Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “I mean a human being who likes killing things,” said Kit without hesitation.

  “I killed a wasp yesterday,” said the voice; “at least, I think it died afterwards. Certainly I disabled it. Oh, I am sure I killed it.”

  “Yes, and you remembered it to-day,” said Lady Conybeare briskly. “You did not really kill it; it lives in your memory, and — and poisons your life. In time it will kill you. Do you suppose Jack remembers the grouse he killed yesterday?”

  “Oh, but Jack is like the oldest inhabitant,” said Lady Haslemere. “He never remembers anything, just as the oldest inhabitant never remembers a flood or a thunderstorm or a famine at all like the one in question. That means they don’t remember anything at all, for one famine is just like another; so are thunderstorms.”

  Kit paused a moment, with her head on one side, regarding the speaker.

  “No; forgetfulness is not characteristic of Jack,” she said, “any more than memory is. He remembers what he wants to remember, and forgets what he wants to forget. Now, it’s just the opposite with me. I forget what I want to remember — horrid stories about my friends, for instance — and I remember the sort of thing I want to forget — like — like Sunday morning. Isn’t it so, Jack?”

  A slightly amused laugh came from a man seated in the window, who was no other than the Jack in question, and, incidentally, Kit’s husband.

  “It is true I make a point of forgetting unpleasant things,” he said; “that is the only real use of having a memory decently under control. I forget Kit’s milliner’s bills — —”

  “So do I, darling,” said Kit with sudden affection.

  “No, you don’t; you only remind me to forget them. I forget the names and faces of uninteresting people. I forget — no, I don’t forget that — —”

  “What don’t you forget, Jack?” demanded Kit with some sharpness. “I don’t believe it.”

  “I don’t forget that we’ve got to dine in the City at half-past seven. Why ever there was such an hour as half-past seven to put into a Christian clock I can’t conjecture,” he said in a tone of regretful wonder.

  “Well, if you forget unpleasant things, and you don’t forget that, perhaps it will be pleasant.”

  “I am quite certain it will be infernal,” said Jack. “Go and dress, Kit.”

  Lady Conybeare frowned impatiently.

  “Oh, Jack! when will you learn that I cannot do what you ask if you talk to me in that way?” she cried. “I was just going to dress. Now I can’t, and we shall both be late, which will be very tiresome. You will curse and swear at me like St. Peter for keeping you waiting. How stupid you are, and how little you know me!”

  Lord Conybeare looked at his watch.

  “It is exactly three minutes to six,” he said. “You needn’t go for half an hour yet. There is loads of time — loads!”

  Kit got up at once.

  “That’s a dear boy,” she said. “Gracious! it’s past the half-hour! I must fly! Good-bye, Alice; Conybeare and I will look in on you after our dinner. I think you said you were going to have a nice round game with counters. Good-bye, Tom, and learn not to be a prude.”

  “I’m sure you would teach me, if anybody could,” said Tom rather viciously.

  Kit adjusted the lace round her throat again.

  “Thanks for the compliment,” she said; “but prudes are born, not made. You don’t shoot, you don’t hunt, you remember every wasp you have possibly killed. Oh, Tom, I am afraid you are hopeless. Don’t laugh. I mean what I say; at least, I think I mean the greater part of it.”

  “I reserve the less, then,” said Tom. “I must go too. So Alice and Haslemere and I will see you to-night?”

  “Yes; we’ll escape as soon as we can from the dinner. Mind you take some money with you, Jack, for the round game. I must fly,” she said again, and took her graceful presence very slowly out of the room.

  There was a short silence, broken by Lord Conybeare.

  “It is odd how you can tell a man by the hour at which he dines,” he said. “Seven is an impossible hour, and the people who dine at seven are as impossible as the hour. People who dine at half-past are those who are trying to dine at eight and cannot manage it. They are also trying not to be impossible, and cannot.”

  Lady Haslemere got up.

  “I once knew a man who dined at ten minutes to eight,” she said, “which struck me as extremely curious. He was an archdeacon. I believe all archdeacons dine at ten minutes to eight. And they call it a quarter to, which is even odder.”

  “I don’t know any archdeacons,” said Tom, with a touch of wistfulness in his voice. “Introduce me to one to-night, Alice.”

  “Archdeacons don’t come to Berkeley Street,” said she.

