Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “But the telegram?” asked Jack. “Who sent the telegram about the strong support in Australia?”

  Mr. Alington opened his mild eyes to their widest.

  “I, my dear fellow!” he said; “at least, of course I caused it to be sent. As usual, two days ago, I despatched one cipher telegram to this valet of mine, telling him to invest, and another to my manager telling him to wire, ‘Strong support in Australia.’ He did as I told him; Chavasse did not. That is all.”

  Jack was silent a moment, but it did not take him long to grasp the whole situation, for it was very simple.

  “And what next?” he said.

  Alington shrugged his shoulders.

  “Unless the shares go up again before next settling-day, I shall almost certainly be bankrupt,” he said.

  “Then why, if the papers were correctly informed, did you go on buying last night?”

  “Because I could get Carmel dirt cheap,” he said. “If they go up, I am so much the richer; if they do not, I am done in any case. This unfortunate contretemps about my foolish valet does not affect the value of the mine. The gold is there just the same.”

  “But nobody will believe that,” put in Jack.

  “For the present, as you say — for the immediate present — they will not realize it. They will think themselves lucky to part with their shares enormously below their value. My fortune depends on how soon they realize it.”

  “There will be an inquiry into the matter?”

  “Undoubtedly. Bogus telegrams are not officially recognised by the Stock Exchange.”

  Alington was certainly at his best, so thought Jack, when things happened. His sleek, unhurried respectability, a little trying and conventional at ordinary times, though unaltered in itself, became admirable, a rare manifestation of self-control. No flurried quickening marked his precise, unhurried sentences; they remained just as leisurely as ever. As in the days when Carmel East and West was behaving in so mercurial a manner, though so consonantly with his wishes, so now, when the greater coup had struck so back-handedly against himself, he did not cease to be imperturbably calm and lucid. Though without breeding in the ordinary sense of the word, he had to a notable extent that most characteristic mark of breeding, utter absence of exaltation in unexpected prosperity and complete composure in disaster. There was nothing affected about him; he was, as always, unimpulsive master of himself, and this, which in the social mill seemed a lack of animation, in the mill of adversity became a thing to respect.

  “You take it very quietly,” said Jack.

  “It is mere habit,” said Alington. “By the way, I hope, my dear fellow, that your wife is better?”

  “Much better, thanks. We went to Goring yesterday.”

  “So I saw in the papers. How much had you in Carmel?”

  “Eight thousand pounds cash. And half of my shares I have bought only, not paid for.”

  “Ah! will that be a difficulty?”

  “More like an impossibility, unless they go up before settling-day.”

  “I am sorry for that,” said Alington, “for I should have recommended your buying even more. I am going to bluff the thing out. I am going to buy and buy. Chavasse may go hang. I shall make no attempt to get him or his — my — fifty thousand pounds.”

  “Fifty thousand!” exclaimed Jack involuntarily.

  “Fifty thousand! Indeed, I could not before the ship touches at the Cape. But if I buy, and am known to be buying, it is still conceivable that confidence may be restored, that the damage done by that absurd, unreasonable panic yesterday may be repaired. I don’t say that the rush for shares was not insane, but the panic was not less so. And now, my dear fellow, I congratulate you on the way you have taken it. You would make a financier. Æquam memento rebus in arduis! How Horace has the trick of stating simple things inspiritingly! A divine gift.”

  “But what do you suppose they will find out at the inquiry?” asked Jack.

  “Ah, you need not fear the inquiry in the least. That will not touch your salary as director, which is the sort of thing which I see you have on your mind. No. What would perhaps be serious for you is, if I became bankrupt. Then, it is true, my private accounts where your salary figures would be made public. The surest means of avoiding that is that shares should go up again before settling-day. It is with this view I am buying now; with this view I should recommend you to desperate measures! Desperate? Oh, certainly! But I must remind you that the case is fairly so. I see it is lunch time. You will lunch here, of course?”

