Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Late that night he strolled into Markham’s room, as the latter was just thinking that it was time to go to bed, and proceeded to deliver himself of his impressions at length.

  “It made me confoundedly uncomfortable,” he commented, after giving a full account of what had taken place. “I didn’t half like it, Teddy; I never saw anything like it before, and it was so much more real than I expected. What do you suppose that girl felt, or that man either? How can the singing of a hymn change the whole moral character? It must be hysterical. That’s why I went away; I was afraid of becoming hysterical too. Think how flat one would feel the next morning. And oh! the awful commonness of it all. The elect greengrocer was the scrubbiest sort of brute. Fancy announcing publicly that you were saved! Surely, that is the one thing in the world one would be reticent about. What does it all mean, Teddy?”

  Markham felt the natural reserve which almost all young men feel in talking of such subjects, and Tom’s sudden curiosity about it surprised him. It was like Tom to mix with any crowd to see what was going forward, but it was so unlike him to have waited a single moment after seeing what it was, that Ted had waited in the street for him, expecting him to appear again every moment, and had eventually gone on to the Pitt, in a puzzled frame of mind.

  “I don’t exactly know, Tom,” he said, after a pause. “I believe that that sort of conversion, as they call it, often has permanent effects. I think it quite conceivable that the greengrocer will continue to give full measure.”

  “But about the savings bank!” burst out Tom; “how can that have anything to do with it?”

  “You would put it differently, of course: you would say, ‘ Honesty is the best policy.’”

  “Possibly I should. At any rate, if one can account intelligibly for a thing it is better to do so, than to try to account for it fallaciously.”

  Markham frowned.

  “We’ve never talked of this kind of thing before,” he said tentatively. “I haven’t the remotest idea what your religion is, or, indeed, if you’ve got any.”

  “That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking to myself all the evening,” remarked Tom. “I don’t know myself; I was only conscious that I felt no kind of sympathy with those people. I was amused and disgusted, and then I was frightened.”

  “I wish you had stopped,” said Markham, suddenly.

  “Why on earth? Do you really think it would have done me any good to have been suddenly ‘ taken’ as those people were? I suppose you will say I am a Pharisee — but what good would it have done me? What should I not do that I do now, or what should I do that I do not do? Early chapels, I suppose—”

  “Ah, don’t!” said Markham, with sudden earnestness. “Those things may mean nothing to you, but they do to others — and among others to me.”

  Tom stared in perplexity.

  “To you — do you believe in that sort of conversion? Do you think that something can happen to you suddenly like that which changes you?”

  “I can’t help believing it. How can I say that such things do not happen? I stake my life on such possibilities.”

  “The whole thing seems so irrational to me,” said Tom. “In anything else, a man’s life is not changed by a little thing of that sort. And then the banking account—”

  “Well, take an instance in your own line,” said Markham. “Can’t you imagine a modern artist who looks at a Raphael for the first time becoming a convert to that style of art?”

  “That’s quite different,” said Tom. “These people have probably been brought up in these beliefs; the idea is not a new one to them. No doubt it came home with more force at such a moment. It is like a man who had been looking at Raphaels all his life, and caring nothing for them, being suddenly convinced by one of them. That doesn’t seem to me likely.”

  “You may be right, I can’t say, for you know more of the subject than I. But what right have you to say that a thing doesn’t seem likely in a matter of which, as you said, you know nothing?”

  “That’s true,” said Tom, “I do know nothing of it. But who does?”

  “The probability is, that people who have thought about it know more than those who haven’t.”

  Tom got up, and began to walk up and down the room.

  “Well, I want to know, but how can I? If I didn’t feel an interest in it, I shouldn’t have come to talk about it But I am altogether at sea. I wasn’t brought up in a religious household. My father never speaks of such things. At school I had to read the Bible, chiefly the Acts, like any other school lesson. I was confirmed as a matter of course. If you are not religiously minded, how can you become religious? If a man is not literary, you don’t expect him to feel any interest in books.”

  “But it’s a defect that he doesn’t.”

  “Yes, because he naturally moves among people who do,” said Tom, “and he necessarily feels out of it. But though you move among religious people you don’t fed out of it, because their religion does not come into their lives. I suppose you would call my father an Atheist, but you wouldn’t know it, unless you inferred it from the fact that he doesn’t go to church on Sundays, and that we don’t have family prayers. How is it possible for me to feel such things? Perhaps — you see I never knew my mother, she died when I was a baby — —”

  “Were you not brought up to believe anything?”

  “My nurse taught me to say my prayers. On cold evenings I used to ask if I might say them in bed, and I always got dropped on for it. It was considered a form of profanity. I never understood why. And when the age for nurses ceased, my prayers ceased also. I want to know where the difference between me and religious people comes in. A large number of religious people lose their tempers oftener than I do, because I was born with a better temper than they. You read of clergymen being convicted of theft. I never was, because I never stole anything. Gentlemen don’t do such things. It seems to me that we both agree with a certain code of morality for different reasons.”

