Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  They rejoined the others in course of time. Dodo made fearful ravages on the eatables, and after tea she suddenly announced, —

  “Mrs. Vivian, I’m going to smoke a cigarette. Do you feel dreadfully shocked?”

  Mrs. Vivian laughed.

  “My dear Dodo, I should never venture to be shocked at anything you did. You are so complete that I should be afraid to spoil you utterly, if I tried to suggest corrections.”

  Dodo lit a cigarette with a slightly defiant air. Mrs. Vivian’s manner had been entirely sincere, but she felt the same sort of resentment that a prisoner might feel if the executioner made sarcastic remarks to him. She looked on Mrs. Vivian as a sort of walking Inquisition.

  “My darling Dodo,” murmured Mrs. Vane, “I do so wish you would, not smoke, it will ruin your teeth entirely.”

  Dodo turned to Mrs. Vivian.

  “That means you think it would be very easy to spoil me, as you call it.”

  “Not at all,” said that lady. “I don’t understand you, that’s all, and I might be pulling out the key-stone of the arch unawares. Not that I suppose your character depends upon your smoking.”

  Dodo leaned back and laughed.

  “Oh, this is too dreadfully subtle,” she exclaimed. “I want to unbend my mind. Chesterford, come and talk to me, you are deliciously unbending.”

  CHAPTER FOUR.

  Lord and Lady Chesterford were expected home on the 6th of December. The marriage took place late in August, and they had gone off on the yacht directly afterwards, in order to spend a few warm months in the Mediterranean. Dodo had written home occasionally to Mrs. Vane, and now and then to Jack. To Jack her letters had never been more than a word or two, simply saying that they were enjoying themselves enormously, and that Jack had been hopelessly wrong. Mrs. Vane also had much reason to be satisfied. She had spent her autumn in a variety of fashionable watering-places, where her dresses had always been the awe and wonder of the town; she had met many acquaintances, to whom she had poured out her rapture over Dodo’s marriage; had declared that Chesterford was most charming, and that he and Dodo were quite another Adam and Eve in Paradise, and that she was really quite jealous of Dodo. When they left England, they had intended to spend the winter abroad and not come back till February, but early in December a telegram had arrived at Winston, Lord Chesterford’s country house, saying that they would be back in ten days. About the same time Jack received a letter, saying that their change of plans was solely owing to the fact that Dodo was rather tired of the sea, and the weather was bad, and that she had never been so happy in her life. Dodo’s eagerness to assure Jack of this struck him as being in rather bad taste. She ought to have entirely ignored his warnings. The happiness of a newly-married woman ought to be so absorbing, as to make her be unaware of the existence of other people; and this consciousness in Dodo of her triumphant superiority of knowledge, led him to suppose he was right rather than wrong. He was unfeignedly sorry not to be sure that she had been right. When he told Dodo that he wished to be jealous of Chesterford, he was quite sincere. Since he could not have Dodo himself, at any rate let her make someone happy. Dodo also informed him that they were going to have a house-party that Christmas and that he must come, and she had asked Mrs. Vivian, to show that she wasn’t afraid of her any longer, and that Maud was coming, and she wished Jack would marry her. Then followed a dozen other names belonging to Dodo’s private and particular set, who had all been rather disgusted at her marrying what they chose to call a Philistine. It had been quite hoped that she would marry Jack. Jack was not a Philistine at all, though the fact of his having proposed to her remained a secret. Maud, on the other hand, was a Philistine; and it was one of Dodo’s merits that she did not drop those who originally had claims on her, when she became the fashion. She was constantly trying to bring Maud into notice, but Maud resisted the most well-meant shoves. She had none of Dodo’s vivacity and talents; in fact, her talents lay chiefly in the direction of arranging the places at a dinner-party, and in doing a great deal of unnecessary worsted work. What happened to her worsted work nobody ever knew. It was chiefly remarkable for the predominance of its irregularities, and a suggestion of damaged goods about it, in consequence of much handling. To Dodo it seemed an incredible stupidity that anyone should do worsted work, or, if they did do it, not do it well. She used to tell Maud that it was done much more cheaply in shops, and much better. Then Maud would drop it for a time, and take to playing the piano, but that was even more oppressively stupid to Dodo’s mind than the worsted work. Maud had a perfect genius for not letting her right hand know what her left hand was doing, a principle which was abhorrent to Dodo in every application. The consequence of all this was, that Dodo was apt to regard her sister as a failure, though she still, as in the present instance, liked giving Maud what she considered a helping hand. It must be confessed that Dodo’s efforts were not altogether unselfish. She liked her environment to be as great a success as herself, as it thus added to her own completeness, just as a picture looks better in a good frame than in a shabby one. Maud, however, had no desire to be a success. She was perfectly happy to sit in the background and do the worsted work. She longed to be let alone. At times she would make her escape to the iron works and try to cultivate the domestic virtues in attending to her father. She thought with a kind of envy of the daughters of country clergymen, whose mediocre piano-playing was invaluable to penny readings and village concerts, and for whose worsted work there was a constant demand, in view of old women and almshouses. She had hoped that Dodo’s slumming experiences would bring her into connection with this side of life, and had dispensed tea and buns with a kind of rapture on the occasion of Dodo’s tea-party, but her sister had dropped her slums, as we have seen, at this point, and Maud was too shy and uninitiative to take them up alone. She had an excellent heart, but excellent hearts were out of place in Mrs. Vane’s establishment. Dodo had confessed her inability to deal with them.

