Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Why, Eva, you said just the opposite a minute ago.”

  The mistake was pardonable enough: when a man is in love with a woman, he naturally thinks of her by her Christian name, and it is excusable if, in some momentary excitement, he uses it. Eva was startled. He had never called her that before, and, losing her self-control for one half second, she uttered a sudden exclamation of anger, and glanced at her husband. He was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, looking at the sunset. He turned to Jim Armine, and said politely, —

  “I think you must have misunderstood Lady Hayes.”

  The poor young man flushed deeply, and Eva bit her lips, divided between her annoyance and a desire to laugh. But the annoyance conquered in the end, as the delicate, veiled insult of her husband’s speech dawned upon her. His words certainly bore another interpretation, though whether he had meant it or not she was not quite sure, and she could not ask him. But Jim Armine evidently took them in the obscurer sense and was horribly disconcerted, and Eva not unnaturally felt extremely annoyed. He was, possibly, trying to make a fool of her, and she had not the least intention of being treated in such a manner. After a few moments she found something to say, but the conversation was evidently over. Jim Armine soon strolled away to the other end of the deck, and Eva was left alone with her husband.

  As soon as the other was out of hearing, she said to him, —

  “I do not wish you to speak of me in that way. Please remember that.”

  “I regret having offended you,” replied he, “but I do not choose that Armine should call you by your Christian name, Eva, in fact.”

  “Your speech implied more than that,” she said.

  Lord Hayes determined to make a stand.

  “You are very quick at finding meanings.”

  “What you said was insulting.”

  “It is insulting to you that he should call you Eva?”

  “Do you admit, then, that your speech bore another meaning?”

  Lord Hayes lit another cigarette.

  “I admit nothing of the sort. Not at all.”

  “You will be so good as to apologise to him.”

  “I have no reason for supposing that he imagined it to bear any meaning but the obvious one — the one, in fact, which I meant to convey. Of course you are at liberty to explain to him that, if you choose.”

  For the first time Eva was conscious of a slight disadvantage, and Lord Hayes distinctly saw it. As she sat still silent, he looked at his watch and remarked, —

  “I am afraid they propose to give us dinner at seven. It is a barbarous custom. Perhaps you would like to know that it is now five minutes to seven.”

  He carefully furled his white umbrella, and walked down the deck to the saloon. He made in his mind a careful little note of the occurrence, against that possible contingency of suspicion coming down the avenue. It was characteristic of him that he was as evenly polite as ever to Jim Armine, and advised him to drink white wine and not red, and remarked to him at tea afterwards that the Albert biscuits were stale, but that it was interesting to observe that the English manufactories of biscuits held their own abroad; in fact, that the makers of the stale Albert biscuits were Huntly & Palmer.

  This suggestive little scene accounted, in his mind, for Eva’s unusual want of politeness on the subject of his yachtsman’s cap and brown canvas shoes. But he did not consider that a reason for abandoning them; in fact, they became to him a sort of commemorative medal on the occasion of his victory. A force which has an unbroken record of defeat is apt to dwell on a single and unexpected victory. In the main he was right in attributing Eva’s irritation that morning to her slight discomfiture on the evening before, for though she had dismissed, or rather forgotten, the occurrence, there was still in her a latent resentment that unconsciously vented itself in this manner.

  They had been at the villa four or five days, and Lord Hayes had got into the habit of observing his wife and Jim Armine somewhat closely. Eva was rather silent; to her husband she hardly spoke at all, though now and then at meals she would begin talking, more to herself than the others. Jim Armine was not a very wise young man, and he said things sometimes, that, with another woman, would have betrayed him, but Eva did not seem to notice them.

  They were seated at lunch one day, when Eva took up her parable. She had said nothing at all, as her way was, for some minutes, and Lord Hayes had been describing to Jim how the eucalyptus oil was extracted from the tree.

