Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Oh, down at the cottage with Lady Conybeare. So delicious and rustic; there is no one there except Lily and dear Toby. Of course we are very happy about it. And don’t you find a hotel quite intolerable?”

  In the pause that followed Mrs. Murchison ran over her plans.

  “What a charming place this is,” she went on; “and how delightful to be near Stanborough! Lord Comber is there; he told me he was going on there from Beyrout. At the Links Hotel, I think he said.”

  Toby looked up.

  “Is Comber there?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

  His cheerful face had clouded, and his tone was peremptory.

  “Of course I am sure,” said Mrs. Murchison. “Dear me, how annoyed you look, Lord — I mean Toby. And I thought he was such a friend of your sister-in-law’s and all. What is the matter?”

  “Nothing — nothing at all,” he said quickly.

  But he looked at his mother and caught her eye.

  “What a very odd place for Lord Comber to come to!” said Lily, who had grasped “watering-place” with greater distinctness than Mrs. Murchison.

  “I am sure I don’t see why,” said she. “Stanborough is extremely bracing and fashionable. I saw they had quite a list of fashionable arrivals there in the World yesterday. Isn’t it so, Toby?”

  “Perhaps he has come to play golf,” said Toby in a tone of resolute credulity.

  “Golf?” asked Mrs. Murchison vaguely. “Oh, that’s the game, isn’t it, where you dig a sandpit, and then hit the ball into it and swear? So somebody told me. It sounds quite easy.”

  Toby laughed.

  “A very accurate description,” he said. “I’m going to play this afternoon. Hear me swear!”

  Lady Conybeare rose, as they had finished lunch.

  “Come and see me before you go out, Toby,” she said.

  Lily looked from one to the other, and saw the desire of a private word between them.

  “Oh, mother, let me take you to the rose-garden!” she said. “Shall we have coffee there as usual, Lady Conybeare?”

  “Yes, dear. Take your mother out.”

  The two left the room, and Lady Conybeare turned to Toby.

  “Well, Toby,” she said.

  “I don’t wish to be either indiscreet or absurd, mother,” he answered.

  “Nor I,” said she. “Kit told me she was coming to Stanborough for a week, and I asked her, of course, to stay here. She said she had made arrangements to stay at the Links Hotel. Jack is not coming.”

  Toby made two bread pellets, and flicked them out of the window with extraordinary accuracy of aim.

  “Damn Kit!” he said. “She comes to-morrow, and that beast, I suppose, came a day or two ago. I saw somebody in the distance the day before yesterday who reminded me of him, but I didn’t give another thought to it. No doubt it was he.”

  There was a pause.

  “But Jack — —” said Lady Conybeare, and it cost her something to say it.

  “Oh, Jack’s a fool!” said Toby quickly. “You know that as well as I do, mother. Of course, he’s awfully clever, and all that; but I’ll be blowed if my wife ever stops at a seaside hotel with a Comber-man.”

  Lady Conybeare stretched out her hand.

  “Thank God, I have you, Toby!” she said.

  “What a fool Kit is!” said Toby thoughtfully. “There are hundreds of people there, as Mrs. Murchison says. Telegraph for Jack, mother,” he said suddenly.

  Lady Conybeare shook her head.

  “We have no right, no reason to do that,” she said. “Toby, take the thing in hand. Do your best.”

  Toby looked out of the window and hit an imaginary opponent with his closed fist.

  “Perhaps we could manage something,” he said. “Don’t say a word to Lily, mother, or to Mrs. Murchison.”

  Lady Conybeare smiled rather bitterly.

  “Nor wash my dirty linen in public,” she said. “Is that my habit, dear?”

  Toby got up and kissed his mother lightly on the forehead.

  “I’ll do my best,” he said.

  “I know you will.”

  And they went out to coffee in the rose-garden.

  CHAPTER XIII. TOBY TO THE RESCUE

  Half an hour later Toby was on his way to Stanborough, where he was to meet a friend at the club-house, and play a round of golf with him. As soon as that was over, he proposed to make a call at the Links Hotel and demand an interview with Ted Comber. Lily, in this as in all else above the common level of womankind, made no suggestion that she should come round with them. In fact, she voluntarily repudiated such a possibility.

