Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “I should like to know her,” said Lady Grantham. The remark was characteristic.

  Lady Grantham returned to the subject of Dodo in the course of the evening.

  “Everyone says she is so supremely successful,” she said to Edith. “What’s her method?”

  All successful people, according to Lady Grantham, had a method. They found out by experience what rôle suited them best, and they played it assiduously. To do her justice, there was a good deal of truth in it with regard to the people among whom she moved.

  “Her method is purely to be dramatic, in the most unmistakable way,” said Edith, after some consideration. “She is almost always picturesque. To all appearance her only method is to have no method. She seems to say and do anything that comes into her head, but all she says and does is rather striking. She can accommodate herself to nearly any circumstances. She is never colourless; and she is not quite like anybody else I ever met. She has an immense amount of vitality, and she is almost always doing something. It’s hopeless to try and describe her; you will see. She is beautiful, unscrupulous, dramatic, warm-hearted, cold-blooded, and a hundred other things.”

  “Oh, you don’t do her justice, Edith,” remarked Miss Grantham. “She’s much more than all that. She has got genius, or something very like it. I think Dodo gives me a better idea of the divine fire than anyone else.”

  “Then the divine fire resembles something not at all divine on occasions,” observed Edith. “I don’t think that the divine fire talks so much nonsense either.”

  Lady Grantham got up.

  “I expect to be disappointed,” she said. “Geniuses are nearly always badly dressed, or they wear spectacles, or they are very short. However, I shall come. Come, Nora, it’s time to go to bed.”

  Lady Grantham never said “good-night” or “good-morning” to the members of her family. “They all sleep like hogs,” she said, “and they are very cheerful in the morning. They get on quite well enough without my good wishes. It is very plebeian to be cheerful in the morning.”

  Although, as I have mentioned before, Sir Robert was an adept at choosing his conversation to suit his audience, there was one subject on which he considered that he might talk to anyone, and in which the whole world must necessarily take an intelligent and eager interest. The Romans used to worship the bones and spirits of their ancestors, and Sir Robert, perhaps because he was undoubtedly of Roman imperial blood, kept up the same custom. Frank used irreverently to call it “family prayers.”

  To know how the Granthams were connected with the Campbells, and the Vere de Veres, and the Stanleys, and the Montmorencies, and fifty other bluest strains, seemed to Sir Robert to be an essential part of a liberal education.

  To try to be late for family prayers was hopeless. They were at no fixed hour, and were held as many times during the day as necessary. Sometimes they were cut down to a sentence or two; suggested by the mention of some ducal name; sometimes they involved a lengthy, pious orgie in front of the portraits. To-night Edith was distinctly to blame, for she deliberately asked the name of the artist who had painted the picture hanging over the door into the library.

  Sir Robert, according to custom, seemed rather bored by the subject. “Let’s see,” he said; “I’ve got no head for names. I think that’s the one, of my great-grandfather, isn’t it? A tall, handsome man in peer’s robes?”

  “Now he’s off.” This sotto voce from Frank, who was reading Badminton on Cover Shooting.

  Sir Robert drew his hand over his beautiful moustache once or twice.

  “Ah, yes, how stupid of me. That’s the Reynolds, of course. Reynolds was quite unknown when he did that portrait. Lord Linton, that was my great-grand-father — he was made an earl after that portrait was taken — saw a drawing in a little shop in Piccadilly, which took his fancy, and he inquired the name of the artist. The shopman didn’t know; but he said that the young man came very often with drawings to sell, and he gave him a trifle for them. Well, Lord Linton sent for him, and gave him a commission to do his portrait, had it exhibited, and young Reynolds came into notice. The portrait came into possession of my grandfather, who, as you know, was a younger son; don’t know how, and there it is.”

  “It’s a beautiful picture,” remarked Edith.

  “Ah, you like it? Lord Sandown, my first cousin, was here last week, and he said, ‘Didn’t know you’d been raised to the Peerage yet, Bob.’ He thought it was a portrait of me. It is said to be very like. You’d noticed the resemblance, no doubt?”