  “You must excuse my silence, Mr. Armine,” she said, “but, you know, I have all sorts of recollections about this villa. We were here, you know, on our wedding tour, after we had been on the Riviera — just Hayes and myself — and we used to sit out in the garden and listen to the nightingales singing of love. It was very romantic; no doubt Hayes has spoken to you of it, when you pour out your hearts in the smoking-room, after I have gone to bed. It is always odd to me that men choose that time for being confidential. I should have thought it would have disturbed your night’s rest.”

  “How do you know that we are confidential, then?” asked Jim.

  “Why, of course you are; there isn’t time to be confidential during the day. Besides, that is the only time when you are sure not to be invaded by women. I shall hide in the smoking-room some night and listen to what you say.”

  “There is nothing you might not hear,” said her husband.

  “You mean that, I suppose, in order to deter me from listening, assuming that, being a woman, I only care to hear what is not meant for my ears. But you said it very politely.”

  “Not at all; it was a formal invitation,” said he, “an assurance of how entirely welcome you would be.”

  “Thanks. Of course you and I are under a sort of mutual compact to delight in each other’s society at any time or place.”

  Lord Hayes laughed.

  “One eternal honeymoon. Surely the golden age will return.”

  Jim Armine, not unnaturally, felt that this was distinctly a comedy à deux, and that the presence of a third person was unnecessary. But no man can leave his red mullet half eaten for such reasons. Everything goes to the wall before our material needs.

  Lord Hayes’s punctilious little manner always vanished in anything like a scene. He began to be self-possessed at exactly that point when most self-possessed people begin to be nervous and flurried, for his punctiliousness was the result not of nervousness, but a desire not to be nervous, and when the occasion was interesting enough to allow him to forget this, his tinge of finished cynicism and indifference to his fellow men assumed its natural predominance. He rather enjoyed a little polite sparring match with his wife, until he began to get the worst of it; as long as the buttons were on the foils he could fence very decently, but the sight of the bare point distinctly discomposed him.

  Eva flushed.

  “Let us reserve our raptures for when we are alone,” she said. “They are slightly embarrassing to a third person.”

  Lord Hayes smiled. For the second time the banner of victory seemed to wave over his head. He saw his wife flush, and knew that she was very angry. That desire to avenge herself which she had felt so strongly on her return from her honeymoon, the sense that she had been trapped, and was being exhibited as a rare bird in a cage, was very strong in her; the added insolence of the trapper pretending to be on intimate and loving terms with her made her furious, and the consciousness that she had brought it upon herself, did not tend to diminish her rage. For the second time he was trying to make a fool of her before a third person.

  How far a scene that took place a day or two after this was brought on by Eva’s dislike of her husband and her thirst for vengeance, is not part of this narrative to determine. The chronicler’s mission is not to form conclusions, but to present data, and my immediate mission is to present some rather important data.

  Even in December, in Algiers, it is often pleasant to sit out of doors at nine in the evening, for the air is cool but dry, and Eva often spent an hour in t
he little open passage which ran round the central courtyard of the house, and in which, a year before, she had talked to her husband on the position of women. This time it was Jim Armine who was her companion; Lord Hayes had gone upstairs to write to his mother, and he proposed to give her some accurate descriptions, based on observation, about the date palm.

  His room looked out on to the aforementioned courtyard, and before beginning his letter, he went across to the window to close it, for he had heard that the night air of Algiers is unwholesome. Just as he was in the act of taking this little precaution, there lighted on his ear the grumbling noise of a basket chair being dragged in passive, grating resistance over a stone floor, followed by the sound of Eva’s voice. As he could not see her, he came to the very logical conclusion that she was sitting directly below his window, and where she could not see him, and as she was talking, and Jim Armine was the only person in the house, he pictured her talking to him. After all, the evening air was not unpleasant, and instead of closing the window he stood by it and listened. The emphatic deliberation of this manœuvre was, he felt vaguely, in its favour from a conventional point of view.