  Dodo’s general invitation to Jack was speedily followed by a special one from Winston, naming the first week in January as the time of the party. Jack was met on his arrival by Chesterford, and as they drove back the latter gave him particulars about the party in the house.

  “They are chiefly Dodo’s friends,” he said. “Do you know, Jack, except for you, I think I am rather afraid of Dodo’s friends, they are so dreadfully clever, you know. Of course they are all very charming, but they talk about character. Now I don’t care to talk about character. I know a good man when I see him, and that’s all that matters as far as I can judge. Dodo was saying last night that her potentiality for good was really much stronger than her potentiality for evil, and that her potentiality for evil was only skin deep, and they all laughed, and said they didn’t believe it. And Dodo said, ‘Ask Chesterford if it isn’t,’ and God only knows what I said.”

  Jack laughed.

  “Poor old fellow,” he said, “you and I will go to the smoking-room, and talk about nothing at all subtle. I don’t like subtleties either.”

  “Ah, but they expect great things of you,” said Chesterford ruefully. “Dodo was saying you were an apostle. Are you an apostle, Jack?”

  “Oh, that’s only a nickname of Dodo’s,” he said, smiling. “But who are these dreadfully clever people?”

  “Oh, there’s Ledgers — you know him, I suppose — and a Miss Edith Staines, and a girl whom I don’t know, called Miss Grantham, whom Ledgers said, when she was out of the room last night, that he had ‘discovered.’ What he meant Heaven knows. Then there’s Maud, who is a nice girl. She went round to the keeper’s with me this afternoon, and played with the baby. Then there’s Bertie Arbuthnot, and I think that’s all.”

  Jack laughed.

  “I don’t think we need mind them,” he said. “We’ll form a square to resist cavalry.”.

  “Bertie’s the best of the lot,” said Chesterford, “and they laughed at him rather, I think. But he is quite unconscious of it.”

  Th
ey drove on in silence a little way. Then. Chesterford said, —

  “Jack, Dodo makes me the happiest of men. I am afraid sometimes that she is too clever, and wishes I was more so, but it makes no difference. Last night, as I was in the smoking-room she sent to say she wanted to see me, and I went up. She said that she wanted to talk to me, now she had got rid of all those tiresome people, and said so many charming things that I got quite conceited, and had to stop her. I often wonder, Jack, what I have done to deserve her. And she went on talking about our yachting, and those months in London when we were first engaged, and she told me to go on smoking, and she would have a cigarette too. And we sat on talking, till I saw she was tired, and then I went away, though he would hardly let me.”

