Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Lady Ardingly was seated in a costume that it would be impossible to specify without being prolix, and possibly indelicate, writing notes. An uneasy shadow of a maid hovered near her, to whom she paid no attention. The footman, in obvious perturbation, opened the door and waited, in obedience, it would seem, to a command.

  “Ah, my dear, how are you?” said Lady Ardingly, addressing her last note. “One moment, if you will be so kind. Walter, take these, and have them sent at once by hand. They must all wait for answers. In case any are not in, let them be brought back. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “Say it, then.”

  “All to be delivered, and if” — and he glanced at the two letters— “if their lordships isn’t in, the notes not to be left.”

  And he cast a glance of awe and astonishment at his mistress and fled.

  Lady Ardingly was, in truth, an astonishing object. Nothing had been done to her; she was, with the exception of certain linen garments, as her Maker had willed she should be. Short and scant gray hair imperfectly covered her head; her face, of a curious gray hue, was arbitrarily intersected by a hundred wrinkles and crow’s-feet.

  “I am in dishabille,” she said, rather unnecessarily; “but every old woman is in dishabille. You will get used to it, my dear, some day. So you have come to tell me what every one is saying about Jack’s speech. Yes, I am ready for you,” she threw over her shoulder to her maid.

  That functionary took her stand by her mistress and handed the weapons. A powder-puff began the work, followed by an impressionist dusting on of rouge. Lady Ardingly grew beneath the work of her hands. Then a thick crayon of charcoal traced the approximate line where her eyebrows had once been, and a luxuriant auburn wig framed the picture. Mildred, who locked up even from the eyes of her maid such aids as she was accustomed to use, looked on with a sort of shamefacedness. Just as Marie had just now given almost a shock to her instinct of covering up and doing in secret the processes of thought, of showing to the world only the finished and diplomatic product, so Lady Ardingly gave a shock to her body. Each of them — differing by the distance of miles — was alike in this. And the frankness of both was inconceivable to her. Yet both, in their way, possessed calmly and fully what it cost her long effort to catch a semblance of. Neither minded being natural, and both naturally were so. Mildred’s naturalness — a rare phenomenon — was the outcome of intense artificiality.

  “And what is every one saying of Jack’s speech?” repeated Lady Ardingly, with one eye closed, regarding with some favour a brilliant patch of rouge on her left cheek. “Or what do you say? You can scarcely yet have heard what people think of it.”

  “Surely he has almost declared himself a Liberal,” suggested Mildred.

  “So the Daily Chronicle said,” remarked Lady Ardingly. “What else?”

  “But, on the other hand, the Cabinet would sooner have such a critic on their side than against them.”

  “Ah, my dear, you have read the Standard too. So have I. Have you not any opinion of your own?”

  “Yes; he is on the edge of a precipice.”

  Lady Ardingly’s decorative hand paused.

  “And what is the precipice?” she asked. “You have not forgotten our talk, I see.”

  Mildred lost patience a little.

  “Your advice, you mean,” she said.

  “My advice, if you prefer. I am so glad you have been behaving with such good sense. And as for Jack’s speech, I tell you frankly I was astonished with delight. He seems to me to have hit exactly the right note, and he is in the middle of the right note, like Guardina when she sings. I consider him as having the ball at his feet. He has sprung to the front at a bound. Now his supporters will push him along. He has only got to keep greatly en évidence, and he need do nothing more till the first meeting of the Cabinet.”

  “Has his speech done all that for him?” asked Mildred.

  “Yes, certainly, for it is the speech of a man of action, of whom there are fewer in England than the fingers on my hand. He told his audience that speeches are not in his line. That is immensely taking, when at the time he was making a really magnificent one. Yes, Jack is assured, if only you are careful,” she added in French, which, if considered a precautionary measure against her maid’s comprehension, was not a very tactful move, since the latter was a Frenchwoman.