  “No proper man wants a girl hanging about when he is playing a game,” she had said. “So if you ask me to come with you — if, in fact, you don’t forbid me to — you’ll be no proper man. Now, shall I come with you? I want to, awfully.”

  “Yes — I mean, no,” said Toby, wavering, but deciding right.

  Toby was playing with a friend after his own heart, who had just left Oxford, more to the regret of undergraduates than of tutors, and so presumably his departure was really regrettable. He was a hater of cities and five-o’clock teas, capable of riding whatever on this unruly earth had been foaled, but perfectly incapable of what he called “simpering and finesse,” meaning thereby the pretty little social gifts. Furthermore, he was possessed of so much common-sense that at times he might have been unjustly suspected of being clever. Him, as they played, Toby determined to consult under secrecy as to what must be done with the ineffable Comber, and “If Buck and I,” thought he, “aren’t a match for that scented man, I’ll brush my teeth with my niblick. Lord, what a lark!”

  Toby, it must be confessed, rather enjoyed the mission with which his mother had entrusted him. He was not naturally of a punitive or revengeful disposition, and, indeed, Lord Comber, had never done anything to him, except exist, which called for vengeance. But the thought of his discomfiture was sweet in his mouth, and, though he had not yet formed the vaguest idea as to how it was to be accomplished, he felt a serene confidence that he and Buck would be able to hatch something immensely unpleasant between them.

  Here was no case, he thought gleefully to himself, that called for tact or diplomacy, or any lady-like little weapons, which Comber probably possessed. Brutal means must be used, and he should use them. He regretted intensely that both he and Comber were past the age when their difference could be settled with the straightforward simplicity which says, “Will you go of your own accord, or do you prefer to be kicked?” Dearly would he have liked that, for, indeed, his fists itched after the man.

  Anyhow, the cause was good. Comber was to be sat upon, and Kit saved from making an egregious fool of herself. Married women of her age and appearance, reasoned Toby, do not stay alone with people like Comber at watering-places like Stanborough, and Kit’s brother-in-law did not intend that she should do risky things of this description if he could prevent it. Toby’s laudable determination on this point was not due, it must be confessed, to moral scruples. He did not know, and he did not care to know, whether Kit’s flirtation with this man was serious or not. But people, he was aware, talked about them, and certainly, if she and he stayed in a Stanborough hotel for a week in August together, people would have an excellent reason for talking. Still less had he any fancy, supposing the worst came to the worst, for seeing, as his mother said, Conybeare linen, marked very plain, in the public wash-tub.

  Also he hated Comber with all the fine intensity with which a healthy, normal young man hates, and is right to hate, those smiling, wobbly, curled and scented of his sex, who powder themselves and take pills, and read ladies’ papers, and are at their best (or worst) in a boudoir — lap-dogs of London. Some women, and perhaps their Creator knows why, appeared, so Toby thought, to like them. Kit liked Comber — here was an instance of it that thrust sore at him. Now, Jack was no saint (here again Toby was not judging on moral grounds), but he was a man. He would shoot straight or ride straight all day, an
d in the evening he would make himself, it might be, quite scandalously agreeable to other people’s wives. It was not right, and Toby did not defend him, but, anyhow, he behaved like a male. That was where the difference lay.

  He remembered how they had all howled at Kit when one evening she had announced that she was going to Stanborough for a week in August to get braced. No, she was not going to take any of her friends with her, and very likely she would not even take a maid. She proposed to live in some stark hotel swept by all the winds that blow, in a bedroom with only a small square of carpet, one damp sandy towel, and windows looking due north, and kept always wide open. She intended to bathe daily before breakfast in the cold, salt, terrible German Ocean, to sit and walk on the sands all day, and go to bed directly after an eggy high tea, about seven. She would have eggs with her tea, and eggs with her breakfast, and cold roast beef for lunch, and possibly beer. She would not go to stay with Jack’s mother, which was the obvious thing to do, because the house was so comfortable, and she knew she would only sit indoors, and get up late and go to bed late if she did. She wanted to be cold and uncomfortable and early-birdish, and come back braced with a bronzed complexion like a sailor, and blowzy hair. It would be immensely healthy and exceedingly unpleasant.