  This communication had only the effect of making Jack rather uncomfortable. Knowing what he did, he knew that this was not all genuine on Dodo’s part. It was obviously an effort to keep it up, to use a vulgar term. And since it was not all genuine, the doubt occurred as to whether any of it was. Jack had a profound belief in Dodo’s dramatic talents. That the need for keeping it up had appeared already was an alarming symptom, but the real tragedy would begin on that day when Dodo first failed to do so. And from that moment Jack regarded his prophecy as certain to be fulfilled. The overture had begun, and in course of time the curtain would rise on a grim performance.

  They drove up to the door, and entered the large oak-panelled hall, hung all round with portraits of the family. The night was cold, and there was a fire sparkling in the wide, open grate. As they entered, an old collie, who was enjoying the fruits of a well-spent life on the hearthrug, stretched his great, tawny limbs, and shoved a welcoming nose into Chesterford’s hand. This produced heartburnings of the keenest order in the mind of a small fox-terrier pup, who consisted mainly of head and legs, which latter he evidently considered at present more as a preventive towards walking than an aid. Being unable to reach his hand the puppy contented himself with sprawling over his boots, and making vague snaps at the collie. It was characteristic of Chesterford that all animals liked him. He had a tender regard for the feelings of anything that was dependent on him. Dodo thought this almost inexplicable. She disliked to see animals in pain, because they usually howled, but the dumb anguish of a dog who considers himself neglected conveyed nothing to her. From within a door to the right, came sounds of talking and laughter.

  There was something pathetic in the sight of this beautiful home, and its owner standing with his back to the fire, as Jack divested himself of his coat. Chesterford was so completely happy, so terribly unconscious of what Jack felt sure was going on. He looked the model of the typical English gentleman, with his tall stature and well-bred face. Jack remembered passing on the road a labourer who was turning into his cottage. The firelight had thrown a bright ray across the snow-covered road, and inside he had caught a momentary glimpse of the wife with a baby in her arms, and a couple of girls laying the table-cloth. He remembered afresh Dodo’s remark about waiting until the chimney smoked, and devoutly hoped that the chimney of this well-appointed house was in good order.

  Chesterford led the way to the drawing-room door, and pushed it open for Jack to enter. Dodo was sitting at the tea-table, talking to some half-dozen people who were grouped round her.

  As Jack entered, she rose and came towards him with a smile of welcome.

  “Ah, Jack,” she said, “this is delightful; I am tremendously glad to see you! Let’s see, whom do you know? May I introduce you to Miss Grantham? Mr. Broxton. I think you know everybody else. Chesterford, come here and sit by me at once. You’ve been an age away. I expect you’ve been getting into mischief.” She wheeled a chair up for him, and planted him down in it. He looked radiantly happy.

  “Now, Jack,” she went on, “tell us what you’ve been doing all these months. It’s years since we saw you. I think you look all right. No signs of breaking down yet. I hoped you would have gone into a rapid consumption, because I was married, but it doesn’t seem to have made any difference to anybody except Chesterford and me. Jack, don’t you think I shall make an excellent matron? I shall get Maud to teach me some of her crochet-stitches. Have you ever been here before? Chesterford, you shut it up, didn’t you, for several years, until you thought of bringing me here? Sugar, Jack? Two lumps? Chesterford, you mustn’t eat sugar, you’re getting quite fat already. You must obey me, you know. You promised to love, honour and obey. Oh, no; I did that. However, sugar is bad for you.”

  “Dodo keeps a tight hand on me, you see,” said Chesterford, from the depths of his chair. “Dodo, give me the sugar, or we shall quarrel.”

  Dodo laughed charmingly.

  “He would quarrel with his own wife for a lump of sugar,” said Dodo dramatically; “but she won’t quarrel with him. Take it then.”

  She glanced at Jack for a moment as she said this, but Jack was talking to Miss Grantham, and either did not see, or did not seem to. Jack had a pleasant impression of light hair, dark grey eyes, and a very fair complexion. But somehow it produced no more effect on him than do those classical profiles which are commoner on the lids of chocolate boxes than elsewhere. Her “discoverer” was sitting in a chair next her, talking to her with something of the air of a showman exhibiting the tricks of his performing bear. His manner seemed to say, “See what an intelligent animal.” The full sublimity of Lord Ledgers’ remark had not struck him till that moment.

  Miss Grantham was delivering herself of a variety of opinions in a high, penetrating voice.