  Kit had not yet risen when Jack went up to London that morning, and she found Lily alone in the garden when she came down. Her illness had left her very weak and frail, and though she was getting on rapidly, she felt very different from the Kit who, a few weeks ago, would dress twenty times a day for twenty engagements, and sit up half the night with baccarat. Physically and mentally, she had been much jarred by a very sudden and startling pull-up. All her life she had been content to go drifting giddily along, asking only of the moment that it should amuse her; and in those days when she lay in the darkened room it seemed as if somebody, not herself, had asked her some serious and frightening questions. At any rate, she had a scare, if no worse, and she felt disposed to go cautiously. Out of she knew not where had leaped the forces that strike, that pay the wages of all action, of sin, of virtue, of justice and injustice, and to her had wages been given. She had heard of such things before; cant phrases of childhood reminded her that one reaped as one had sown, that causes lead to effects, but until now she had not any more certain news of them. But during those three days of semi-consciousness, in which she had clung instinctively to Lily, it was as if some piece of herself, dormant and overlaid for the most part by the entertainment of ordinary every-day living, had, in the disablement of that, reasserted itself, and now that she was winning her way back to normal conditions this new consciousness had not been stilled again.

  Lily, whom she had hitherto regarded as enviably rich, rather proper and guindée, had touched some chord in her which did not cease to vibrate. Of all people in the world, Kit would, à priori, have considered her the one who would naturally have shunned her. Hitherto she had regarded her, viewed by any intimate standard, with all the complete indifference with which people who do not consider themselves good look upon those whom they regard as being so, and the sinner is always sublimely incurious of the attitudes and actions of the saint. But Lily had come to her in her need; guindée as she might be, she had yet been a comfort and an encouragement to her in the hopelessness of her desolation, just as if she was not, as Kit supposed she must be, shocked at her. Afterwards, during her convalescence, for days a secret fear had beset Kit that the moment would come when Lily would talk to her seriously, “jaw her,” as she put it to herself — very sweetly and gently, no doubt, but still “jaw” her. That would spoil it all. But day had added itself to day, and the “jaw” was still unspoken. Lily was only more patient with her than anyone, and more comfortable. She was not amusing, but Kit for once did not want to be amused. Her presence was pleasant; it was what Kit wanted, and this gave her food for thought.

  More than once, again, during those darkened days Kit had broken down, cried herself nearly hysterical, and it was Lily who had soothed her back from the borders of insanity. She had not asked after the state of Kit’s soul, or urged repentance on her; she had not been improving, or told her that pain was sent her for a good reason. Once, indeed, as we have seen, she had prayed with her, and Kit, who would naturally have screamed at such an idea, or told all her friends what liberties a quite nice sister-in-law sometimes took, did neither. She found — it may have been imagination — that it did her good. All these things she had revolved secretly, but often, while they were staying at Goring, and they seemed to her significant. Her mind, indeed, used them as its ordinary provender, going to graze on them habitually.

  Lily and Toby were off next day, and when Kit came down on the Sunday morning following Jack’s departure to
London, she had determined to talk to Lily. It struck her as odd that three weeks ago she should have been so nervous that Lily was going to talk to her, whereas now she herself was about to give her an intentional opportunity of doing so. Also to-morrow she would be left alone with Jack, who would return then, and sooner or later she and he would have to talk. Hitherto both of them had avoided the one subject which filled their minds: while in London it was an ever-present dread to each that some day this must come, each continually apprehensive that the other would begin, yet half longing to get it over. Both knew that the thing had to be talked out, there was no getting over that; nor was it any use waiting till the narcotic accumulation of time should dim the memories of that scene when Kit had told him all, and been answered by a blow. There are certain things which no lapse of time will ever cover: this was one. Words had to pass between them, and what those words should be neither could guess. Here was another reason why Kit wanted to be talked to by Lily.

  They walked up and down the lawn for a few minutes, speaking of indifferent things, and Lily made some reference to her leaving on the next day.

  “And I shall be alone with Jack,” said Kit simply, but with purpose.

