Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  The book had lain there, indeed, in the same state for half an hour before he came, for Madge had been very fully occupied with her own thoughts. She had had a talk to her mother the night before, which this morning seemed to her to be more revealing of herself than even her own confession to Philip in their stroll on the terrace had been. She had told her just what she had told him, namely, that she gave him very willingly all that she knew of herself, liking, esteem, respect, adding out of Philip’s mouth that this more than contented him. But then Lady Ellington, for the first time perhaps for many years, had made a strategical error, allowing her emotion, not her reason, to dictate to her, and had said —

  “Ah, Madge, how clever of you.”

  She had seen her mistake a moment afterwards, and just a moment too late, for Madge had asked the very simple question “Why?” And the unsatisfactory nature of her mother’s reply had given her food for thought.

  For Lady Ellington had applauded as clever what was to her the very rudiment of honour, and she had supposed that her mother would say “How very stupid of you.” Clearly, then, while extremely uncalculating to herself, Madge had succeeded in giving the impression of calculation to one who, she well knew, calculated. What, then, she asked herself, was the secret of this love of which she was ignorant, that rendered her confession of ignorance so satisfactory a reply?

  Effusive pleasure on her mother’s part at the termination of this recital had not consoled her. Somehow, according to Lady Ellington’s view, an almost quixotic honesty appeared clever. And it was over this riddle that she was puzzling when Evelyn appeared, with brilliance, so to speak, streaming from him. Brilliance certainly streamed from his half-finished sketch, and brilliance marked his exposition of it.

  “Oh, I lead a dog’s life,” he said, as he planted his easel down on the gravel. “Do you know Lady Taverner, for whom this is to be a background? No? I congratulate you. She is pink, simply pink, like a phlox, with butter-coloured hair, probably acquired. Well, put a pat of butter and a phlox on a purple plate, and you will see that the phlox is pinker than ever and the butter more buttery. Therefore, since I really am very thorough, I make a sketch of clematis to see how the flowers really grow, and shall plaster her with them — masses behind her, sapphires round her neck; and a pink Jewess in the middle,” he added, in a tone of extraordinary irritation.

  Madge let her book slide to the ground.

  “Do you want to be talked to or not?” she asked. “If you don’t, say so, and I will go away.”

  Evelyn looked up from his purple clematis.

  “I lead a dog’s life,” he said, “but sometimes somebody throws me a bone. So throw me one.”

  “You seem to growl over it,” said she.

  “I know I do. That is because, though I lead a dog’s life, nobody shall take my bone from me.”

  He bit the end of his brush.

  “And the filthy thing casts purple shadows upwards,” he said. “At least the sun shines on the purple, and reflects the purple on leaves that overhang it. I wish I had been born without any sense of colour. I should have made such ripping etchings.”

  Madge had no immediate reply to this, and he painted for some ten minutes in silence. She had picked up her book again, and read the words of it — reading it could not be called.

  “You haven’t given me many bones,” said he at length.

  Madge looked up.

  “I know I haven’t,” she said; “but seriously I considered if I had got anything to say, and found I hadn’t. So I decided to say nothing.”

  Evelyn dabbed in a purple star.

  “But surely one has always something in one’s mind,” he said. “One can’t help that, so why not say it? A penny for your thoughts now.”

  Madge laughed.

  “No, they are worth far more. In fact, they are not in the market,” she said.

  Evelyn grew portentously grave.

  “Mrs. Gummidge,” he said.

  “Oh, what do you mean?” she asked.

  “You’ve been thinking of the old one,” said Evelyn. “Philip.”

  “Quite true, I was,” she said. “He is such a dear.”

  “So glad you like him,” muttered Evelyn, again frowning and biting his brushes. “Lord love us, what a blue world it is this morning! There, I can’t paint any more just now.”

  “That’s rather sudden, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, I always stop like that,” said Evelyn. “I go on painting and painting, and then suddenly somebody turns a tap off in my head, and I’ve finished. I can’t see any more, and I couldn’t paint if I did. I suppose the day will come when the tap will be turned permanently off. Shortly afterwards I shall be seen to jump off Westminster Bridge. I only hope nobody will succeed in rescuing me.”

  “I will try to remember if I happen to be there,” said she.

  Evelyn put his sketch to dry in the shadow of the terrace wall.

  “The law is so ridiculous,” he said. “They punish you if you don’t succeed in committing suicide when you try to, and say you are temporarily insane if you do. Whereas the bungler is probably far more deranged than the man who does the job properly.”

  “I shall never commit suicide,” said Madge with conviction.

  “Ah, wait till you care about anything as much as I care about painting,” said Evelyn, “and then contemplate living without it. Why, I should cease without it. The world would be no longer possible; it wouldn’t, so to speak, hold water.”

  “Ah, do you really feel about it like that?” said she. “Tell me what it’s like, that feeling.”

  Evelyn laughed.

  “You ought to know,” he said, “because I imagine it’s like being permanently in love.”