  “Did it never occur to you to wonder why you existed, or how you existed, or what was the object of your existence at all?”

  Tom looked at him straight in the face.

  “No, never. What good would it do me to puzzle my head about such things even if it had occurred to me? Here I am; how or why I have no means of telling. But I mean to make other people know why I existed; one can’t do more than that. I am going to be an artist.”

  Markham felt the hopelessness of making Tom understand. It was like describing colours to a blind man; for himself he had been brought up in a childlike faith, and he was childlike still. His life had been sheltered, nursed in traditions, and when it was transplanted to the outer air, it was a sapling capable of striking roots, and standing by itself. It had never known what the drenching showers of autumn, or the winds of winter were, till it was capable, not exactly of despising them, but of being unconscious of them. If Tom was blind, he was blind, too, in another sense.

  There was a long silence. Tom had halted in his walk by the chimney-piece, and was poking a paper spill down his pipe stem. Markham was sitting at the table, puzzled and helpless. It was a couple of minutes perhaps before Tom spoke. Then he spoke decidedly.

  “I’m not going to bother about it,” he said. “I don’t understand what it all means, but I don’t understand what most things mean. If it is a big thing, you may be sure that there are many ways of getting at it. One man can’t see all the way round a big thing. You are at one side of it, Ted, perhaps I am nowhere; but then, again, I may be at the other side of it. I may be meant to come to it by roads you can never guess of. If I am meant to know it, I shall know it some time. By-the-by, we play tennis at ten to-morrow.”

  “You’ve got a lecture at ten,” said Markham.

  “Many things may happen at ten,” said Tom “but the probability is in favour of only one thing happening. I don’t think the lecture has supreme rights. However, if it has, you won’t get a game.”

  “Oh, but you promised you’d play!”
said Markham unwisely.

  “I can’t go back on that,” said Tom. “I never promised to go to a lecture. You shall give me breakfast at nine — or perhaps a little after nine. Let’s call it nine-ish.”

  CHAPTER V.

  MAUD WREXHAM was sitting in her mother’s room one morning, towards the end of July, after breakfast, telling Lady Chatham her engagements for the day. This piece of ritual was daily and invariable, and her mother spent the succeeding three-quarters of an hour in trying “to work things in,” as she called it — in other words, to manage that one carriage should drop two people in different parts of London, and call for them both again at the hour they wanted These manoeuvres usually ended in both parties concerned taking hansoms, after waiting a considerable time for the carriage to pick them up, and driving home separately, while the empty carriage, with the coachman, who was always sceptical about such arrangements, returned home gloomily about half an hour later.

  “I think I shall go to Victoria and meet Arthur,” Maud was just saying; “he will catch the first boat from Calais, and his train gets in about five.”

  “Dear Arthur!” exclaimed Lady Chatham with effusion, “I hope he won’t be dreadfully relaxed. Athens is so relaxing; I wish he could have stopped at Berlin.”

  Arthur Wrexham had just spent his first year at Athens, as third Secretary to the Legation, and was coming home for two months’ leave.

  “He’ll have a lot of luggage, mother,” went on Maud; “you’d far better let me take a hansom, and then he and I can come back in one, and send his luggage by a four-wheeler.”

  Lady Chatham examined her engagement-book with avidity.

  “No, Maud, it’s the easiest thing in the world. What a coincidence! I’ve got to pick your father up at Victoria Mansions at a quarter-past five. I will drop you at Victoria, and then go on. If we are there by ten minutes past, it will do perfectly; the boat is sure to be late.”

  “It will be rather stupid if I miss him,” said Maud. “You’ll be in plenty of time — or if you like, I will start five minutes earlier, and go round to see — no, I can’t do that. Then, as you say, you can take a hansom. No, you needn’t do that. If I take the landau we can all come back together. Five minutes for getting to Victoria Mansions, and five minutes back. He’ll take ten minutes getting his luggage out. How much luggage will he have?”

  “I don’t really know.”

  “Because we might take the lighter things — I needn’t take a footman — and send the heavier ones home by Carter and Paterson.”

  “I think it would be safer to get a cab, wouldn’t it?”

  “I’ll think about it, and tell you at lunch. Dear Arthur! Well, what else are you going to do?”

  “We’re going to the Ramsdens’ dance this evening, and dining there first.”

  “Then the other carriage can take us, and if Arthur cares to go to the dance — they didn’t know he’d be back, but I’m sure they want him to come — Lady Ramsden told me so, if he was back by any chance — it can come back here, and take him on again at ten. Then you and I will come back in it, when you’ve had enough, and if Arthur wants to stop, I’m afraid he must find his own way back. Is that all?”

  “I’m lunching with the Cornishes.”

  “Well, then, I’ll leave a note for you about Arthur’s luggage, as I shan’t see you at lunch. Where do the Cornishes live?”

  “In Pont Street.”

  “Then it’s the most convenient thing in the world. I’m going to my dentist at half-past twelve, and I shall be back by two. Then the carriage can take you on at once.”