  Mildred’s eye brightened; at the same time she thought she would not tell Lady Ardingly that Marie and he were probably coming to Windsor the next Sunday.

  “Dear Jack!” she said, “I have always had an immense belief in him. And now his time has come.”

  “I feel certain of it, provided he makes no faux pas. And what of your other friend, Jim Spencer? He also spoke last night, I see. I have not read his speech yet.”

  “There is no need. He said what Jack said,” replied Mildred.

  “Indeed. I am glad, then, you took measures to kill that absurd gossip we spoke of the other day. Otherwise people would say that he had been inspired by Marie.”

  “You think of everything, I believe,” said Mildred.

  “I have a great deal of time on my hands. But now you must go, my dear. To-day I happen to be busy.”

  Lady Ardingly held out a rather knuckly hand. She clearly did not wish that her face, new every morning, should be disturbed just yet.

  “Ah, by the way,” she added, “please let me drive down to see you on Sunday afternoon, according to your invitation. I am afraid I forgot to answer it.”

  Now, no such invitation had ever been given, and Mildred knew it; so, no doubt, did Lady Ardingly. She paused a moment before answering.

  “Of course, we shall be charmed!” she said.

  “She has asked Jack, and does not want me to come,” thought Lady Ardingly. Then aloud: “So sweet of you! Your garden must be looking lovely now. Good-bye, my dear.”

  CHAPTER XV

  It was Sunday evening, and the lawn at Riversdale was brilliantly crowded. The last returns had come in the day before, and the Conservatives had even increased their already immense majority. Every one in the set that congregated to Mildred’s house was delighted, and there was a general sense of relaxation abroad, which might have degenerated into flatness, had there not been so many other amusing things to think about. The season was practically at an end, and, like a flock of birds who have denuded some pasture of its wire-worms, every one was preparing, that feeding-ground finished with, to break up into smaller patches and fly to the various quarters of the globe. Guardina and Pagani had both of them, oddly enough, developed signs — not serious — of an identical species of gouty rheumatism, and had been ordered to Homburg for a fortnight by the same doctor, who was a man not without shrewdness. The Breretons were going a round of Scotch visits in the middle of the month, Jack Alston and his wife were doing the same, and Lady Devereux was consulting Arthur Naseby as to the possibility of being at Cowes and Bayreuth for the same days in the same week. They thought it could be done. Lady Ardingly alone was going to fly nowhere. She proposed to take a rest-cure at her country house for a fortnight, and, with a view to securing herself from all worry and ennui, had engaged four strong people to play Bridge continually, and was on the look-out for a fifth table, who would make her party complete. Amid all these plans for the future there was but little time to look backwards, and all the events of the last month, the last week, the last day even, were stale. The opera was over, and Guardina, instead of living her triumphs o’er again, was only thinking about Homburg, and the various delightful ways in which she could spend the very considerable sum of money she had earned. She was almost as good at spending as she was at earning, and she promised herself an agreeable autumn. The election, similarly, was a stale subject; every one who mattered at all had got his seat, including Jim Spencer, and the only thing connected with Parliament which was of any interest was Jack’s seat in the Cabinet. Only yesterday he had been semi-officially asked whether he would take the War Office, and he
had replied that he had not the slightest objection. He, too, felt agreeably relaxed, and disposed to take things easily. He had slaved at the work and been rewarded; his tendency was to eat, drink, and be merry. Another chain of circumstances also conduced to the propriety of this. He had made a second attempt to enter into more tender relations with his wife, and again she had visibly shrunk from him. And with the bitterness of that, and the relaxation which followed his success, there had come mingled the suggestion of consoling himself.

  The day had been very hot, and Marie, between the heat and the struggle that was going on within her about Jack, had suffered all the afternoon from a rather severe headache, and had retired to her room about six with the idea of sleeping it off if possible, and being able to put in her appearance again at dinner. But sleep had not come; her headache, instead of getting better, got distinctly worse, and when her maid came to her at dressing-time, she sent word to Mildred, with a thousand regrets, that she really did not feel equal to appearing. Subsequently, just before dinner, Mildred herself had come to see her, rustling and particularly resplendent, with sympathy and salts and recommendations of antipyrin, a light dinner and bed.