  Here was as random an arrow as was ever let fly; he had been unconscious of even drawing his bow, but to his unutterable surprise it went full and straight to its mark. The girl’s face went suddenly expressionless, as if a lamp within had been turned out, and she rose quickly, with a half-stifled exclamation.

  “Ah, what nonsense we are talking,” she said quickly.

  Evelyn looked at her in genuine distress at having unwittingly caused her pain.

  “Why, of course we are,” he said. “How people can talk sense all day beats me. They must live at such high pressure. Personally I preserve any precious grains of sense I may have, and put them into my pictures. Some of my pictures simply bristle with sense.”

  The startled pain had not died out of Madge’s eyes, but she laughed, and Evelyn, looking at her, gave a little staccato exclamation.

  “And what is it now?” she asked.

  “Why, you — you laughed with sad eyes. You were extraordinarily like what my picture will be at that moment.”

  The girl glanced away. That sudden, unexplained little stab of pain she had experienced had left her nervous. Her whole nature had winced under it, and, like a man who feels some sudden moment of internal agony for the first time, she was frightened; she did not know what it meant.

  “I expect that is nonsense, too,” she said. “At least, it is either nonsense or very obvious, for I suppose when anyone laughs, however fully he laughs, there is always something tragic behind. Ah, how nice to laugh entirely just once from your hair to your heels.”

  “Can’t you do that ever?” asked Evelyn sympathetically.

  “No, never, nor can most people, I think. We are all haunted houses; there is always a ghost of some kind tapping at the door or lurking in the dusk. Only a few people have no ghosts. I should think your’s were infinitesimal. You are much to be envied.”

  Evelyn listened with all his ears to this; partly because he and Madge were already such good friends, and anything new about her was interesting; partly because, though, as he had said, surface was enough for him — it bore so very directly on his coming portrait of her.

  “Yes, I expect that is true,” he said; “most people certainly have their ghosts. But it is wise to wall up one’s haunted room, is it not?�
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  Madge shook her head.

  “Yes, but it is still there,” she said.

  She got up from the low chair in which she was sitting with an air of dismissing the subject of their talk.

  “Come, ask me some more of those very silly riddles,” she said. “I think they are admirable in laying ghosts. So, too, are you, Mr. Dundas. I am sure you will not resent it when I say it is because you are so frightfully silly. Ghosts cannot stand silliness.”

  Evelyn laughed.

  “It is so recuperative to be silly,” he said, “because it requires no effort to a person of silly disposition, that is to say. One has to be oneself. How easy!”

  She opened her eyes at this.

  “That means you find it easy to be natural,” she said. “Why, I should have thought that was almost the most difficult thing in the world to be. Now a pose is easy; it is like acting; you have got to be somebody else. But to be oneself! One has to know what one is, first of all, one has to know what one likes.”

  Evelyn laughed again.

  “Not at all. You just have to shut your eyes, take a long breath, and begin talking. Whatever you say is you.”

  The girl shook her head.

  “Ah, you don’t understand,” she said. “You, you, I, everybody, are really all sorts of people put into one envelope. Am I to say what one piece of me is prompting me to say or what another is thinking about? And it’s just the same with one’s actions; one hardly ever does a thing which every part of one wants to do; one’s actions, just like one’s words, are a sort of compromise between the desires of one’s different components.”

  She paused a moment, and, with a woman’s quickness of intuition provided against that which might possibly be in his mind.

  “Of course, when a big choice comes,” she said, “one’s whole being has to consent. But one only has half a dozen of those in one’s life, I expect.”

  She had guessed quite rightly, for the idea of her marriage had inevitably suggested itself to Evelyn when she said “one hardly ever does a thing which every part of one wants to do.” But in the addition she had made to her speech there was even a more direct allusion to it, which necessarily cancelled from his mind the first impression. He was bound, in fact, to accept her last word. But he fenced a little longer.

  “I don’t see that one choice can really be considered bigger than another,” he said. “The smallest choice may have the hugest consequences which one could never have foretold, because they are completely outside one’s own control. I may, for instance, settle to go up to London to-morrow by the morning train or the later one. Well, that seems a small enough choice, but supposing one train has a frightful accident? What we can control is so infinitesimal compared to what lies outside us — engine-drivers, bullets, anything that may kill.”

  The girl shuddered slightly.

  “It is all so awful,” she said, “that. An ounce of lead, a fall, and one is extinguished. It is so illogical, too.”

  “Ah, anything that happens to one’s body, or mind either, is that,” said Evelyn.

  “How? Surely one is responsible for what happens to one’s mind.”

  “Yes, in the way of learning ancient history, if we choose, or having drawing-lessons. But all the big things that can happen to one are outside one’s control. Love, hate, falling in love particularly is, I imagine, completely independent of one’s will.”

  The girl gave a short, rather scornful laugh.

  “But one sees a determined effort to marry someone,” she said, “often productive of a very passable imitation of falling in love.”

  Had she boxed his ears, Evelyn could not have been more astonished. If this was an example of shutting the eyes; drawing a long breath and being natural, he felt that there was after all something to be said for the artificialities in which we are most of us wont to clothe ourselves. There was a very Marah of bitterness in the girl’s tone; he felt, too, as if all the time she had concealed her hand, so to speak, behind her back, and suddenly thrown a squib at him, an explosive that cracked and jumped and jerked in a thoroughly disconcerting manner. And she read the blankness of his face aright, and hastened to correct the impression she had made.