  “Yes,” said the other. Then, after a pause: “You must have things to say to each other, Kit. Jack told Toby yesterday he had hardly had a word with you since you were ill.”

  Kit stopped.

  “I dread it,” she said, “and I know it must come. But, Lily, what is to be said on either side? what can be said?”

  “Ah, it’s no use thinking over what you are going to say,” said Lily. “You will say what you must, what you feel.”

  “I don’t know what I feel,” said Kit. “Let us sit down; it is warm. And I want to talk to you.”

  They sat down on a garden-seat, shaded by the fan-branched cedar and looking out over the haze of summer sunshine and the slow, strong river.

  “I don’t know what I feel,” said Kit again.

  “Try to tell me as best you can,” said Lily quietly.

  “Well, I won’t be dishonest with myself, I am sure of that,” said Kit. “Just now I have a horror of what — of what is past. But how can I know from what it springs? It may be only because the terrible consequences are still vivid to me. I have been wicked all my life — it is no use pretending otherwise. I have never tried to do good or to be good. Well, I get paid out for a bad thing I have done. Is it not most probable that I have a horror of it only because the punishment is very fresh to me?”

  “That is something,” said Lily. “If punishment makes you detest what you did, it is doing its work.”

  “Ah, but the burglar who is caught doesn’t detest burglary, really. He may not commit it again, but that is a very different matter. You beat a dog for chasing a cat; when it sees a cat next time, it probably will put its tail down, but you have not eradicated its tendencies, or changed its nature.”

  Kit paused. She was groping about helplessly in her dim-lit soul.

  “You are a good woman, Lily,” she said. “You don’t and you can’t understand a person like me. Oh, my dear, I should never have got through it but for you! I want to be good — before God, I believe I want to be good, but I don’t know what it means. I can only say that I will not do certain things again. But how feeble is that! I want to see Ted again — oh, how I want to! — but I believe that I want not to. Is that any good? I want to love Jack again. I did once, indeed I did, and I want him to love me. That is hopeless: he never will.”

  Lily was puzzled. Kit’s difficulties seemed, somehow, so elementary that explanation was impossible. But she knew that it was only through the acknowledgment and the facing of them that her salvation lay. Kit was a child in matters of morals, and perfectly undeveloped; but, luckily, plain simplicity is the one means by which to approach children. Tact, finesse, all the qualities which Kit had and she had not were unneeded here.

  “Kit, dear, it doesn’t matter, so to speak, whether Jack loves you or not,” she said. “Anyhow, it doesn’t concern what you must do. Oh, you will not find things easy, and I never heard that one was intended to. You will find a thousand things you want to do, and must not, a thousand things you must do which are hard — harder than the old bazaar-opening, Kit. I am assuming, of course, that, on the whole, you want to be good. There is the great thing, broadly stated.”

  Kit nodded her head.

  “I don’t know. I suppose I do,” she said.

  “Well, there is no master key to it,” said Lily. “Separately and simply you have to take each thing, and do it or avoid it. You will need endless patience. I don’t want to preach to you, and I don’t know how; but you have asked me to help you. Your life has been passed in a certain way: you have told me certain things about it. On the whole, you wish the future to be different. Forget the past, then — try to forget it. Do not dwell on it: it is a bad companion. It will only paralyze you, and you need all your power for what lies in front of you.”

  “Do you mean I must renounce the world, and all that?” asked Kit.

  “No, nor go into a nunnery. You have a duty towards Jack. Do it; above all, keep on doing it, every day and always. Consider whether there are not many things, harmless in themselves, which lead to things not harmless. Avoid them.”

  “Don’t flirt, you mean?” said Kit quite sincerely.

  Lily paused a moment. There was a certain coarse simplicity about Kit which was at once embarrassing and helpful. Never were appearances more misleading; for Kit, with her pallor and exquisite face, looked the very image of a refined woman of the world, one who lived aloof from the grossness of life, yet of fine and complicated fibre. Instead, as far as present purposes were concerned, she was as ignorant as a child, but without innocence. She had lost the latter without remedying the former.