  “A tall, handsome man,” remarked Frank to the fireplace.

  “I don’t know as much as I ought about my ancestors,” continued Sir Robert, who was doing himself a gross injustice. “You ought to get Sandown on the subject. I found a curious old drawing the other day in a scrapbook belonging to my father. The name Grantham is printed in the centre of a large folio sheet, with a circle round it to imitate the sun, and from it go out rays in all directions, with the names of the different families with which we have intermarried.”

  “I haven’t got any ancestors,” remarked Edith. “My grandfather was a draper in Leeds, and made his fortune there. I should think ancestors were a great responsibility; you have to live up to them, or else they live down to you.”

  “I’m always saying to Frank,” said Sir Robert, “that you have to judge a man by himself, and not by his family. If a man is a pleasant fellow it doesn’t matter whether his family came over with the Conqueror or not. Our parson here, for instance, he’s a decent sensible fellow, and I’m always delighted to give him a few days’ shooting, or see him to dinner on Sunday after his services. His father was a tobacconist in the village, you know. There’s the shop there now.”

  Edith rose to go.

  Sir Robert lighted her candle for her.

  “I should like to show you the few portraits we’ve got,” he said. “There are some interesting names amongst them; but, of course, most of our family things are at Langfort.”

  “My grandfather’s yard measure is the only heirloom that we’ve got,” said Edith. “I’ll show it to Lady Grantham when she comes to stay with me.”

  Frank had followed them into the hall.

  “Family prayers over yet, father?” he asked. “I shall go and smoke. I hope you’ve been devout, Miss Staines.”

  Edith left the Granthams two days after this, “to buy legs of mutton,” she explained, “and hire a charwoman. I don’t suppose there’s anyone at home. But I shall have things straight by the time you come.”

  Sir Robert was very gracious, and promised to send her a short memoir he was writing on the fortunes of the family. It was to be bound in white vellum, with their arms in gilt upon the outside.

  Edith, found no one at home but a few servants on board wages, who did not seem at all pleased to see her. She devoted her evening to what she called tidying, which consisted in emptying the contents of a quantity of drawers on to the floor of her room, and sitting down beside them. She turned them over with much energy for about half an hour, and then decided that she could throw nothing away, and told her maid to put them back again, and played her piano till bed-time.

  Lady Grantham and Nora followed in a few days, and Dodo was to come the same evening. They were sitting put in the garden after dinner, when the sound of wheels was heard, and Edith went round to the front door to welcome her.

  Dodo had not dined, so she went and “made hay among the broken meats,” as she expressed it. Travelling produced no kind of fatigue in her; and the noise, and shaking, and smuts, that prey on most of us in railway carriages always seemed to leave her untouched. Dodo was particularly glad to get to England. She had had rather a trying time of it towards the end, for Jack and the Prince got on extremely badly together, and, as they both wished to be with Dodo, collisions were frequent. She gave the story of her adventure to Edith with singular frankness as she ate her broken meats.

  “You see, Jack got it into his head that the Prince is a cad and a b
rute,” said Dodo. “I quite admit that he may be, only neither Jack nor I have the slightest opportunity for judging. Socially he is neither, and what he is morally doesn’t concern me. How should it? It isn’t my business to inquire into his moral character. I’m not his mother nor his mother confessor. He is good company. I particularly like his sister, whom you must come and see, Edith. She and the Prince are going to stay with us when we get back to Winston; and he knows how to behave. Jack has a vague sort of feeling that his morals ought to prevent him from tolerating the Prince, which made him try to find opportunities for disliking him. But Jack didn’t interfere with me.”

  “No,” said Edith; “I really don’t see why private individuals shouldn’t associate with whom they like. One doesn’t feel bound to be friends with people of high moral character, so I don’t see why one should be bound to dislike people of low ditto.”