  Marie had all the dislike of a very healthy person for medicines, but the pain was almost unendurable, and before long she took the dose recommended. Soon after came her maid with some soup and light foods, and she roused herself to eat a little, conscious of a certain relief already. Her dinner finished, she lay down again, and in a few minutes was fast asleep.

  She woke feeling immensely refreshed, her headache already insignificant, and with a strong desire for the cool, fresh air of the night. Her room, baked all day by the sun, was very hot, and the sight of the dim shrubberies outside, and beyond them the misty moonlit field that bordered the Thames, tempted her to go out. She had already told her maid not to sit up, and, turning up her electric light, saw that it was nearly midnight, and that she must have slept close on three hours.

  She leaned for a few moments out of her open window, but only the faintest breeze was stirring the tree-tops, and here the air was heavy and motionless. A half-moon, a little smeared with mist, rode high in the southern heavens, making the redder lights from the rows of lanterns on the lawn look tawdry and vulgar. The tents were brilliantly lit, and she could see cards going on in one, while in another the servants were laying out supper for those who would sit late over their Bridge or conversation. Even at this distance she could distinguish Arthur Naseby’s shrill tones, and laughter punctuated his sentences. He was evidently having a great success. Up and down the middle of the lawn itself, where moonlight struggled with the lanterns, she could see little groups standing talking, and in the foreground was Mildred saying good-bye to some who were going. “It is so early,” Marie could hear her say; “it can hardly be Monday yet.” Jack was standing by her.

  Marie turned back into the room and put out the electric light, then went across to the window again. Much as she would have liked a stroll in the cool darkness of the shrubberies, she in no way wished to mingle with the group on the lawn, and receive sympathy for her indisposition and felicitations on her recovery; still less did she desire what Mildred would call a “quiet chat,” before going to bed, which in other words meant to be one of a bevy of people all talking loud and listening to nobody. But by degrees the leave-takers went, and those who remained drifted back to the tents and the lights. It would be easily possible, she thought, to slip out, leaving the lawn on her left, and stroll through the trees down towards the river, where she would get the breeze without the fatigues of conversation.

  She slipped a gray dust-cloak over her dress and went quietly down-stairs. The drawing-room was empty, and she passed out of the French-window on to the gravel path. In ten paces more she had gained the shelter of the long shrubbery that ran parallel to the lawn, and was screened by it from all observation. She threw the hood of her cloak back from her head. A breeze, as she had hoped, came wandering and winding up the dusky alleys from the river, laden with the thousand warm and fragrant smells of the summer, and with open mouth and ruffled hair she drank it greedily in. Her headache had ceased, and the deep, tranquillized mood of pain removed occupied her senses. The bushes on each side were gently stirred by the wind, and now a waft of the heavy odour of syringa, or the more subtly compounded impression from the garden beds, saluted her as she passed. She had left the path, and felt with a thrill of refreshment the coolness of dew-laden grass touch her feet. Above her head the leaves of the tree-tops, in the full luxuriance of their summer foliage, let through but little light, but in certain interspaces of leaf she could see from time to time a segment of the crescent riding dimly in the heat-hazed sky, or a more prominent star would now and then look down on her. Then, as she left the garden behind, a fragrance more to her mind came to her — the fragrance not of garden-beds and cultivation, but the finer and more delicate odours of July field-flowers, floating, as it were, on the utterly undefinable smell of running water from the Thames.

  Thus, having passed the lawn and its occupants, she turned through into the more open spaces by a lilac-bush that stood near the path, remembering, so she thought, that there was a seat here, and a hammock much frequented by Maud. She had, it seemed, recollected the position of this to a nicety, for on rounding the lilac-bush she came straight on to the hammock, and gave a little cry of surprise to find it tenanted.