  “Certainly don’t flirt,” she said; “but don’t do a great deal more than that. Remember that you are a certain power in the world — many people take their tone from such as you — and let that power be on the right side. One knows dimly enough what goodness is, but one knows it sufficiently. I don’t want you to be a raving reformer: that is not in your line. Set your face steadily against a great many things which are commonly done by the people among whom you move.”

  “The things I have done all my life,” said Kit.

  “Yes, the things you have done all your life.”

  Kit sat silent, and the gentleness of her face to this straight speech was touching. At last she looked up.

  “And will you help me?” she asked. “Oh, Lily! I have been down into hell. And I didn’t believe in it till I went there. But so it is — an outer darkness.”

  She said it quite simply and earnestly, without bitterness, or the egotism which want of reticence so often carries with it. Round them early summer was bright with a thousand blossoms and melodies; the mellow jangle of church bells was in the air; the time of the singing-bird had come.

  “But I can’t feel — I am numb. I don’t know where to go, or where I am going,” she went on, her voice rising. “I only know that I don’t want to go back to the life I have hitherto led; but there is nothing else. The great truths — God, religion, goodness — which mean so much, so everything to you, are nothing to me. I feel no real desire to be good, and yet I want to be not wicked. One suffers for being wicked. I can get no higher than that.”

  “Stick to that, dear Kit,” said Lily. “I can tell you no more. Only I know — I know that, if one goes on doing the thing one believes to be best, even quite blindly, the time comes that one’s eyes are slowly opened. Out of the darkness comes day. One sees from where one has come. Then one look, and on again.”

  “But for ever, till the end of one’s life?” asked Kit.

  “Till the end of one’s life. And the effort to behave decently has a great reward, which is decent behaviour.”

  “And Jack — what am I to say to Jack?”

  “All you feel.”

  “Jack will think it so queer,” said K
it.

  “You did not see Jack when you were at your worst that afternoon. Oh, Kit! it is an awful thing to see the helpless anguish of a man. He will not have forgotten that.”

  “Jack in anguish?” asked Kit.

  “Yes; just remember that it was so. Here’s Toby. I thought he was at church. What a heathen my husband is!”

  Toby strolled up, with his pipe in his mouth.

  “I meant to go to church,” he said; “but eventually I decided to take — to take my spiritual consolation at home.”

  “I, too, Toby,” said Kit.

  CHAPTER X. TOBY DRAWS THE MORAL

  Toby was sitting in the smoking-room of the Bachelors’ Club some weeks later on a hot evening in July. The window was open, and the hum of London came booming in soft and large. It was nearly midnight, and the tide of carriages had set westward from the theatres, and was flowing fast. The pavements were full, the roadway was roaring, the season was gathered up for its final effort. Now and then the door opened, and a man in evening dress would lounge in, ring for a whisky-and-soda, and turn listlessly over the leaves of an evening paper, or exchange a few remarks with a friend. As often as the door opened Toby looked up, as if expecting someone.

  It had already struck midnight half an hour ago when Jack entered. He looked worried and tired, and by the light of a match for his cigarette, which he lit as he crossed the room to where Toby was sitting, the lines round his eyes, noticed and kindly commiserated a few months before by Ted Comber, seemed deeper and more harshly cut. He threw himself into a chair by Toby.

  “Drink?” asked the other.

  “No, thanks.”

  Toby was silent a moment.

  “I’m devilish sorry for you, Jack,” he said at length. “But I see by the paper that it is all over.”

  “Yes; they finished with me this afternoon. Alington will have another week of it. Jove! Toby, for all his sleekness and hymn-singing, he is an iron fellow! He’s got some fresh scheme on hand, and he’s going about it with all his old quiet energy, and asked me to join him; but I told him I’d had enough of directorships. But there’s a strong man for you! He is knocked flat, he picks himself up and goes straight on.”