  “Why not? How exclusive! Do they expect Berkeley Street to come to them?”

  “Probably. They are trained to believe nothing which is not incredible. It is exactly that which makes them impossible.”

  “Extremes meet,” said Lord Conybeare. “The sceptic forces himself to believe everything that is perfectly credible. And he succeeds so well. Sceptics believe that they once ate nuts — we’ve all eaten nuts once — and are descended from apes. And how obvious is their genealogy from their faces! If I was going to be anything, it should not be a sceptic.”

  Lady Haslemere wandered once round the room, condemning the china silently.

  “I must positively go,” she said.

  “Do, Alice!” said Jack; “because I want to dress. But you are rather like Kit. When she says she must fly, it means she has little intention of walking, just yet.”

  Lady Haslemere laughed.

  “Come, Tom,” she said. “We are not wanted. How deeply pathetic that is! They will want us some day, as the hangman said. Well, Jack, we shall see you later. I am going.”

  Lord Conybeare went upstairs to his dressing-room, revolving with some intentness the affair of this City dinner. The taking off his coat led him to wind up his watch, and he was so lost in thought that for a moment he looked surprisedly at his dress-clothes, which were laid out for him, as if pyjamas would have been a more likely find. But his linked and studded shirt was an irresistible reminder that it was dinner-time, not bedtime, and he proceeded to dress with a certain neat haste that was clearly characteristic of him. In stature he was somewhat below the average size, both in height and breadth; but one felt that an auctioneer of men might most truthfully have said, when he came to him at a sale: “Here is a rather smaller specimen, gentlemen, but much more highly finished, and very strong!”

  The quick deftness of even unimportant movements certainly gave the impression of great driving power; everything he did was done unerringly; he had no fumblings with his studs, and his tie seemed to fashion a faultless, careless bow under a mere suggestion from his thin, taper-nailed fingers. He looked extremely well bred, and a certain Mephistophelian sharpness about his face, though it might have warned those whom Kit would have called prudes — for this was rather a sweeping word with her — that he might not be desirable as a friend, would certainly have warned the prudent that he would assuredly be much more undesirable as an enemy. On the whole, a prudent prude would have tried to keep on good terms with him. He appeared, in fact, even on so hasty and informal a glance as that which we are giving him as he arranges his tie, to be one of those lucky people to whom it is well to be pleasant, for it was difficult to imagine that he was afraid of anything or cared for anybody. Certain happily-constituted folk have never had any doubt about the purpose of the world, so clearly was it designed to feed and amuse them. Lord Conybeare was one of these; and in justice to the world we must say that it performed its altruistic part very decently indeed.

  Jack Conybeare was still on the sunny side of thirty-five. He and Kit had been married some seven years, and had no children, a privation for which they were touchingly thankful. They had, both of them, quite sufficient responsibilities, or, to speak more precisely, liabilities; and to be in any way respo
nsible for any liabilities beyond their own would have seemed to them a vicarious burden of the most intolerable sort. Their own, it is only fair to add, sat but lightly on them; Kit, in particular, wore hers most gracefully, like a becoming mantle. Chronic conditions, for the most part, tend to cease being acutely felt, and both she and Jack would far sooner have had a couple of thousand pounds in hand, and fifty thousand pounds in debt, than not to have owed or owned a penny. Kit had once even thought of advertising in the morning papers that a marchioness of pleasing disposition was willing to do anything in the world for a thousand pounds, and Jack had agreed that there was something in the idea, though the flaw in it was cheapness: you should not give yourself away. He himself had mortgaged every possible acre of his property, and sold all that was available to sell, and the close of every day exhibited to a wondering world how it was possible to live in the very height of fashion and luxury without any means of living at all. Had he and Kit sat down for a moment by the side of a road, or loitered in Park Lane, they would probably have been haled, by the fatherly care of English law, to the nearest magistrate, for that they had no apparent means of sustenance. Luckily they never thought of doing anything of the kind, finding it both safer and pleasanter to entertain princes and give the best balls in London.

  A want of money is an amiable failing, common to the saint and the sinner alike, and does not stand in the way of the accusé acquiring great popularity. Jack, it is true, had no friends, for the very simple reason that he did not in the least want them; Kit, on the other hand, had enough for two.

