by E. F. Benson
How extraordinarily happy she had been that morning! The whole world had seemed so clean and fresh and wholesome, so delightfully straightforward and uncomplicated. If only she could get back that feeling, just for a moment, she thought she would be rested and ready to begin again. In the old days nothing had seemed hard, nothing out of reach, nothing perplexing. And now her life was spoiled.
One evening early in June she was having tea with May, longing for Tom to come in, dreading that he would come. May had sent for the baby, and he was sitting on his mother’s knee regarding his toes, which apparently seemed to him very wonderful inventions and quite original, and his mother was taking a sympathetic interest in his discoveries. Maud, who had been quite fascinating to the infant mind till he found out about his toes, had been thrown over, and as May’s attention was riveted on her son, she felt just a little out of it. Suddenly May looked up.
“Just fancy,” she said, “this little mite is our own, Tom’s and mine: I never get quite used to that fact. Yes, darling” — she turned her attention to the baby—” how pretty, and that’s all yours. Oh, you angel!” Maud felt her breath catch in her throat, and on the moment the door opened and Tom came in.
“Baby-cult as usual,” he said. “How are you, Maud?”
Maud could not quite command her voice, but she murmured something.
“That surprising infant usurps far too much of May’s time,” continued he. “May will never quite recognize that one baby is rather like another baby.” May bent over the little sparsely be-haired head.
“What an unnatural papa he’s got!” she said; “he says you’re like other babies. You know quite well, and so does he, that there never was a baby like you, and never will be!”
Tom’s pleasant soul sat laughing in his eyes as he answered her.
“Mothers are said to be biassed in favour of their own young; never you believe that, my boy.”
Then he turned to Maud.
“May’s manners are cast to the winds when His Smallness is present,” he said; “she won’t attend to either of us, so we’ll attend to each other. Are you going to the Levesons’ to-morrow? I hear they are going to be very smart, and that it’s a case of red carpet. May, I must smoke a cigarette. I don’t care whether it’s the drawing-room or not.”
“And fill the room with horrid, horrid smoke,” said May to her son.
“I hardly know,” said Maud; “I’ve been overdoing it lately, and I think I shall go into my shell again for a bit. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a real shell, and curl yourself up in the middle of a dinner-party if you were bored.”
“I shall order one,” said Tom, thoughtfully. “You do look rather tired. Where are you going to put your shell? If I were you I should leave London for a week. It would be so original. You would of course let it be known that you were going to read ‘Sordello,’ ‘Sordello’ is the fashion now, I think. Of course nobody has read it and that’s why they talk about it. No one talks about a thing they really have read.”
“That has a slight flavour of Mr. Manvers,” remarked May.
“Manvers has such a pungent flavour, that one really can’t help catching a little of it, if one sees him at all,” said Tom. “But I wasn’t consciously Manveresque — I suppose he’s in Paris, associating with all the good dead Americans.”
May smiled.
“And now mammy’s going to take him upstairs,” she said, and left the room.
Tom poured himself out a cup of tea.
“Please talk nonsense to me,” he said; “I’ve been seeing Wallingthorpe, and — and of course he’s a delightful man, but he is so serious. He takes everybody and everything seriously, including himself. That is so clever of him — and the worst of it is he keeps it up. He is always clever. How tiring he must find it!”
Maud laughed, but the laugh ended abruptly.
“Talk nonsense!” she said; “I have forgotten how. Oh, Tom, the world is a very serious place!”
Tom raised his eyebrows.
“When did you find that out?” he asked.
“I? Oh, ever so long ago!” she said rather wildly.
“If you take it lightly and pleasantly, it turns round on you somehow, and deals you sudden back-handed blows. I don’t know why I am saying all this.”
“Hit it back,” suggested Tom. “It deals blows back-handed possibly, but it caresses you backhanded too.”
Maud put on her gloves, and fitted her fingers carefully.