  The voices, at first, were inaudible to him, for the sense of hearing requires focussing as much as the sense of sight, and he only caught a word here and there. But, for the sake of the reader, it will be necessary to give the inaudible part of the conversation.

  The two seated themselves in their basket chairs, and Jim Armine lit a cigarette. There was a small lamp by him, the flame of which burned steadily in the still air. It cast a square of brilliant light into the courtyard beyond, across which, as across a magic-lantern sheet, white moths wandered from time to time, losing themselves again in the surrounding dark. There were several moments’ silence, and then he looked at Eva, half of whose face was in brilliant illumination, and said, —

  “You look tired to-night.”

  “No, I am not tired,” she said, “but I am feeling blank. Just now everything appears to me extremely uninteresting. I know from experience that things are not uninteresting really, and that is the worst of it. They are there, but I cannot touch them. I live in a grey fog; there is sunshine somewhere, quite close, but I cannot get to it. What else could I expect?”

  Jim was attending eagerly.

  “Of course I mayn’t say how sorry I am for you,” he said in a low voice.

  Eva did not turn her head, but the least sparkle returned to her eyes. Perhaps things were going to be amusing, after all, for a few minutes.

  “I am grateful, of course,” she said. “One is to be pitied when the fog is so palpably dense. Of course, it will lift again; fogs don’t last for ever. I am glad you are with us, though I don’t think you ought to be. After all, nothing matters much.”

  Lord Hayes had by this time successfully focussed his ear to the indistinct sounds, and Eva’s last remark was perfectly audible.

  “Ah! but things do matter,” said the young man earnestly. “And all men are not like some men.”

  “By which I suppose you mean me to understand that you are not like some men. How can I know that? You have no halo round your head, no dawning of ineffable joy in your face. Why should I suppose you are more than others? You have spoken to me before now of your great aims, your enthusiasms for great causes, by which, as far as I know, you only mean Home Rule, or the Unionist policy — I forgot what your politics are — and even that seems to have been in abeyance lately. You have been with us a week or more, and what have you done, what have you thought about? You seem to prefer, after all, talking to me—”

  “You are very cruel, Eva,” said he.

  Lord Hayes shut his window. Perhaps the night air was unwholesome after all. In any case, he had heard enough. Suspicion was running down the avenue, and growing clearer at every step. He hesitated a moment, and then left his room and walked downstairs. As he came out into the courtyard he heard the echo of Eva’s light, cruel laughter.

  Jim Armine was standing in front of her, with his arms hanging listlessly by his side. He did not look exactly happy, and the sight of Lord Hayes only added a very slightly deeper shade to his face.

  Eva’s husband never felt more methodically cool in his life. He had quite determined what to do. She had not seen him approach, and a smile still lingered on her lips. She was lying back in her chair, in indolent languor; only in her eyes was amusement and excitement.

  “You looked very fine just then,” she was saying to Jim, and turning, she saw her husband.

  The smile died off her lips, the amusement from her eyes. Only that air of utter languor was left. But she saw her vengeance coming near, as Lord Hayes had seen suspicion, and she met it joyfully.

  Lord Hayes laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder.

  “The steamers only go twice a week to Marseilles,” he said, “and there will be no steamer to-morrow. In the meantime, I am sure you will see the advisability of your spending the next two nights at the Hotel St. George. They say it is a very good hotel. Of course we shall not receive callers.”

  Eva shifted her position slightly, and looked at her husband.

  “Kindly explain why he should go off so suddenly,” she said.

  “I would not insult you by doing so.”

  “The insult lies in your silence. I suppose you overheard something.”

  “Yes,” said her husband. “I was listening.”

  “Ah! that is so like you. What were you listening for?”

  “I was listening more or less for what I heard.”

  “In fact, you suspected something of the sort?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet you did not warn me. Go away, Mr. Armine, and don’t listen, please. Sit down, Hayes; I wish to talk to you. What a lovely night it is. Quite idyllic. By the way, I wish to know whether your suspicions are entirely confined to him.”