  “That’s exactly my view,” said Dodo; “morals don’t come into the question at all. I particularly dislike some of the cardinal virtues — and the only reason for associating with anybody is that one takes pleasure in their company. Of course one wouldn’t go about with a murderer, however amusing, because his moral deficiencies-might produce unpleasant physical consequences to yourself. But my morals are able to look after themselves. I’m not afraid of moral cut-throats. Morals don’t come into the social circle. You might as well dislike a man because he’s got a sharp elbow-joint. He won’t use it on your ribs, you know, in the drawing-room. To get under the influence of an immoral man would be different. We’ll, I’ve finished. Where are the others? Give me a cigarette, Edith. I sha’n’t shock your servants, shall I? I’ve given up shocking people.”

  Dodo and Edith strolled out, and Dodo was introduced to Lady Grantham.

  “What an age you and Edith have been,” said Miss Grantham. “I have been dying to see you, Dodo.”

  “We were talking,” said Dodo, “and for once Edith agreed with me.”

  “She never agrees with me,” remarked Lady Grantham.

  “I wonder if I should always agree with you then,” said Dodo. “Do things that disagree with the same thing agree with one another?”

  “What did Edith agree with you about?” asked Miss Grantham.

  “I’m not sure that I did really agree with her,” interpolated Edith.

  “Oh, about morals,” said Dodo. “I said that a man’s morals did not matter in ordinary social life. That they did not come into the question at all.”

  “No, I don’t think I do agree with you,” said Edith. “All social life is a degree of intimacy, and you said yourself that you wouldn’t get under the influence of an immoral man — in other words, you wouldn’t be intimate with him.”

  “Oh, being intimate hasn’t anything to do with being under a man’s influence,” said Dodo. “I’m very intimate with lots of people. Jack, for instance, but I’m not under his influence.”

  “Then you think it doesn’t matter whether society is composed of people without morals?” said Edith.

  “I think it’s a bad thing that morals should deteriorate in any society,” said Dodo; “but I don’t think that society should take cognisance of the moral code. Public opinion don’t touch that. If a man is a brute, he won’t be any better for knowing that other people disapprove of him. If he knows that, and is worth anything at all, it will simply have the opposite effect on him. He very likely will try to hide it; but that doesn’t make it any better. A whited sepulchre is no better than a sepulchre unwhitened. You must act by your own lights. If an action doesn’t seem to you wrong nothing in the world will prevent your doing it, if your desire is sufficiently strong. You cannot elevate tone by punishing offences. There are no fewer criminals since the tread-mill was invented and Botany Bay discovered.”

  “You mean that there would be no increase in crime if the law did not punish?”

  “I mean that punishment is not the best way of checking crime, though that is really altogether a different question. You won’t check immorality by dealing with it as a social crime.”

  There was a short silence, broken only by the whispering of the wind in the fir trees. Then on the stillness came a light, rippling laugh. Dodo got out of her chair, and plucked a couple of roses from a bush near her.

  “I can’t be serious any longer,” she said; “not a single moment longer. I’m so dreadfully glad to be in England again. Really, there is no place like it. I hate the insolent extravagant beauty of Switzerland — it is like chromo lithographs. Look at that long, flat, grey distance over there. There is nothing so beautiful as that abroad.”

  Dodo fastened the roses in the front of her dress, and laughed again.

  “I laugh for pure happiness,” she continued. “I laughed when I saw the cliff of Dover to-day, not because I was sea-sick — I never am sea-sick — but simply because I was coming home again. Jack parted from me at Dover. I am very happy about Jack. I believe in him thoroughly.”

  Dodo was getting serious again in spite of herself. Lady Grantham was watching her curiously, and without any feeling of disappointment. She did not wear spectacles, she was, at least, as tall as herself, and she dressed, if anything, rather better. She was still wearing half-mourning, but half-mourning suited Dodo very well.

  “Decidedly it’s a pity to analyse one’s feelings,” Dodo went on, “they do resolve themselves into such very small factors. I am well, I am in England, where you can eat your dinner without suspicion of frogs, or caterpillars in your cauliflower. I had two caterpillars in my cauliflower at Zermatt one night. I shall sleep in a clean white bed, and I shall not have to use Keating. I can talk as ridiculously as I like, without thinking of the French for anything. Oh, I’m entirely happy.”