  Her rules of life were very uncomplicated, and they daily became more so. “You can’t be too charming,” was the chief of them. She took infinite pains to make herself almost universally agreeable, and was amply repaid, for she was almost universally considered to be so. This embracing desire had its drawbacks, but Kit’s remedies for them quite met the case. For instance, when any woman whom she did not happen to remember by sight greeted her, as often happened, effusively at some evening party, Kit always kissed her with a corresponding effusion; if a man in the same circumstances did the same, she always said reproachfully, “You never come to see us now.” In this way her total ignorance of who they were became a trivial thing; both were charmed, and when people are charmed, their names become of notable insignificance.

  The finest inventions of all are the simplest, and the simplicity of Jack’s modus vivendi rivalled its own subtlety and the subtlety of Kit’s. He loudly professed staunch Conservative principles, always voted with the Bishops in the House of Lords on any question, and had made a special study of guano and Church ritual. A method exposed always sounds a little crude, but the crudity often belongs not to the method but to its exposure. Certainly Jack’s method answered, and no method can do more. The mammon of unrighteousness, not being deceived, but not being shocked at such duplicity, thought him very clever, and the unmammon of righteousness, being deceived, was not shocked at other things which were occasionally in the air about him. With perfect justice they labelled the world scandal-loving and uncharitable when they were told these other things, and asked Jack to dinner, to show that they did not believe them. A further proof of his wisdom may be seen in the fact that he accepted such invitations, and if he and Kit left early, it was not because they were going on elsewhere to play round games, but because the laying of foundation-stones and the opening of bazaars had been so fatiguing.

  But though both he and Kit were fond of appearing other than they were to sets other than their own, they were on the whole singularly unsecretive to each other. In the first place, they both knew that the other was reasonably sharp, and while each respected the other for this sharpness, they realized that any attempt to deceive would probably be detected. In the second place, a far better reason, even on the lowest grounds, on which they took it, they knew that mutual lying is a rotten basis for married life. Each allowed the other a wide latitude, and in consequence they were excellent friends, and always lent each other a helping hand if there was any scheme of mutual aggrandizement to be put through. There were just a few questions that Kit never put to Jack, nor he to her; each had a cupboard, a very little one, to which there was only one key, and they were wise enough never to ask each other for it. Such, hitherto, had been their married life — a great deal of frankness and confidence, and an absolute respect for the privacy of the other’s innermost sanctum.

  To-night there was a beautiful scheme in the egg ready to be hatched, or neither of them would have dreamed of dining in the City at half-past seven. Attention was just beginning to be directed to West Australian gold-mining, and the public had awoke to the fact that there were large fortunes to be made, or lost, in that direction. Thus Jack, having no fortune to lose, went into it with a light heart; he was clearly marked out as one of those who were destined to win. In pursuance of the laudable idea of avoiding a really serious financial crisis, they were dining at the Drapers’ Company, where they would meet a Mr. Frank Alington, who had a whole fleet of little paper companies, it was understood, ready to be floated. Jack had met him once, and had taken this opportunity of meeting him again, hoping to find bread upon the waters. It was to be Kit’s business to make herself inimitably agreeable, ask him to Park Lane, and leave the rest to Jack. She, of course, would have a finger in the profits.

  Kit was delighted to take the part assigned to her. Jack had looked into her bedroom as she was dressing, and through the half-open door had said, “Very gorgeous, please, Kit,” and she had understood that this was a really important operation, and that a dazzling wife was part of the apparatus necessary. She had not meant to dress very particularly; plush and cairngorms, she had once said to Jack, was the sort of thing the City really appreciated, but she was always ready, within reason, to do as Jack wished, and she told her maid to get out a dress that had arrived from Paris only that morning. But Jack’s remark to her as she was dressing was the sort of hint that Kit always took. It cost so little to be pleasant in these ways, and how wise it was to obey one’s husband in such matters! She had intended to keep this dress for a royal dinner a week hence, but she put it on without a murmur, and, indeed, her wifely devotion had its immediate reward.