  “Oh, did you never hear him sing last year?” she was saying to Lord Ledgers. “Mr. Broxton, you must have heard him. He has the most lovely voice. He simply sings into your inside. You feel as if someone had got hold of your heart, and was stroking it. Don’t you know how some sounds produce that effect? I went with Dodo once. She simply wept floods, but I was too far gone for that. He had put a little stopper on my tear bottle, and though I was dying to cry, I couldn’t.”

  “I always wonder how sorry we are when we cry,” said Lord Ledgers in a smooth, low voice. “It always strikes me that people who don’t cry probably feel most.”

  “Oh, you are a horrid, unfeeling monster,” remarked Miss Grantham; “that’s what comes of being a man. Just because you are not in the habit of crying yourself, you think that you have all the emotions, but stoically repress them. Now I cultivate emotions. I would walk ten miles any day in order to have an emotion. Wouldn’t you, Mr. Broxton?”

  “It obviously depends on what sort of emotion I should find when I walked there,” said Jack. “There are some emotions that I would walk further to avoid.”

  “Oh, of course, the common emotions, ‘the litany things,’ as Dodo calls them,” said Miss Grantham, dismissing them lightly with a wave of her hand. “But what I like is a nice little sad emotion that makes you feel so melancholy you don’t know what to do with yourself. I don’t mean deaths and that sort of thing, but seeing someone you love being dreadfully unhappy and extremely prosperous at the same time.”

  “But it’s rather expensive for the people you love,” said Jack.

  “Oh, we must all make sacrifices,” said Miss Grantham. “It’s quite worth while if you gratify your friends. I would not mind being acutely unhappy, if I could dissect my own emotions, and have them photographed and sent round to my friends.”

  “What a charming album we might all make,” said Lord Ledgers. “Page 1. Miss Grantham’s heart in the acute stage. Page 2. Mortification setting in. Page 3. The lachrymatory gland permanently closed by a tenor voice.”

  “Poor old Chesterford,” thought Jack, “this is rather hard on him.”

  But Chesterford was not to be pitied just now, for Dodo was devoting her exclusive conversation to him in defiance of her duties as hostess. She was recounting to him how she had spent every moment of his absence at the station. Certainly she was keeping it up magnificently at present.

  “And Mrs. Vivian comes to-morrow,” she was saying. “You like her, don’t
you, Chesterford? You must be awfully good to her, and take her to see all the drunken idlers in the village. That will be dear of you. It’s just what she likes. She has sort of passion for drunken cabmen, who stamp on their wives. If you stamped on me a little every evening, she would cultivate you to any extent. Shall I lie down on the floor for you to begin?”

  Chesterford leant back in his chair in a kind of ecstasy.

  “Ah, Dodo,” he said, “you are wonderfully good to me. But I must go and write two notes before dinner; and you must amuse your guests. I am very glad Jack has come. He is a very good chap. But don’t make him an apostle.”

  Dodo laughed.

  “I shall make a little golden hoop for him like the apostles in the Arundels, and another for you, and when nobody else is there you can take them off, and play hoops with them. I expect the apostles did that when they went for a walk. You couldn’t wear it round your hat, could you?”

  Miss Grantham instantly annexed Dodo.

  “Dodo,” she said, “come and take my part. These gentlemen say you shouldn’t cultivate emotions.”

  “No, not that quite,” corrected Jack. “I said it was expensive for your friends if they had to make themselves miserable, in order to afford food for your emotions.”

  “Now, isn’t that selfish?” said Miss Grantham, with the air of a martyr at the stake. “Here am I ready to be drawn and quartered for anyone’s amusement, and you tell me you are sorry for your part, but that it costs too much. Maud, come off that sofa, and take up the daggers for a too unselfish woman.”

  “I expect I don’t know much about these things,” said Maud.

  “No; Maud would not go further than wrapping herself in a winding-sheet of blue worsted,” remarked Dodo incisively.

  Maud flushed a little.

  “Oh, Dodo!” she exclaimed deprecatingly.

  “It’s no use hitting Maud,” said Dodo pensively. “You might as well hit a feather bed. Now, if you hit Jack, he will hit back.”