  Dodo was aware of more reasons for happiness than she mentioned. She was particularly conscious of the relief she felt in getting away from the Prince. For some days past she had been unpleasantly aware of his presence. She could not manage to think of him quite as lightly as she thought of anyone else. It was a continual effort to her to appear quite herself in his presence, and she was constantly rushing into extremes in order to seem at her ease. He was stronger, she felt, than she was, and she did not like it. The immense relief which his absence brought more than compensated for the slight blankness that his absence left. In a way she felt dependent on him, which chafed and irritated her, for she had never come under such a yoke before. She had had several moments of sudden anger against herself on her way home. She found herself always thinking about him when she was not thinking about anything else; and though she was quite capable of sending her thoughts off to other subjects, when they had done their work they always fluttered back again to the same resting-place, and Dodo was conscious of an effort, slight indeed, but still an effort, in frightening them off. Her curious insistence on her own happiness had struck Edith. She felt it unnatural that Dodo should mention it, and she drew one of two conclusions from it; either that Dodo had had a rather trying time, for some reason or other, or that she wished to convince herself, by constant repetition, of something that she was not quite sure about; and both of these conclusions were in a measure correct.

  “Who was out at Zermatt when you were there?” inquired Miss Grantham.

  “Oh, there was mother there, and Maud and her husband, and a Russian princess, Waldenech’s sister, and Jack, of course,” said Dodo.

  “Wasn’t Prince Waldenech there himself?” she asked.

  “The Prince? Oh yes, he was there; didn’t I say so?” said Dodo.

  “He’s rather amusing, isn’t he?” said Miss Grantham. “I don’t know him at all.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Dodo; “a little ponderous, you know, but very presentable, and good company.”

  Edith looked up suddenly at Dodo. There was an elaborate carelessness, she thought, in her voice. It was just a little overdone. The night was descending fast, and she could only just see the lines of her face above the misty folds of her grey dress. But even in that half light she tho
ught that her careless voice did not quite seem a true interpretation of her expression. It might have been only the dimness of the shadow, but she thought she looked anxious and rather depressed.

  Lady Grantham drew her shawl more closely round her shoulders, and remarked that it was getting cold. Edith got up and prepared to go in, and Miss Grantham nestled in her chair. Only Dodo stood quite motionless, and Edith noticed that her hands were tearing one of the roses to pieces, and scattering the petals on the grass.

  “Are you going in, Dodo?” she asked; “or would you rather stop out a little longer?”

  “I think I won’t come in just yet,” said Dodo; “it’s so delightful to have a breath of cool air, after being in a stuffy carriage all day. But don’t any of you stop out if you’d rather go in. I shall just smoke one more cigarette.”

  “I’ll stop with you, Dodo,” said Miss Grantham. “I don’t want to go in at all. Edith, if you’re going in, throw the windows in the drawing-room open, and play to us.”

  Lady Grantham and Edith went towards the house.

  “I didn’t expect her to be a bit like that,” said Lady Grantham. “I always heard she was so lively, and talked more nonsense in half an hour than we can get through in a year. She’s very beautiful.”

  “I think Dodo must be tired or something,” said Edith. “I never saw her like that before. She was horribly serious. I hope nothing has happened.”

  The piano in the drawing-room was close to a large French window opening on to the lawn. Edith threw it open, and stood for a moment looking out into the darkness. She could just see Dodo and Nora sitting where they had left them, though they were no more than two pale spots against the dark background. She was conscious of a strange feeling that there was an undercurrent at work in Dodo, which showed itself by a few chance bubbles and little sudden eddies on the surface, which she thought required explanation.

  Dodo certainly was not quite like herself. There was no edge to her vivacity: her attempts not to be serious had been distinctly forced, and she was unable to keep it up. Edith felt a vague sense of coming disaster; slight but certain. However, she drew her chair to the piano and began to play.