  For the dress! That surpassing man Jean Worth had said once, not to herself, but to some other customer, and no friend of hers, that it was a real pleasure to dress Lady Conybeare; and Lady Conybeare, on her side, kindly considered it a real pleasure to be dressed by Worth. Thus the gratification was mutual, and it must have been a consolation to the dressmaker, if he had to whistle long and loud for his cheque, to have his artistic pleasure to fall back on. Now Kit — a rare accomplishment — could stand orange, and to stand orange means to be admirably suited to orange. She loved it herself, Jean genuinely agreed with her, and in this dress four tints of orange chiffon, Dantè, faisan doré, Vésuve, and pomme d’or, blazed together. Even Worth, the greatly daring, had inwardly felt a qualm of audacity, but how admirably, when Kit was inside the gown, had his audacity succeeded! “Réussi!” he would have sighed had he seen it. Over all was a fine net of pale mandarin yellow, to which was tacked a cusped acanthus pattern of sequins; and Kit, looking at herself long and critically in her wardrobe glass, said “Lor’!” Her glorious red-gold hair, full of dusky flames, of a tint after which Nature blindly gropes where Paris leads the way, was the point to which Worth had worked, and his success was beyond all approval or praise.

  Next came the question of jewels, and Hortense, her maid, with the artist’s eye, thought that pearls and pearls only, pas un diamant, would be consummately chic. Kit saw what she meant, and from an artistic point of view devoutly agreed, but she turned up her nose at the suggestion. “We don’t want to be chic, my good woman,” she said. “We want to hit ’em in the eye. The rubies, Hortense!”

  Now, the rubies were really fine, glorious molten lakes of colour, almost barbarically splendid, and being entailed, they had been forced to remain in the Conybeare coffers. But if ever a woman and
her dress were designed and built for rubies, Kit and this creation were. Hortense, moved beyond her wont, ejaculated “Mon Dieu!” as the gorgeous baubles were clasped on Kit’s dazzling neck; and her mistress, being as candid with herself as she was with her husband, smiled serenely at her own reflection.

  “A touch of rouge,” she said to Hortense, and when that was unerringly applied, “There,” she murmured, “that will double up the City. And Jack,” she added to herself, “will then proceed to pick its pockets.”

  She rustled across the floor, and tapped at the door of her husband’s dressing-room.

  “Are you ready, Jack?” she asked.

  “Yes, just. Come in, Kit.”

  Kit took from her table the orange-red fan which Worth had sent with the dress, threw the door open and held her head very high.

  “The gold-miner’s wife,” she remarked.

  Her husband looked at her a moment in blank admiration. Seven years’ husband as he was, Kit still occasionally “knocked him over” as he expressed it, and she knocked him over now. Then he laughed outright.

  “That ought to fetch ‘em,” he said frankly.

  “So I think,” said Kit; “but really, Jack, it was a sacrifice putting this on. Remember that, please. I was keeping it for the royalties next week, but you said ‘very gorgeous,’ and I obeyed.”

  “Oh, blow the royalties!” said Jack. “Dress in tartan plaid for them, or a kilt even. Besides, it is bad form for a hostess to be better dressed than her guests. That dress wouldn’t do at all, Kit, in your own house. They would think you were an advanced Radical.”

  The India-rubber-tired brougham, with its little electric lamp in the roof (Kit’s only real extravagance for more than ten days, as she triumphantly told Jack) was ready when they got downstairs, and they rolled off into the gaslit roar of the streets. This way and that flashed the gleaming lights of hansoms and carriages; it was like passing through an August shower of shooting-stars. Long queues of waiting folk stretched like snakes from the pit-doors of theatres; newsboys roared their “‘orrible and revoltin’” details; jewellers’ shops with windows a blaze of gems signalled and winked across the streets; feathered women peacocked along, making eyes at the passers; loungers lounged; busy little men with black bags made scurrying bee-lines across the crowded roadway; buses, a plaster of advertisements, swung nodding on their way; and bicycles glided by them so spare and silent that they might have been incorporeal things. High up on house-roofs glowed the changing colours of prima-donna soaps, putting to shame the lesser lights of heaven; now an invisible gigantic penman would write Kodak with large flowing hand in red ink, then, dissatisfied, delete it, and try it again in yellow. Here the crystal signs of music-halls flashed diamonds, or the open door of a restaurant cast a brilliant square of light on to the street. Then for a moment a strident, diabolically-precise scale from a street-organ would overscore all other noises; but the hoofs and wheels which bore the hungry world to the houses of its friends to be fed reasserted itself with a crash and trample like some Valkürie-ritt; the whole town was abroad, and humming like a swarming beehive.