Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  But in this they utterly mistook him, for this steady, concentrated application to work was, perhaps, the only thing in the world which could have prevented him breaking down or losing his mental balance altogether. Even as it was, it partook only, as far as he could see, of the nature of a temporary alleviation, for in the very nature of things he could not go on working like this indefinitely. And what would happen to him when he relaxed he could not imagine, he only knew that the hours when he was not at the office were like some nightmare repeated and again repeated. Nor did they lose, at present, the slightest edge of the intensity of their horror. This week was as bad as last week; last week was no better than the week before, all through this hot August when he remained in town, not leaving it even for his usual week end on the river, but seeing its pavements grow hotter and dustier and emptier as more and more of its toiling crowds escaped for a week or two to the sands or the moors.

  The worst time of all was the early morning, for though he usually went to sleep from sheer weariness when he went to bed, he began to wake early, while still Jermyn Street was dusky and dewy, and as yet the sparrows in the plane trees opposite his window had not begun to tune up for the day. Morning by morning he would watch “the casement slowly grow a glimmering square,” or if it was, as often, absolutely unbearable to lie in bed, he would get up and go into his sitting-room, where the wan light but brought back to him the dreadful hours he had passed there the evening before. The glass from which he had drunk stood on the little table by the sofa, and by it lay the unread evening paper. The beloved Reynolds prints, Mrs. Carnac, Lady Halliday, Lady Stanhope, Lady Crosbie, all first impressions, smiled meaninglessly on the wall, for all the things he had loved and studied had lost their beauty, and were blackened like dahlias in the first autumn frosts. Sometimes a piece of music stood on the piano, from which he had played a bar or two the night before, but had then stopped, for it, too, conveyed nothing to him; it was but a jangle of senseless chords. Sometimes in these dreadful morning hours he would doze a little on the sofa, but not often; and once he had poured out into the glass a stiff dose of whisky, feeling that even an alcohol-purchased oblivion would be better than more of this wakefulness. But he had the sense left not to take to that; if he did that to-day he would do it to-morrow, and if he admitted the legitimacy of such relief, he knew he would find less and less reason every day for not letting himself sink in that slough. Besides, he had to keep himself clear-headed and alert for the work of the day.

  Two passions, to analyse a little further, except when he was at work, entirely possessed him, one his passion for Madge, of which not one jot, in spite of what had happened, was abated. It was not, nor ever had been, of the feverish or demonstrative sort, it did not flicker or flare, it burned steadily with a flame that was as essential a part of his life as breathing or the heart-beat. And the other, existing strangely and coincidently with it, was the passion of hate — hatred for her, hatred for Evelyn, a red flame which shed its light on all else, so that in the glare of it he hated the whole world. Two people only stood outside of it — his mother and Tom Merivale; for these he did not feel hate, but he no longer felt love; he was incapable of feeling that any longer except for Madge. But he did not object to them, he thought of them without resentment, but that was all.

  Then, as his nerves began to suffer under this daily torture, the hours of enforced idleness became full of alarm. What he feared he did not know, he only knew that he was apprehensive of some further blow that might be dealt him from a quarter as unexpected as that from which this had come. Everything had been so utterly serene when this bolt from the blue struck him, he could not have conjectured it; and now he could not conjecture what he expected next.

  But all this London did not know: it only knew that this very keen man of business was as acute as ever, to judge by the Metiekull episode, and began to reason that since he was so callous to what had happened, Madge had really not behaved so outrageously as had been supposed. She had found — this was the more human and kindly view induced by the cessation of the late London hours, and the substitution of a great deal of open air for the stifling ballroom of town — she had found that she really was in love with Mr. Dundas, and that Philip on closer acquaintance was what he had proved himself to be, business man first, lover afterwards. And really Mr. Dundas’s pictures this year had been stupefyingly clever. They made one just gasp. Surely it would be silly to get somebody else to “do” one instead of him, just because Madge had found out her mistake in time, and he had assisted at the correction of it. He was certain to have heaps of orders in any case, so it would be just as well to be painted by him as soon as possible. Of course that implied that one accepted his marriage in a sort of way, but, after all, why not? Besides — here the world’s tongue just tended to approach the cheek — it would be a kindness to old Lady Ellington to smooth things over as much as possible, and that dear little thing, Gladys, whom everybody liked so much, would be so pleased to find that Madge was not hardly thought of. Yes, quite so, and has the dressing-gong sounded already? And Tom killed a stag, and they had a good day among the grouse, and Jack killed a salmon, so there will be fish for dinner. What a blessing!

  One of these mornings which saw Philip in the gloaming of dawn hearing the sparrows beginning their chirruping in the plane-trees, saw Tom Merivale also, not only hearing but listening to the twitter of half-awakened birds in his garden. He had slept in the hammock slung in the pergola, and after the coolness of the clear night following on the intense heat of the day before, the dew had been heavy. His blanket was shimmering with the seed-pearls of the moisture, his hair also was wet with it, and on the brick of the pergola path it lay like the condensation of the breath of the spirit of woodland itself. The cleanness and purity of this hour of dawn was a thing that every morning more astounded him. Whether a clear and dove-coloured sky brooded as now overhead, or whether morning came wrapped in rain-clouds, it always brought to one who slept with the sky for a roof a sense of renewal and freshness which it was impossible to get used to. Everything was rested and cleaned, ready to begin again on the hundred joyful businesses of day.