  Toby recollected these amazing plans of Kit’s very precisely. Ted Comber, he also remembered, had been there when she had enunciated them, and when he asked if he might come too, had received an unqualified negative. Thus, whether Kit had or had not made this subsequent arrangement with him mattered not at all. If she had, the Perseus-Toby was coming hot-foot over the downs to deliver her from her self-forged fetters; and if Comber had come without being asked, still more peremptory should be his dismissal. What was to be done was clear to demonstration; how it must be done was a matter for council.

  Toby found several friends at the club-house — it was of common occurrence that he found friends in casual and unlikely places — and got generally chaffed and slapped and offered various mixed and stimulating drinks warranted to improve his putting and shut the jaws of the bunkers. But in the course of time they got clear, and drove up the steep hill leading to the first hole. Once started, Toby gave the outlines of the problem to Buck, who was highly and justifiably indignant with him.

  “It’s a shabby trick, Toby,” he said, “to bring me up on to this fine turf under the pretence of playing golf, if you want to talk morals. Good God! fancy talking moral problems on a golf links! If this was a lawn-tennis court, and you were a parson, I could understand it.”

  “Oh, don’t be a fool, Buck!” said Toby; “the whole thing is stated — I have told you all — in ten words, and you needn’t allude to it again till we get in. Then you shall say what you advise me to do. But it must be settled to-day; my sister-in-law comes to-morrow. Just let it simmer.”

  Buck grunted, waggled, frowned heavily at his ball, and laid the iron shot dead.

  “There, it’s all rot saying that to think of something puts you off,” said Toby. “Blast it all!” and his scudding half-topped ball ran very swiftly into the bunker.

  “Of course, talking is one worse,” said Buck, a little soothed.

  Fifty yards separated the first green from the second tee, and Toby recapitulated the salient points of the problem. The man of few words answered nothing, and immediately afterwards drove a screamer.

  These great sea-blown downs, over which the wind scours as shrill and salt as in a ship’s rigging, are admirably predisposing towards lucidity of thought. The northern airs cleanse and vivify the brain; they set the blood trotting equably through the arteries, they tone down overstrung nerves, and raise the slack to the harmonious mean, and in a naturally sane mind lodged in an extremely sane body they produce extraordinarily well-balanced results. And golf above all human pursuits gives full play to what is known as the subliminal self, a fine phrase, denoting that occult and ruling factor in man’s brain — unconscious thought. The body is fully and harmoniously occupied; so, too, the conscious mind. The eye measures a distance; the hand and muscles take its order, and direct the swinging of the club. Meantime that mysterious twin of entity, the inner brain, goes scenting along its private trails, without let or hindrance from the occupied conscious self. Each goes his own way, on roads, maybe, as diverse as those of Jekyll and Hyde, unharassed by the other. Once only in the round did Buck laugh in a loud and appreciative manner for no clear cause. His inner brain had caught a hare, and sent the message to the golfer.

  It was still only a little after five when they returned to the club-house, and Toby ordered tea in a sequestered corner.

  “Of course you’ll go and call on this worm now,” remarked Buck.

  “Yes, that is what I meant to do. Got anything for me to say?”

  “Toby, can you lie?”

  “Like the devil, in a good cause.”

  “Well, tell the Comber man that you are coming to stay at the Links Hotel with your sister-in-law by her invitation. Do the thing properly, and be prodigal of details. It’s a pity you have such a despicable imagination. Say that she wrote to you in despair because she would be bored to death with no one there to speak to, but that Conybeare insisted on her going. Nasty for the worm that? Eh?”

  Toby pondered a moment.

  “That’s not up to much, Buck,” he said. “It wouldn’t drive the man away unless he went simply from pique. And supposing he tells me Kit didn’t write to me? Perhaps he has had a letter from her saying what fun they’ll have.”

  “Oh, of course, if he says you lie,” said Buck suggestively.

  “Do you know the man?” asked Toby with rapture. “He is quite beautiful, with curly hair, rings, and scent, and I expect, if we knew all, stays.”

  Buck, it is idle to blink the fact, spat on the ground.

