Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Ted lifted his brown eyes to hers, but she sat with eyes downcast, playing with her dessert-knife.

  “Are you never serious?” he asked.

  “Not at dinner. A serious voice carries so. It is audible as far as a Bishop’s hat, if you see what I mean. Have you finished? Shall we go?”

  And she lifted her long, fringed eyelashes a moment, and returned his look.

  BOOK II

  CHAPTER I. KIT’S MEDITATIONS

  Kit was sitting in her own room in the Buckinghamshire cottage one day late in the following December, staring intently into the fire. The fire, it is true, was worth looking at, for it was made of that adorable combination, cedar-logs and peat, and it had attained to that fine flower of existence — a fragrant, molten core of heat, edged by little lilac-coloured bouquets of flame, smokeless and glowing, the very apotheosis of a fire. Outside, the world was shrouded and made dizzy in a trouble of eddying snow, and as the great sonorous blasts trumpeted and lulled again, the reds of the fire would brighten and fade in a sort of mysterious sympathy with the bugling riot overhead. But that Kit should be doing nothing but looking at the fire was an unusual thing; it was odd that she should be alone, even odder that, if alone, she should not be occupied. The toes of her bronze-coloured shoes rested on the fender, and she leaned forward in the low armchair in which she sat, stretching out her hands towards the heat, and the fire shining through the flesh of her fingers made them look as if they were lighted from within — things red and luminous in themselves. It was already growing dusk, but she had enough light to think by, and quite enough things to think about.

  The room was furnished with great simplicity, but the educated eye could see how extremely expensive such simplicity must have been. There was a rug or two on the floor, a few tables and chairs of the Empire on the rugs, and a few pictures on the crimson satin walls. Kit herself perhaps was the most expensive thing present, for she wore her pearls, and they glowed like mist-smoored moons in the fire-light. But she did not look as happy as the possessor of her pearls or her excellent digestion ought to look. There was something of the hard, tired look of suffering, mental and physical, about her face, and though she was alone, she made, now and then, nervous, apprehensive little movements.

  Everything was going wrong, from money upwards, or downwards; for at the present moment Kit hardly knew how to arrange the precedence of her various embarrassments. The financial ones were at any rate the most tangible, though perhaps the least feared, and for the fiftieth time that afternoon she ran over them.

  In the beginning it had been altogether Jack’s fault, but Kit was past finding either consolation or added annoyance in that. She had great faith in Alington’s power of making their fortune, though personally he was detestable to her, for various excellent reasons, and she had wanted to invest the famous nest-egg, which from one cause and another had grown to upwards of three thousand pounds, in these mines under Alington’s advice. After their last private interview she did not like to go to him straight, and so asked Jack to tell her in what mines to place a little money she had saved. The word “saved,” when used by Kit, always made Jack smile.

  But he was absurd, and strongly opposed to her risking her “savings” at all. He had told her to make herself quite happy; if she would leave things to him, and go on “saving” quietly, there would be enough for both of them, a statement in itself repugnant and almost blasphemous to Kit, who firmly held the doctrine that there never can be enough money for one, still less for two.

  “You don’t know what it all means, Kit,” he had said, “and for that matter I don’t either. One day perhaps your shares will go down, and you will sell out in a panic and lose a lot, or you will not sell out and you will lose more. It is impossible for me always to be instructing you; I have not got the data myself. I leave it all to Alington. Besides, I didn’t know you had any money to invest.”

  “That is my affair,” said Kit; “I have been lucky lately.”

  “Then put it into consols, and don’t gamble any more,” said Jack, with the fine inconsistence of the gambling fever on him, “or come and talk about it some other time; I’ve got twenty hundred things to do now.”