  Just as a stone falling through the air moves with a speed that is accelerated each moment by double the acceleration of the last, so Merivale felt that every day his communion with and absorption in Nature made progress out of all proportion to what he had achieved before. It was so few months ago that he had himself wondered at the mysterious and silent telepathy that ran through all Nature, the telepathy that warns birds and beasts of coming storm, that makes the bats wake and begin their eerie flittings even at the hour when sunset is brightest, knowing that the darkness is imminent, that connects man, too, as he had proved, if man only will be quiet and simple instead of fretful and complicated, with birds and beasts, so that they know he is their brother and will come to his silent call to them. But of late that had become such a commonplace to him that he only wondered how it could ever have been otherwise than obvious. He remembered, too, how so few weeks ago he had for the first time heard the sound of the glass flute in the woods above Philip’s house at Pangbourne, but now not a day passed, often not an hour, in which that unending melody, the eternal and joyful hymn of Nature and of life, was not audible to him. Whether what he heard was really a phenomenon external to himself or only the internal expression, so to speak, of those thoughts which filled his entire consciousness, both waking and sleeping, he did not care to ask himself, for it did not in the least seem to him to matter. Wherever that melody came from, whether it was born in his own brain and telegraphed from there to his ears, or whether it was really some actual setting of the joy of life to song, external to him, and heard just as a railway whistle or the bleat of a sheep is heard and conveyed from his ears to his brain, he did not even wish to know, for wherever coined, it was of royal minting, the secret and the voice of Life itself was there.

  The woods of Pangbourne — Philip. He had heard from Mrs. Home of the catastrophe,
and in answer to a further letter of his he had learned that Philip remained in London slaving all day at the office, seeing no one but his clerks, silent, alone, giving no sign even to her. This letter had come only last night, and ended with an imploring cry that if Tom thought he could help him in any way, his mother besought him to do what he could. Philip had been down to see her once only, immediately after his engagement was broken off, and he had been utterly unlike himself — hard, terrible, unforgiving. Could Merivale not do something? Philip had never had but four friends in the world, two of these had turned enemies (Mrs. Home had crossed out in a thin, neat line the last two words and substituted “ceased to be friends”), and there were left only himself and she. And she had tried, and could do nothing.

  Tom Merivale thought over all this as the twitter of birds grew more coherent in the bushes, passing from the sound like the tuning-up of an orchestra into actual song. The resemblance, indeed, was curiously complete, for after the tuning-up had ceased, while it was still very faintly light, there was a period of silence before song began, just such a silence as ensued when the strings of a band had found the four perfect fifths, and there was the hush and pause over singers and audience alike until the conductor took his place. Day was the conductor here, and to-day it would be the sun who would conduct his great symphony in person at dawn, the approach of which to Philip but meant the hard outlining of the square of window, but to Tom all the joy of another day, a string of round and perfect pearls of hours. The East was already in the secret, for high above the spot where dawn would break rosy fleeces of clouds had caught the light, while nearer to the horizon the nameless green of dawn, that lies between the yellow of the immediate horizon itself and the blue of the zenith, was beginning to melt into blue. Then, how well he knew it, the skeins of mist along the stream below would dissolve, the tintless, hueless, darknesses of clear shadow that lay beneath the trees would grow green from the sun striking through the leaves. These things were enough to fill this hour with ecstasy, and every hour to him brought its own. There would be the meal prepared by himself, the work in the garden, claiming fellowship and friendship every moment with the green things of the earth, the mid-day bathe, when he was one with the imperishable water, the long communing with eyes half-shut on the sunny heather, where even the stealthy adder was no longer a thing of aversion, and then for the sake “of his sister, the body,” as the old Saint said, a walk that might cover twenty miles before he returned at dusk. Oh, how unutterably good, and how unutterably better each day!

  A wind came with the dawn itself, that scattered more dew on to him from the rose-sprays overhead, and he slid out of the hammock to go into the house to make his breakfast, stretching himself once or twice before he went in to feel his muscles, the rigging of the ship of the body, all twang sound and taut. Nor did it seem to him in any way unworthy that even this physical fitness of his should give him such joy: it would, indeed, have been a disgrace if it had been otherwise. For all the sensations and functions of life were on one plane, and whether the sweat poured from him as he dug the garden, or his teeth crushed a nuthusk, or the great thigh-muscles strained as he mounted a hill, or his ear was ravished with the fluting of a bush-bowered thrush, it was all one; each was a function of life, and the sum of them was just joy.