  “They lunch at two, I’m afraid, mother.”

  “Well, dear, you’ll only be a few minutes late. It will save you the bother of taking a hansom, or walking.”

  “Oh, never mind! I shall be out, I expect, and shall go there straight.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Oh, shopping.”

  “Well, then, I might drop you on my way to the dentist’s wherever you liked. If you will be ready at twelve I will take you. Or five minutes to twelve if you are going out of my way.”

  Maud got up.

  “No, start at twelve as you intended, and if I’m in, and ready, I’ll come with you. Don’t wait for me, mother.”

  “If you’d only tell me exactly where you want to go, and when, Maud, I’ve no doubt I could work it in.”

  “I’ve got to go to Houghton and Gunn’s first.”

  “Very well, then,” said her mother, triumphantly, “nothing can be simpler. I drop you there, and go to the dentist’s. Then I send the carriage back for you, and you do anything else you want, and come back to the dentist’s at half-past one. Then we drive straight to Pont Street, and I drop you again, and go home.”

  Maud’s chief object at this moment, it must be confessed, was to get out of the room. So she assented with fervour.

  “That’s beautiful, mother. How clever of you to work it all in!”

  Lady Chatham heaved a sigh of well-earned satisfaction. “Yes, I think everything is provided for. Ring the bell, darling, will you? I must send word to the stables at once.”

  Lady Chatham felt that she had really deserved a painless visit to the dentist. She was always regretting that her time was so dreadfully taken up with little things, and that she never could do anything she really wanted to do, though what that was is quite unknown. It is to be suspected that in addition to her daily arrangements, she spent much time in making plans for Maud’s future, which included far more than the ordinary maternally matrimonial plans include. She intended, for instance, to send her out to Athens for a few months during the winter, where she would live with her brother, and see a little foreign life. Foreign life, she considered, was something very mysterious, but very broadening in its effects on the human mind. The fact that you no longer had meat breakfast at half-past nine, and lunch at two, but café au lait at eight and dêjeûner at twelve or half-past, was apparently the door to whole vistas of widening experiences. Breakfast at half past nine and lunch at two were parts of the organism of life, and the substitution of other hours instead of those was a change the importance of which could not be overlooked. She had spent six months in Rome when she was a girl, with an uncle, who was ambassador there, and she always looked back to that six months as having been something very revolutionary and startling. It had made, she often said, the whole difference to her.

  To-day, however, the arrangements, owing to a distinct intervention of Providence, who roughened the seas, and made the train late, went off more satisfactorily than usual, and as they drove to the Ramsdens in the evening, Lady Chatham felt that the dentist really had hurt her more than he should have been allowed to do, and hoped that she would have a pleasant dinner to make up for it.

  The Ramsdens lived in one of the few houses in London which do not remind one of barracks, and Lady Ramsden’s parties had the reputation, among those who were asked, of being very smart, while those who were not considered her a pushing woman. Four or five times a year her dinners had a little paragraph all to themselves in the Morning Post, beginning with a Royal Highness and ending with Colonels in attendance, on the page that announced the movements of nations and the quarrels of kings. Lady Ramsden always snipped these out, and pasted them in an extract book. There was a certain monotony about them, but you cannot have too much of a good thing. But this was not one of her really smart parties; originally it was to have been, but the Highness had been unable to come, and she had to have recourse, not only to mere Honourables, but even a plain Mr., in the shape of Tom Carlingford.

  Tom had already arrived when Lady Chatham got there, and Maud was quite surprised to find how glad she was to see him again. Apparently, her mission of being nice to people had been successful in this instance, for he was evidently equally glad to see her. He took her in to dinner, and as Tom’s custom was, began exactly where they had left off.

  “I’m going out to Greece in October,” he was saying. “I’ve f
inished with Cambridge.”

  “I remember your telling me you were going out,” said Maud. “I’m going too; did you know that? My brother is at the Legation there.”

  “Oh, but how nice!” said Tom. “Are you going soon?”

  “Well, about the beginning of December, for a month or two. You’ll see my brother to-night. He’s coming to the dance afterwards. Have you taken your degree? By the way, I saw that your friend Mr. Markham had got a Fellowship. I was so pleased. I nearly wrote to congratulate him.”

  “Why didn’t you quite?” asked Tom.

  “Surely it was sufficiently shocking that I nearly did. Are you going to get a Fellowship too?”

  Tom grinned.

  “Well, it’s not imminent.”

  “Why, aren’t you ambitious? It’s a pity for a man not to be ambitious.”

  “My ambitions don’t lie in those lines. Besides, I’m a fool. Every one has told me so scores of times.” Later on in the evening the two were sitting out in a charming little courtyard in the centre of the house, open to the air, and walled with banks of flowers. The place was lit up by small electric lights among the flowers, and the air was deliciously cool and dim after the hot glare of the ball-room. The steady hum of a London night came to them clearly in the stillness, that noise of busy people, which never is quiet. The place was nearly deserted, and Maud was fanning herself lazily.