  Then in a flare of pride and temper, Kit had determined to manage for herself, and had put a couple of thousand pounds into Carmel East. This was in November, at a time when, for some reason, known perhaps to Alington, but certainly to no one else in the market, Carmel was behaving in a peculiarly mercurial manner. A week after she had made her investment the pound shares, which were standing at a little above par, had declined rapidly to fourteen shillings. It might only be a bear raid, but she was too proud to ask Jack for advice again, and remembering his ill-omened remark about not selling and so losing more, she telegraphed to her broker to sell out at once. This done, the shares began to rise again, and in less than a fortnight’s time, owing to telegrams and reports from the mine, they stood at nearly two pounds. She reckoned up, almost with tears, what she had lost, which, added to what she might have gained, formed a maddening total. Her eighteen hundred shares, if she had only held on, would have been worth close on three thousand six hundred pounds; instead, she had sold them when they stood at fourteen shillings for thirteen hundred pounds. And when Jack, a few mornings later, came into her room with a cheque for five hundred pounds, which he gave her, she felt that this only accentuated the bitterness of it.

  “A little present, Kit,” he said, “just for you to play about with. What a good thing you were wise, and did not concern yourself with things you did not understand! Oh, I bless the day when we went down to the City dinner and met Alington. You wore an orange dress, I remember: it would be rather graceful if you paid for it now.”

  “How much have you made, Jack?” she asked.

  “Eight thousand, and I wish it was eighty. But that is the result of having no capital. I’m going to pay some bills — perhaps; but it is all very wearing.”

  Kit was not accustomed to cry over spilt milk, and Jack’s present made up the greater part of what she had actually lost, though it was only a small proportion of what she might have gained. One learns by experience, she thought; for experience is a synonym for one’s mistakes, and she had been a consummate fool to be frightened. The mine was still quite young, and if within a few months the shares were worth double their original value, it was likely to be a good investment even at the present price, and again she invested two thousand pounds in it. Since then the price had steadily gone down, and the shares were quoted a week ago at nineteen shillings. But this time, though it taxed her admirable nerve, she was not going to be frightened, and with the object of averaging she had spent the remaining spoonfuls of her nest-egg in buying more, thus reducing the whole price to thirty-two shillings per share. Thus, when they again went up, as she still believed they would do, she would sell as soon as they touched two pounds, as Jack had sold, and clear, though not so much as he had done, still, something worth having. But the averaging had been singularly unsuccessful, and this morning the abominable things had stood again at fourteen shillings.

  This had been too much for Kit’s nerves, and she went to Jack with the whole story. He had simply shrugged his shoulders; he was odiously unsympathetic. The “I told you so” rejoinder is always irritating, and the irritation it produces varies directly according to the amount of damage involved. Kit’s irritation, it follows, was considerable.

  “Oh, Jack, what is the use of saying that?” she had cried angrily. “I come to be helped, not to be moralized to. I ask you now as a favour to telegraph to Mr. Alington. You say you know nothing about these things, although you are a director. Well, perhaps he does. And I want some money.”

  It was not wise, and Kit knew it even as she spoke, to take a fretful, discourteous tone. It had long been a maxim with her that courtesy was a duty, the greatest perhaps, which one owned to those with whom one was intimate, and that it was most foolish to let familiarity breed brusqueness. Besides, it never paid, excep
t with tradesmen and others, to put your nose in the air, and, as a rule, she was not guilty of this breach of prudence. But to-day she was horribly worried, and anxious about many things, and that Jack should say “I told you so” seemed unbearable.

  He did not reply immediately, and then, taking a cigarette from a table near him, “You usually do want some money,” he remarked.

  Kit made a great effort, and recovered her temper and her self-control.

  “Dear Jack,” she said, “I have been rude, and I apologize. But I very seldom am rude; do me the justice to admit that. Also I have been stupid and foolish. I am in an awful hole. Do telegraph to Alington, like a good boy, and ask him what I am to do. And I should really be very glad of a little money if you can spare it.”