  But Philip; this morning he could not get Philip out of his head, for detached from the world of men and women as he was, he could not help pitying the blind, meaningless suffering of his old friend. For all suffering to him was meaningless, he did not in himself believe that any good could come out of it considered merely as suffering: much more good, that is to say, would have come out of joy; this was withheld by suffering, a thing almost criminal to his view. But he could realise, and did, that all that Philip loved best had gone from him; it was as if in his own case the sun and the moon had been plucked from the sky, or water had ceased to flow, as if something vital in the scheme of things was dead.

  It seemed to him, then, with his mind full of Philip, very natural that there should be a letter from him when the post came in that morning. It ran thus:

  Dear Tom, — I had rather an unpleasant experience yesterday, for suddenly in the middle of the morning I fainted dead off. It seemed sensible to see a doctor, who of course said the usual thing — overwork, overworry, go and rest completely for a time. He was a sensible man, I’ve known him for years, and so I have decided to do as he tells me.

  Now you are such an old friend that I trust you to say “No” quite frankly if you don’t want me. I therefore ask you if I may come down and stay with you a bit. I thought of going home, but I should be alone there, as my mother is away just now, or on the point of going, and I don’t want to bring her back, and I really think I should go crazy if I was alone. You seem to have found the secret of happiness, and perhaps it might do me good to watch you. All this is absolutely subject to your saying “No” quite frankly. Just send it or the affirmative by telegram, will you, and I will arrive or not arrive this evening. But I warn you I am not a cheerful companion. — Yours,

  Philip Home.

  For any sake don’t say a word or give a look of pity or sympathy. I shall bring a servant — may I? — who will look after me. I don’t want to give you trouble, and I intend to take none myself. Mind, I trust you to telegraph “No” quite simply if you don’t want me.

  There was only one reply possible to this, and, indeed, Merivale had no inclination to give any other. Of course Philip was welcome; he would very likely have proposed this himself had not this letter come so opportunely, and the telegram in reply was genuinely cordial. Poor old Philip, who used to be so happy in the way in which probably a locomotive engine is happy, groomed and cared for, and only required to do exactly that which it loves doing, namely, being strong and efficient, and exercising its strength and speed. Yet though Tom’s welcome of him was so genuine, he shrank inwardly, though he did not confess this even to himself, from what lay before him, for he hated misery and unhappiness — hated the sight or proximity of it, he even thought that it was bad for anybody to see it, but if on this point his attitude was inconsistent with the warmth of his telegram, the inconsistency was wholly human and amiable.

  On the other hand, though he was by no means of a proselytising nature, there was here, almost forced upon him, a fine test case. He believed himself very strongly in the infectious character of human emotions; fear seemed to him more catching than the smallpox, and worry ran through a household even as does an epidemic of influenza. And if this which he so profoundly believed was true, that truth must hold also about the opposite of all these bad things; they, too, must be infectious also, unless one chose to draw the unthinkable conclusion that evil was contagious, whereas good was not communicable by the same processes. That could not be, the spiritual microbes must, as far as theory or deduction could be trusted to supply an almost certain analogy, correspond to the microbes of the material world; there must in fact be in the spiritual world, if these microbes of suffering and misery were there, much vaster armies of microbes that produced in man all the things that made life worth living; battalions of happiness-germs must be there, of germs that were forever spreading and swarming in their ceaseless activity of building-up and regenerating man, of battling with the other legions whose work was to destroy and depress and kill. And if there was anything in his belief — a belief on which he would gladly have staked his life — that joy, health, life were ever gaining ground and triumphing over their lethal foes, then it followed that the germs of all things that were good were more potent than those that were evil if their armies were mobilised.

  How mysterious and how profoundly true this transference of emotion was, or, in terms of the present analogy, these invasions of spiritual microbes! For what caused panic to spread through a crowd? Not danger itself, but fear, fear which ran like an electric current through the ranks of its quivering victims. Serenity, therefore, must be equally contagious, and if one could isolate one of those fear-ridden
folk for a moment in a ring of men who were not afraid, it could not be doubted that their fearlessness would triumph. No reassuring word or gesture need be spoken or made, the very fact of the atmosphere of calm must inevitably quiet the panic-stricken. Worry, too, would stifle if isolated in serenity, just as serenity would vanish if the hosts of its enemy hemmed it in. And here, to take the case in point, was Philip, possessed and infected by the poisonous microbes of unhappiness, which blackened his soul and darkened the sun for him. What was the remedy? Not, as he had been trying to do, to drug himself into unconsciousness over work, while they continued their ravages unchecked and unchallenged, but to steep himself as in some antiseptic bath in an atmosphere that was charged with their bitterest foes. It was happiness, the atmosphere of happiness, that alone could combat his disease. And of the eventual result of that treatment Merivale did not entertain the slightest doubt; there would, of course, be war between happiness and the misery of his friend, but he felt within himself that it was impossible that Philip’s misery could be so strong as the armies on his own side. Think of the allies, too, that surrounded him: his light-armed skirmishers, the birds and bees, with their staccato artillery of joy forever playing on the object of their detestation; the huge guns of the great beech forest forever pouring their sonorous discharge on to the enemy; the flying cavalry of the river, the heather-fragrant wind which encompassed and outflanked him in each direction.