“I am out of sorts,” she said; “the world is grievously awry.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I am the matter. It’s nobody else. But what is one to do?”
Maud knew she was being unwise. She knew perfectly well that she would be sorry for this, but the hope that Tom might understand seemed to her the only thing worth caring for, and at the same time the one thing in all the world which she dreaded. She was afraid, desperately afraid, of saying too much, but she could not help herself. “Why will not he understand?” she thought, “and God forbid that he should.” But Tom was in a thoroughly superficial mood. He said to himself that Maud was out of sorts, that she was overtired and worried.
“Man disquieteth himself in vain,” he said. “It is best to take living very lightly. We all of us have something we want to do or be, and cannot do or be it. We are wise if we let it alone. There is much I want to do and be, and cannot manage it, and every one is in the same plight After all, if we aim at being contented, that is enough.”
Maud got up.
“Aim at being contented? Aim at being in Heaven! We have to remember that we are on earth.”
Tom rose too.
“What is the matter?” he said; “do tell me.” Again Maud felt stifled and choking. “ One is a creature of moods,” she said, “and the heavy moods come, as well as the light Just now I have a heavy mood. By the way, I shall follow your advice. I am rather overdone, and I shall leave London for a time. I shall not say I am reading ‘Sordello.’ I think I shall say I am reading the Bible — it is the better book. I shall go before the end of the week: at present I am going now. Give my adieux to your wife. She is more charming than ever!”
But at this moment May came in, and Maud gave her adieux in person. Tom was vaguely puzzled.
“It’s very sudden,” he said. “ Are you going really?”
“Certainly,” said Maud; “I really am going — I am going away for a whole fortnight. I want tone, and there is no such thing in London.”
Tom laughed.
“I am inclined to agree with you,” he said.
“Well, good-bye,” said Maud; “good-bye, May — that fascinating child is quite too fascinating.”
May sat still a moment after she had gone. “What is the matter with her?” she asked; “what have you been saying, Tom? I never saw her like that.”
“Nor have I,” said he. “I have said nothing. I have no idea what is the matter with her.”
Maud stood on the doorstep, and looked to see if the carriage was in sight, and finding it not there, remembered that her mother had “worked it in,” and began to walk home. But she felt hopelessly ill and weak, and told the man to fetch her a hansom. “O God! how tired I am of it all!” she said to herself.
CHAPTER XV.
IT is probably true that when things are at their worst they begin to mend, but the little complications common to man sometimes exhibit a ghastly ingenuity of contrivance before that most desirable point is reached. As Manvers said, we are wonderful creatures, and beautifully adapted for bearing things. But Nature has been merciful enough to give most of us a weak point, and when the weak point is touched we are privileged to break down.
Maud, whose moral nature was very robust, was not physically strong, and that night she fainted incontinently in the middle of dinner. The doctor came — a doctor whose words were literally words of gold — and said, worry, overstrain, change of air, out of doors, sunshine; and Maud’s determination to leave London was made easy for her.
Lady Ramsden had managed to survive her husband, and was continuing to enjoy unagitated widowhood and her usual ill-health in her house on the Norfolk coast. She had grown a little stouter, a shade duller, and a trifle more monosyllabic, but otherwise time seemed to have let her be. She replied to Lady Chatham’s letter that she would be delighted to see Maud, but that her health was indifferent, and that Maud would probably be rather lonely. But if she wanted sea air and sunshine, she could not do better than come. She would be charmed to have her, and would she say the day and hour of her arrival, and whether she was going to bring a maid.
Lady Ramsden’s house stood on the edge of the short-turfed Norfolk Downs, within a hundred yards of the sea. The sand-cliffs, nibbled off short by the waves, rose some thirty feet from the beach, and the grass, fine and smooth, covered them to the edge, fitting their mounds and hollows so exactly that they looked as if they had been measured for a green baize billiard cloth. A mile to the north the red-roofed little town of Cromer went trooping down to the shore, with its tall grave tower seeming to confer an air of safety to the whole, but not checking a terrible tendency in the town to run to seed, as it were, on all sides in rows of jerry-built villas. But at this time of the year the villas were still unoccupied for the most part, and the town was a fishing village once more.