  “Yes, I know him,” he said. “Hell is full of such. By the way, I haven’t seen you since you were engaged to be married. What an idiotic thing to do!”

  “That happens to be your opinion, does it?” asked Toby mildly.

  “Yes. I’m delighted, really. Congratulations. But the plan doesn’t seem to suit you.”

  “No; it’s rotten,” said Toby. “I want something certain. This easily might not come off.”

  “He’s a real worm, is he?” asked Buck. “I only know him by sight.”

  “Genuine, hall-marked,” said Toby.

  “Well, then give him a chance. Oh, not a chance of getting off. I mean, give him a chance of lying to you. Tell him as news that Lady Conybeare is coming here to-morrow, and perhaps he may appear surprised to hear it. That will give you an opportunity. You can say things to him then.”

  “Yes, there’s more sense in that,” said Toby. “Oh! come and dine to-night.”

  “All right. Is the She there?”

  “Yes; you’ll like her.”

  Buck looked at him enviously.

  “What infernal good luck you have, Toby!” he said.

  “Oh, I know I have,” said Toby. “Lily — —”

  “Don’t know her yet. But about the worm. Probably there will be a row. You’ve got to frighten him away, remember that. Worms are always nervous.”

  “There’ll be a row afterwards with Kit, I’m afraid,” said Toby.

  “Oh, certainly. But it’s all for her good. Introduce me when she comes, and I’ll say I have been her guardian angel.”

  Toby looked at Buck’s strong brown face for a moment in silence.

  “You’d look nice with wings and a night-shirt,” he remarked. “Pity Raphael or one of those Johnnies isn’t alive.”

  “If by Johnnies you refer to the Italian school of painters,” said Buck, “it isn’t worth while saying so.”

  “I know; that’s why I didn’t say so. Good-bye; I’m off to the Links Hotel. Dinner at eight.”

  Lord Comber was in, and would Toby come up to his sitting-room? He met him at the top of the stairs, like a perfect hostess, and took him down the broad passage, stopping once opposite a big glass to smo
oth his carefully-crimped hair. Then he took Toby’s arm, and Toby bristled, for he did not thrust his hand inside the curve of his elbow and let it lie there, but inserted it very daintily and gently, as if he was threading a needle, with a slight pressure of his long fingers.

  “It’s quite too delightful to see you, Toby,” he said; “and how splendid you are looking! I wish I could get as brown as that. You must let me do a sketch of you. Yes, I’m here all alone, and I’ve been terribly bored. I wonder if your mother would allow me to come and see her. Is Miss Murchison there, too?”

  “Yes; she came a couple of days ago.”

  “How nice! I do want to see more of her. Everyone is frightfully jealous of you. And I hear your mother’s house is quite beautiful. Round to the right.”

  Ted Comber firmly held the creed that if you flatter people and make yourself pleasant you can do anything with them. There is quite an astonishing amount of truth in it, but, like many other creeds, it does not contain the whole truth. It does not allow for the possible instance of two personalities being so antagonistic that every effort, even to be pleasant, on the part of the one merely renders it more obnoxious to the other. This is a very disconcerting sort of exception, and the fact that it may prove the rule is a very slight compensation, practically considered.

  “You have some wonderful Burne-Jones drawings, someone told me,” went on Ted, innocently driving the exception up to the hilt, so to speak, in his own blood. “Your father must have had such taste! It is so clever of people to see twenty years before what is going to be valuable. I wish I had known him. Here’s my den.”

  Toby looked round the den in scarcely veiled horror. Daniel’s den with all its lions, he thought, would be preferable to this. There was a French writing-table, and on it signed photographs of two or three women in silver frames, an empty inkstand, a gold-topped scent-bottle (not empty), and a small daintily-bound volume of French verse. Against the wall stood a sofa, smothered in cushions, and on it a mandolin with a blue ribbon. A very big low armchair stood near the sofa, on the arm of which was cast a piece of silk embroidery, the needle still sticking in it, a damning proof of the worker thereof. There was a large looking-glass over the fireplace, and on the chimney-piece stood two or three Saxe figures. A copy of the Gentlewoman and the Queen lay on the floor.