembered he had locked it.

  “No, you can’t come in,” he said. “Good night, Poppy. Sleep well.”

  “It’s me, Georgie,” said Lucia in a low voice. “Open the door: only a chink. She isn’t here.”

  Georgie unlocked it.

  “Perfect!” she whispered. “Such a treat for them all! They will remember this evening. Perfect.”

  Other Novels

  Marlborough College, where Benson was educated – he later based his novel ‘David Blaize’ on his experiences at this institution

  DODO: A DETAIL OF THE DAY

  This was Benson’s first novel and proved fashionably controversial on its publication in 1893, mainly as a result of its frank treatment of how the social class system often forced women in late-Victorian Britain to marry for money, rather than love.

  The novel contains a fictionalised portrait of the composer and suffragette Ethel Smyth and the story might be considered an example of the popular ‘New Woman’ fiction of the late-Victorian period. This genre considered the question of the changing role of women in society by presenting the moral dilemmas that its authors saw as inevitable for emancipated females.

  Cover of the first one-volume edition

  CONTENTS

  VOLUME I.

  CHAPTER ONE.

  CHAPTER TWO.

  CHAPTER THREE.

  CHAPTER FOUR.

  CHAPTER FIVE.

  CHAPTER SIX.

  CHAPTER SEVEN.

  CHAPTER EIGHT.

  CHAPTER NINE.

  CHAPTER TEN.

  VOLUME II.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN.

  CHAPTER TWELVE.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN.

  CHAPTER TWENTY.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

  Dame Ethel Mary Smyth (1858–1944) was a composer and member of the women's suffrage movement.

  VOLUME I.

  And far out, drifting helplessly on that grey, angry sea, I saw a small boat at the mercy of the winds and waves. And my guide said to me, ‘Some call the sea “Falsehood,” and that boat “Truth,” and others call the sea “Truth,” and the boat “Falsehood;” and, for my part, I think that one is right as the other.’ — The Professor of Ignorance.

  CHAPTER ONE.

  Poets of all ages and of all denominations are unanimous in assuring us that there was once a period on this grey earth known as the Golden Age. These irresponsible hards describe it in terms of the vaguest, most poetic splendour, and, apart from the fact, upon which they are all agreed, that the weather was always perfectly charming, we have to reconstruct its characteristics in the main for ourselves. Perhaps if the weather was uniformly delightful, even in this nineteenth century, the golden age might return again. We all know how perceptibly our physical, mental and spiritual level is raised by a few days of really charming weather; but until the weather determines to be always golden, we can hardly expect it of the age. Yet even now, even in England, and even in London, we have every year a few days which must surely be waifs and strays from the golden age, days which have fluttered down from under the hands of the recording angel, as he tied up his reports, and, after floating about for years in dim, interplanetary space, sometimes drop down upon us. They may last a week, they have been known to last a fortnight; again, they may curtail themselves into a few hours, but they are never wholly absent.

  At the time at which this story opens, London was having its annual golden days; days to be associated with cool, early rides in the crumbly Row, with sitting on small, green chairs beneath the trees at the corner of the Park; with a general disinclination to exert oneself, or to stop smoking cigarettes; with a temper distinctly above its normal level, and a corresponding absence of moods. The crudeness of spring had disappeared, but not its freshness; the warmth of the summer had come, but not its sultriness; the winter was definitely over and past, and even in Hyde Park the voice of the singing bird was heard, and an old gentleman, who shall be nameless, had committed his annual perjury by asserting in the Morning Post that he had heard a nightingale in the elm-trees by the Ladies’ Mile, which was manifestly impossible.

  The sky was blue; the trees, strange to say, were green, for the leaves were out, and even the powers of soot which hover round London had not yet had time to shed their blackening dew upon them. The season was in full swing, but nobody was tired of it yet, and “all London” evinced a tendency to modified rural habits, which expressed themselves in the way of driving down to Hurlingham, and giving water parties at Richmond.

  To state this more shortly, it was a balmy, breezy day towards the middle of June. The shady walks that line the side of the Row were full of the usual crowds of leisurely, well-dressed people who constitute what is known as London. Anyone acquainted with that august and splendid body would have seen at once that something had happened; not a famine in China, nor a railway accident, nor a revolution, nor a war, but emphatically “something.” Conversation was a thing that made time pass, not a way of passing the time. Obviously the larger half of London was asking questions, and the smaller half was enjoying its superiority, in being able to give answers. These indications are as clear to the practised eye as the signs of the weather appear to be to the prophet Zadkiel. To the amateur one cloud looks much like another cloud: the prophet, on the other hand, lays a professional finger on one and says “Thunder,” while the lurid bastion, which seems fraught with fire and tempest to the amateur, is dismissed with the wave of a contemptuous hand.

  A tall, young man was slowly making his way across the road from the arch. He was a fair specimen of “the exhausted seedlings of our effete aristocracy” — long-limbed, clean-shaven, about six feet two high, and altogether very pleasant to look upon. He wore an air of extreme leisure and freedom from the smallest touch of care or anxiety, and it was quite clear that such was his normal atmosphere. He waited with serene patience for a large number of well-appointed carriages to go past, and then found himself blocked by another stream going in the opposite direction. However, all things come to an end, even the impossibility of crossing from the arch at the entrance of the Park to the trees on a fine morning in June, and on this particular morning I have to record no exception to the rule. A horse bolting on to the Row narrowly missed knocking him down, and he looked up with mild reproach at its rider, as he disappeared in a shower of dust and soft earth.

  This young gentleman, who has been making his slow and somewhat graceful entrance on to our stage, was emphatically “London,” and he too saw at once that something had happened. He
looked about for an acquaintance, and then dropped in a leisurely manner into a chair by his side.

  “Morning, Bertie,” he remarked; “what’s up?”

  Bertie was not going to be hurried. He finished lighting a cigarette, and adjusted the tip neatly with his fingers.

  “She’s going to be married,” he remarked.

  Jack Broxton turned half round to him with a quicker movement than he had hitherto shown.

  “Not Dodo?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  Jack gave a low whistle.

  “It isn’t to you, I suppose?”

  Bertie Arbuthnot leaned back in his chair with extreme languor. His enemies, who, to do him justice, were very few, said that if he hadn’t been the tallest man in London, he would never have been there at all.

  “No, it isn’t to me.”

  “Is she here?” said Jack, looking round.

  “No I think not; at least I haven’t seen her.”

  “Well, I’m — —” Jack did not finish the sentence.

  Then as an after-thought he inquired: “Whom to?”

  “Chesterford,” returned the other.

  Jack made a neat little hole with the ferrule of his stick in the gravel in front of him, and performed a small burial service for the end of his cigarette. The action was slightly allegorical.

  “He’s my first cousin,” he said. “However, I may be excused for not feeling distinctly sympathetic with my first cousin. Must I congratulate him?”

  “That’s as you like,” said the other. “I really don’t see why you shouldn’t. But it is rather overwhelming, isn’t it? You know Dodo is awfully charming, but she hasn’t got any of the domestic virtues. Besides, she ought to be an empress,” he added loyally.

  “I suppose a marchioness is something,” said Jack. “But I didn’t expect it one little bit. Of course he is hopelessly in love. And so Dodo has decided to make him happy.”