Maud arrived in the afternoon, and she drew in long breaths of the fresh sea air with a sense of relief, of struggle over. She was tired and overdone — tired of life, of worry, of sensation, and she thought that here perhaps she could stay still, being cut off from any thought of agitating impossibilities, of fruitless self-restraint, and of thrice fruitless desires. There was an air of complete, contented repose about the big landscape and the wide flat sea. The tide was up, and the sea looked full and prosperous. Little curling ripples washed up over the sand, and now and then one more energetic than its fellows thrust out a sharp tongue to the very base of the sandy cliffs and then drew back again with a louder murmur of content.
Round the house were rambling, uneven lawns, only half broken in, as it were, and retaining something of the freedom of the grass-clad sandhills, and a satisfying medley of flower-beds, full of great hardy plants which cared nothing for the brisk salt air — nasturtiums, great flaring double poppies, the velvet tassels of love-lies-a-bleeding, and thick-leaved stone-crops. Sturdy health seemed the key-note of the place.
At tea she saw Lady Ramsden, who strove to convey to her that she was glad to see her, and that her niece was also staying with her — her coming had been very sudden and upsetting — but that she had gone over to Cromer for a tennis party, and would be back before dinner, and as soon as tea was over Maud went out again and struck for the edge of the sandy cliffs.
Ah! the relief of getting away from London, away from the possibility of seeing Tom, from the possibility of torturing herself, of leading herself into temptation. Surely it was possible here, with this great shining sea on one side, and the firm landscape on the other, to regain her belief in serenity, to recapture an uncomplicated outlook.
She took off her hat, and let the bracing air from the sea blow her hair about. A mile off shore the little fleet of herring-boats were tacking with full, stiff sails down the coast to begin their strange adventure of casting nets into that shifting immensity beneath the deep fathomless sky above the deep fathomless sea. How did morning look to them as it broke in thin red lines on the horizon? How interesting it would be to be able to see the world just for a moment with other eyes, to be rid for one deep-drawn breath of the weight of one’s own stale identity! It was in that direction her salvation lay. She meant to cease focussing her eyes on her own microscopic troubles, to gain a wider outlook. How much more attainable such an idea seemed here, where there was some breadth of vision, and a horizon not bounded by house-roofs! London was a mere warren, full of silly gossiping rabbits. You could never see beyond the street corner, nor through the smoke.
The light in the west flamed and paled, and Maud began to retrace her steps. She felt better already. Oh, how right Miss Vanderbilt had been about the seat of the emotions! She would dose herself with sea air, she would bathe herself in sun and sea, she would get back her old serenity, her interest in things, her uncomplicated outlook. How pretty the house looked, standing out against the still ruddy sky, with the lights in its windows! There was some one standing in the porch — a girl. It must be Lady Ramsden’s niece. Maud felt quite pleased to have a companion. They would walk and ride and bathe together. Lady Ramsden’s niece — on which side, Carlingford or Ramsden?
The door was opened just before Maud got up to it, and the girl was standing by the lamp in the hall, opening a note when she entered. As she looked at her Maud’s heart suddenly stood still, and then jumped up into her throat, poised and hammering. There was no need to ask on which side she was Lady Ramsden’s niece, for as Maud came in she turned, and for a moment — it came on her like a horrible dream — she almost thought she stood face to face with Tom himself.
The girl looked up with that little raising of the eyebrows which Maud had so often seen in Tom, and greeted her.
“You are surely Miss Wrexham, are you not?” she said, coming forward with boyish frankness.
“It is too delightful to meet you. I think you know my cousin Tom? You have had tea? Yes? I wonder where my aunt is.”