  “Absolutely and entirely.”

  “You are quite sure?”

  “Quite.”

  “That is good,” said Eva. “But naturally I wanted to know. To return — why did you not warn me?”

  Lord Hayes found that things were not going exactly as he had foreseen.

  “I did not think it would be of any use to warn you,” he said at length.

  “Then, as you have no suspicions whatever of me, what purpose is served by his going away?”

  “His presence here, under this roof, is an insult to you and me.”

  “Yet you did not warn me,” said Eva. “It seems to me that you have cancelled the insult to yourself. Shall I tell you exactly what has happened, or do you know it all?”

  “I know enough,” he said.

  “Possibly, from your point of view. But I am afraid you must have left your box before the end. The end was important. How much did you hear exactly? However, it doesn’t matter. He said something — well, extremely ill-judged, and I told him he had mistaken me altogether. I laughed as well. Did you hear me laugh? I said I had not the slightest doubt of his devotion, but that I did not feel the least inclined to accept it. I don’t appreciate devotion, except my husband’s, of course.”

  Eva waited a moment. A refined cruelty waits a little every now and then for the full effect of the pain to be felt.

  “It is impossible that he should remain here,” said he.

  “Please listen to me a moment. I have not finished yet. You have insulted me grossly, twice; in the first place, by not warning me, in the second, by listening. I do not like insults in the least, and I have no intention of receiving them. Jim committed an extreme indiscretion, for which you are mainly responsible. If you had spoken to him or me before, this would not have happened. Again, if you had not listened, you would have known nothing of it, and you will be good enough to take my word for it, that no one would have been the worse. He would have learnt a lesson, and I should have had the pleasure of teaching it him. I did not expect this in the least, for I did not think he would have been so foolish as to speak of it.”

  The degradation whi
ch her husband would have imposed on her grew more and more bitter. She stood up with intense anger intensely repressed.

  “I choose that he should stop,” she said. “I despise you for listening. If you like, you may insist on his going, and, if you do, I shall go too. I tell you I am perfectly reckless, and perfectly determined. Your point is that I have been insulted. It was you who insulted me by not giving me warning, and if you play the spy on me in this way, I owe you absolutely nothing. That is all. You may choose; and choose quickly.”

  She waited a moment, giving him time to reply.

  “Apparently you have nothing to say. In fact, there is nothing for you to say. That is all, then. If you are going to sit out here with us, you had better tell them to bring you a chair. Understand me quite clearly; it is over. I shall never allude to this again, and I must ask you not to, either.”

  Lord Hayes walked away without saying a word. Eva stood still one moment, steadying herself, and then she called out to Jim, who was leaning against a pillar at the opposite corner of the court.

  “You can come back,” she said. “We are not going to send you away. Let us go on talking from the last remark but two.”

  She settled herself again in her chair and laughed. The evening had been unexpectedly amusing.

  “He will not listen again, and you will not talk nonsense again, I hope. Really, this is an unique position, and I am the only one of the three who comes out of it with credit. A suspects that B, his friend, is making love to his wife. Does not warn her, but listens, and hears something that confirms his suspicions. Tries to drive B out of the house. They all meet amicably at breakfast next morning.”

  Certainly, if Eva had felt she had any small score to wipe off against her husband, she had wiped it off very cleanly. He was, for those few moments when she had stood up with her intense anger thoroughly in hand, mortally afraid of her, and she knew it. She had used her anger as a weapon against him, and had not let it act wildly, or unpremeditatedly. She well knew that, as a weapon, anger is most useful when it is skilfully handled, controlled, compressed. A horse without a rider, lashed into the enemies’ lines, may, it is true, do some service by promiscuous kicking, but it is a blind, ungoverned force; a skilful rider, however, who adapts its savage strength to his own intelligence, can guide it and direct it, and its destructive potentialities are increased tenfold.