  “Maud, is it you?” she asked gently.

  The girl sprang up.

  “How you startled me!” she cried, “Why, it is you, Lady Alston.”

  “Yes, dear. I slept, and my headache was really gone when I awoke, so I determined to have a stroll before going to bed. And you, too, have come away, it seems.”

  The girl got up.

  “And you were looking for my hammock, were you not, to lie down in! Do get in. There is a seat here for me, too. Or shall I go away, if you want to be alone?”

  “By no manner of means,” said Marie. “Stay with me a quarter of an hour or so, and then I shall go back to bed.”

  “But you are really better?” asked Maud.

  “I am really all right; there is no excuse for me at all stealing away like this. I ought to have gone out and talked to people; but I felt lazy and rather tired, and only just came out for a breath of air. It is cooler here; but how hot for midnight! ‘In the darkness thick and hot,’” she said half to herself.

  Marie lay down in the hammock the girl had vacated, and there was a few moments’ silence. Then, “Would it tire you to talk a little, Lady Alston?” she said. “About — you know what about.”

  “No, dear,” said Marie. “And one can always talk best about intimate things in the dark. If one is only a voice one’s self, and the other person is only a voice, one can say things more easily. Is it not so?”

  Maud drew her chair a little closer to the head of the hammock, so that both were in the dense shade of the lilac-bush. Immediately outside the shadow of the bush beneath which they sat was the pearly grayness of the third of the lawns, on which the moon shone full.

  “Yes, it is about him,” said Maud. “I think — I think I have changed. No, it is not because my mother or anybody has been pressing me; in fact, I think it is a good deal because they have not. I saw him here once a fortnight ago, and I liked him. I did not do that before, you know.”

  “Did you tell him so?” asked the other voice.

  “Yes; in so many words. He asked me to put out of my mind all the prejudice which had been created in it by his being, so he said, thrown at my head. I promised him to try. And I have tried. It makes a great difference,” she said gravely.

  “And you have seen him once since,” said Marie, with a sudden intuition.

  “How did you know?” asked Maud.

  “You told me — your tone told me. And what then, dear?”

  “I liked him better when I saw him than I did when I remembered him. Is that nonsense?” she asked quickly.

  “I feel pretty certain it is
not,” said Marie.

  “I am glad, for it seemed to me a very — how shall I say it! — a very certain sensation. And I want to see him again — oh, I want very much to see him again! It is all changed — all changed,” she repeated softly.

  “And do you feel happy?” asked Marie, not without purpose.

  “Yes, or miserable; I don’t know which.”

  Marie took the soft hand that leaned on the edge of her hammock and stroked it gently.

  “Dear Maud,” she said, “I am very glad. It is a great privilege” — and her heart spoke— “to be able to fall in love.”

  “Is it that?” asked Maud, leaning her face against the other’s hand.

  “Yes, dear, I expect it is that,” said Marie.

  They sat thus for some while in silence, for there was no more to be said, yet each — Maud for her own sake, Marie for Maud’s and for her own as well — wished to halt, to rest for a little on the oars. Marie was lying back in the hammock, wrapped in it like a chrysalis; the other sat crouched and leaning forward by her side, her hands interlaced with the other’s. The wind whispered gently, the stencilled shadows of leaves moved on the grass, and outside on the open was an ever-brightening space of moonshine, for the cool night air was dissolving the last webs of the heat haze. Then suddenly, without warning, came a voice from near at hand.

  “I have told you the truth,” it said. “I did attempt the renewal. But she does not care for me. I come back to you, if you will take me.”

  “I take you?” said a woman’s voice. “Oh, Jack! Jack!”

  The words were quickly spoken, and on the moment two figures came round the lilac-bush and out into the full blaze of the moonlight. There they stopped, and the woman threw her arms round the man’s neck and kissed him.