  Jack looked at her curiously. It was utterly unlike Kit to behave like this. Her debts hitherto had sat lightly on her; she had often said that nothing was so nice as having money, and nothing so easy as to get along without it. Again, Kit’s nest-egg of three thousand pounds seemed to him a surprising sum. She had not, as far as he knew, played much in the summer, and all the autumn, except for a fortnight she spent at Aldeburgh, they had been together, and her winnings certainly could not have been a fifth of that. He could not conceive how she had got it.

  “Look here, Kit,” he said, “you shall have some money if you must, though just now I want literally every penny I can lay hands on for this mine affair. I am playing for big stakes. If the thing comes off as I expect — and, what is much more satisfactory, as Alington expects — we shall be rich, and when I say rich it means a lot. But I think we had better have a talk. Oh, I will telegraph to Alington about your affair at once.”

  Kit felt wretchedly nervous and upset that morning, and while Jack wrote the telegram, she threw herself into a chair that stood before the fire and lit a cigarette, hoping to soothe her jangled nerves. Snow had already begun to fall, the air was biting; she shivered. But after a few whiffs she threw the cigarette away. It tasted evilly in her mouth, and she felt an undefined dread of what was coming, and not in the least inclined for a talk. Luckily, Jack was going up to town in half an hour; the talk could not last long.

  He waited till the servant had taken the telegram, and then came and stood in front of the fire.

  “How did you get that three thousand pounds?” he asked abruptly.

  “I won it. I have told you so,” said Kit.

  “Where? When? It is a large sum. You know, Kit, I don’t often pry into your affairs. Don’t be angry with me.”

  “My dear Jack, I don’t keep a book with the names and addresses of all the people from whom I have won sixpence. Neither of us, if it comes to that, is famed for well-kept account-books. Where? At a hundred places. When? This last summer and autumn,” and her voice died a little on the words.

  Jack turned and flicked the ash off his cigarette. He knew that Kit could not have won that amount, and he hated to think that she was lying to him. True, he was asking the sort of question they did not ask each other, but he could not help it — the air was ominous. She must have borrowed it or been given it, and such a suspicion cut him to the quick, for though he, like her, did not give two thoughts to running up huge bills at tradesmen’s risk, yet it was quite a different thing to borrow from one’s own class (for he knew rightly that Kit would never be so foolish as to go to a money-lender), or to be given money by one’s friends. And her manner was so strange. He could not avoid the thought that there was something behind.

  “Did Alice Haslemere lend you some?” he asked suddenly.

  Kit, taken off her guard, saw a gleam of hope.

  “Yes,” she said quickly, not meaning to lie. Then, remembering she had told him that she had won it, “No,” she added in the same breath.

  Jack made a quick step back to the table at which he had been writing.

  “There is no manner of use in talking if you can’t tell me the truth,” he said. “How much money do you want, Kit?”

  Kit tried to answer him, but could not. She was only conscious of a great desolating helplessness, and slowly the sobs gathered in her throat. Jack, waiting for her answer, heard a quick-taken breath, and in a moment he was by her, the best of him ready to help, if possible, forgetting everything except that Kit was in trouble.

  “My poor old girl!” he said. “What is the matter? Is there something wrong, Kit? Won’t you tell me? Indeed I am your friend. Don’t cry so. Never mind; tell me some other time if you like. There, shall I leave you? Will you be better alone?”

  Kit nodded her head, and he touched her lightly and kindly on the shoulder, and turned to go. But before he had got to the door she spoke.

  “No, it is nothing, Jack,” she said, controlling her voice with an effort. “I am out of sorts, I think. Never mind about the money. I can push along.”

  She got up from her chair and went towards the door.

  “Don’t worry, Jack,” she said.

  She went to her own room, where she knew that no one would disturb her, and shut herself in. Jack would be away all day, and till evening she would be alone. A few people were coming down with him then from town, among them Toby and his wife, Ted Comber, and several others of their set. On the whole, she was glad they were coming; it was better to be distracted than to brood over things which no brooding will mend. Above all, she wanted an interval in which Jack and she would not be alone. Perhaps after a few days he might forget or remember only vaguely the affair of this morning.