  “Did you ever get behind a door when you were a child,” she asked, “and jump out calling ‘Bo!’? That is what I did just then, and it was a complete success.”

  He looked at her a moment with his head on one side, as if studying an effect.

  “But it was you who jumped out?” he asked rather pertinently.

  “Ah, I wouldn’t even say that,” said she. “I think it was only a turnip-ghost that I had stuck behind the door.”

  Evelyn gave a sort of triumphant shout of laughter.

  “Well, for the moment it took me in,” he said. “I really thought it was you.”

  FIFTH

  THE season in London this year had been particularly amusing; there had been a quite unusually large number of balls, the opera had been one perpetual coruscation of evening stars that sang together, the conduct of May and early June from a meteorological point of view had been impeccable, and in consequence when the world in general came back after Whitsuntide they came for the most part with a pleasurable sense of returning for the second act of a play of which the first had been really enchanting. Like taking one’s seat again for a play was the sense that various unfinished situations which had been left in an interesting stage would now move forward to their dramatic climaxes. One, however — this was rather unfair — had developed itself to a happy close in the country, and Madge Ellington’s engagement to Philip was generally pronounced to be very nice indeed. On both sides, indeed, it was very nice; for it had not been seemly that a millionaire should be unmarried so long, and on the other hand it had not been seemly that Madge should be unmarried so long. But now they had both seen the error of their ways, and had agreed to marry each other.

  And above all, it was very nice for Lady Ellington, about whom it was generally known that she had made a considerable sum in speculation lately. To do that was universally recognised as being an assured advance towards the bankruptcy court, but to have captured a wealthy son-in-law who was a magnate in the South African market turned her steps, or might be hoped to turn them, away from the direction of the courts, and point instead towards the waters of comfort and cash. Another thing that excited to some extent the attention and applause of the world was a certain change of demeanor in Madge, which was very noticeable after her return to London from the Whitsuntide holiday. She had always been rather given to put her head in the air, and appear not to notice people; but her engagement had brought to her an added geniality. Hitherto she had been something of “a maid on yonder mountain height,” but the shepherd, Philip Home, had, it appeared, convinced her that “love was of the valley,” and she had quite distinctly come down. This, at any rate, was the conclusion at which Gladys Ellington, the present Lady Ellington, arrived within two minutes of the time when she met Madge next.

  She was of about Madge’s own age, and the two, in spite of old Lady Ellington’s rooted dislike to her nephew, had always been friends. Gladys was charmingly pretty, most successful in all she did, and universally liked. This was only fair, for she took immense trouble to be liked, and never did an ill-natured thing to anyone, unless it was quite certain that she would not be found out. She had come to tea on the afternoon succeeding Madge’s return to London, and, though she professed regrets at the absence of Madge’s mother, was really delighted to find her friend alone. She had a perfect passion for finding things out, and her method of doing so was to talk with extreme volubility herself, so that no one could possibly conjecture that she had any object of the sort in her mind. But her pauses were well calculated, and her questions few, while with regard to these, she always gave the appearance of not attending to the answers, which further disarmed suspicion. She was, however, a little afraid of Madge’s mother, who always gave her the idea of seeing through her. This made her volubility a li
ttle threadbare at times, and consequently she bore her absence with more than equanimity.

  “Darling, I think it is too charming,” she was saying, “and I always hoped that you would do just this. Mr. Home is perfectly adorable, I think, and though it sounds horribly worldly to say so, it is an advantage, you know, to marry a very rich man. We’re as poor as mice, you see, and so I know. Yes, please — a cup of tea, though we’re told now that a cup of tea is the most unwholesome thing in the world. And you had a nice party? Mrs. Home, too, just like a piece of china scented with lavender. And who else was there?”

  “Only two more men,” said Madge, “Mr. Merivale and Mr. Evelyn Dundas.”

  “The Hermit of the New Forest!” cried Gladys, directing her remarks to him because she wished to hear more of the other. “How too exciting! He lives on cherry jam and brown bread, does he not, and whistles to the cows, who lay their heads on his shoulder and purr. I used to know him in the old days before he was a hermit at all. And Mr. Dundas, too! Do you like him?”

  “Yes, very much, very much indeed,” said Madge gravely. “He is such a child, you know, and he makes one laugh because he is so silly. He is going to do my portrait, by the way; mine and Philip’s.”

  “How delightful! He ought to make a really wonderful thing of you, dear Madge. Do tell me, how much does he charge? I’m dying to be painted by him, but he is so frightfully expensive, is he not? And you liked him; what a good thing, as you are going to sit to him. It must be awful being painted by a man who irritates you.”

  Madge laughed.

  “He doesn’t irritate me in the slightest,” she said. “In fact, I don’t think I ever got to know a man so quickly. I don’t know how it is; somehow he is like clear water. You can see straight to the bottom.”