Violet Carlingford led the way to the drawingroom, where Lady Ramsden was lying on a sofa by a carefully shaded lamp. Her wheezy asthmatic pug lay snoring at her feet. She looked the incarnation of incompetence.
“So you have met,” she said, “and introduced yourselves.”
Violet laughed.
“I don’t think we introduced ourselves much,” she said. “I said, ‘Aren’t you Miss Wrexham? ‘ How are you, aunty?”
“Not very well, dear,” she said; “and Flo isn’t very well either. Listen to her breathing.”
Violet smiled, and two dimples came into her face. They were hardly so deep as Tom’s, but in exactly the same place.
“There’s no need to listen,” she said.
“I shall not come to dinner,” went on Lady Ramsden in a thin voice. “You two will dine alone. What time do you like dinner, Maud? We usually have it at eight Will that suit you? Oh yes; and what is your maid’s name?”
Lady Ramsden got the bell rung for her, and got herself taken out of the room. The pug was hoisted on to a velvet cushion and was carried before her. In such manner did the Greeks carry the emblems of their gods before their images.
As Maud looked at Violet she saw that the likeness was even more extraordinary, and went deeper than she had noticed at first. Violet could hardly have been more than twenty, and her features were still unsexed. She was tall for a girl, and slightly built, and her walk and way of sitting, or rather lolling, as she was lolling now, reminded Maud exactly of what Tom had been when he came to stay with them once while he was at Eton, and sat laughing and talking with them all at the end of five minutes as naturally as if he had known them all his life. She had Tom’s short square-tipped nose, his clear, open, brown eyes, with long fine eyelashes and thin straight eyebrows. Her mouth, like his, was rather full-lipped, and often even when she was not speaking the white of her teeth showed between the lips in a straight narrow line. But her manner was even more fundamentally his. She had Tom’s trick of wrinkling his nose up slightly when he was amused, of putting his head slightly on one side when he was listening or considering, and in speaking of just perceptibly slurring his r’s, of separating his words one from the other more like a foreigner with a perfect command of English than an Englishman.
Violet strolled about the room just as he did, putting a book or two straight, and making a little face at the pug’s saucer of tea with cream in it which lay untasted in the corner. Violet disliked that pug; he was fat, lazy, wheezy, and selfish, and she gave Maud a little sketch of his character. Soon she sat down near her and began on more personal topics.
“It is delightful to
have you here,” she said. “I hope we shall make great friends. I always want to be doing something all day, and if you like playing golf and tennis, and bathing and riding, I’m sure we shall get on.”
Maud was leaning back in her chair, feeling somehow unaccountably shy.
“I was quite startled when I came in,” she said; “you are so extraordinarily like your cousin.”
Violet crossed one leg over the other and clasped her hands behind her head.
“I haven’t seen Tom for an age,” she said; “but when we were younger we were exactly alike. Tom — it was wicked of him — once dressed up in a skirt and cloak, and hat of mine, and went into my mother’s room and asked if she wanted anything in the town as he was going there with the governess. My mother gave him all sorts of feminine commissions and never suspected him till he burst out laughing. His mother and mine were sisters, and our fathers brothers, you know. Has he changed much?”
“He is still exactly like you,” said Maud, who was beginning to feel more at her ease.
“Tom’s getting quite famous, isn’t he?” the girl went on. “That will serve to differentiate us. And he’s got a baby. How funny it seems! We always said he would never grow up.”
“He hasn’t grown up much,” said Maud. “He is just like a boy still in many ways.”
“It’s such a pity one has to get older” remarked Violet. “I’m sure I shall never enjoy myself so much when I am old, and I shall get stuffy and think about complications and worries. At present I never worry.” Maud smiled.
“I am afraid I must be getting old,” she said; “in fact, I came here in order to forget complications and worries.”
Violet sat up with an air of surprise.
“Oh, please don’t worry,” she said, “or you will spoil it all. And we can have such a charming time if we like.”