  She had lunched alone in her sitting-room off a tray, for it was warmer there than in the dining-room, and had tried a dozen ways of making the hours pass. It was impossible to go out; the snow, which had begun before Jack had left, was getting momently thicker and falling in giddy, frenzied wreaths. The air was bitterly cold, and she could see but dimly through the whirling atmosphere the lines of shrubs in the garden, standing with thick white mantles on. A couple of puffy-feathered sparrows crouched on her window-sill, and Kit in the bitterness of her heart hated them, and, going to the window, frightened them away. They dropped stiffly down on the lawn below, and half walked, half fluttered, to the shelter of a bush near. Then a sudden compunction came over her, and, throwing open the window, she flung out the crumbs from her lunch-tray, but the sudden movement only scared them off altogether. She stood long at the window, looking out on to the blinding desolation, and then by a violent effort detached herself for the moment from all the things that troubled her. They would all have to be taken and dealt with, but she could do nothing alone. Jack had to be told something — Jack and another.

  The electric light was out of order, and about a quarter past three of that howling winter’s afternoon she left her place by the fire and her unread book and rang for lamps. Then there were orders also to be sent to the stables, and she detained the man a minute to give them, knowing that when he had gone she would be alone again. The omnibus and the brougham must both meet the train, and the horses must be roughed, and was there any telegram for his lordship. One had come, and, guessing it was from Alington, she opened it.

  “Bad slump in Carmel East,” she read. “Cannot advise.”

  Kit crumpled the telegram up, and threw it impatiently into the grate. Here was another thing to be banished from her mind; truly this was a somewhat extensive exile. She determined not to sell; unless something happened to send the prices up, it would be a mere reminder of her losses to rescue so small a salvage from the wreck. She did not want a little money, she wanted a great deal, and she would just as soon have none as a little. So, having determined to dismiss the whole subject, she thought of nothing else for the next half-hour.

  Outside the evening grew darker and wilder, and the windows on the north-east of her room, the quarter from which the wind blew, were already half blinded by the snow, and every now and then a furious, unseen hand would rattle their casements as if demanding instant admittance. The wind, which had been rising and falling and rising again all day in fitful gusts, now blew with an ast
onishing and ever increasing vehemence. The line would be deep in snow, perhaps almost impassable; in any case the train which should bring Jack and the rest must be late. Kit felt that the elements, the snow and the storm, were malignant beings fighting against her; the solitude of the next few hours became unbearable, and who knew how many hours she might still be alone? Quick to catch at relief, it seemed to her that to have people about, to have the ordinary innumerable duties of a hostess to perform, would be the solution of her troubles, and the omnibus full of folk who had already left London were so many anchors to her. She would have to talk, laugh, entertain people, be her normal self, and hours and days would pass without giving her time or opportunity for thought or regret. She tried to tell herself that her present difficulties, like the unanswered letters, would manage and answer themselves. The nights she did not fear: hitherto she hardly knew what it was to be awake, and even if one did, there were those convenient things like morphia which one could always take.

  Tea-time came; her room had grown intolerable to her, and she went to the hall, where they always had tea if there were people with them, waiting for the snow-muffled sounds of the carriage-wheels. The train was due half an hour before, and they might be here any moment if it had been punctual. Punctual she knew it could not be against this hurly-burly; but still, every minute that passed now was a minute in which they might have reached the station, less hopeless than those she had passed since lunch. The tea-things were brought in, and she ate a piece of bread-and-butter, thinking she would not make tea till they came, but the minutes went on pushing at the hands of the clock, and at last she made enough for herself, and drank a cup. But it seemed neither to warm nor invigorate her; the taste of the cream made her feel sick, and pouring the half of it away, she left the table, and came to sit nearer the fire, book in hand.