Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Victor was in Rome. The manager of the branch of their banking business there had died suddenly, and he had gone to take his place till some one could be sent out from England. The new man arrived there some ten days or so after I did; but he still stayed on, for one morning I saw him in the Forum, and another day I passed him driving. All he knew was that I had not answered the letter which he wrote to me when I was on Como, and he made no further attempt to see me. But he did not leave Rome. And then one day I wrote to him, as I was bound to do, saying that I had not answered his letter because I believed then that I could not; but that if he would forgive that, and come to see me ——

  “Oh, Alice, it is being such a long story. But there is little more. He came, and I asked him if he was stopping long in Rome, and he said his plans were uncertain. And then — so gradually that I scarcely knew it was happening — he began to take care of me; and gradually, also, I began to expect him to do so. He tells me I was not tiresome; I can’t believe him.

  “And then — how does it happen? Nobody knows, though it has happened so often. One day I saw him differently. I had always been friends with him, and in those bad years I had always relied on him; but, as I say, one day I saw him differently. I saw the man himself — not as he struck me, but as he was. That is just it, dear Alice. ‘How he struck me’ was left out, because I was left out. And then I knew I loved him. And — and that is all, I think.”

  Lady Nottingham gave a long, appreciative sigh.

  “I think it is the nicest story,” she said— “and it’s all true. Oh, Jeannie, I am such a match-maker, and it is so pleasant to be forestalled. I asked him down to Bray simply in order to promote this, and now I find it has been promoted already. But the punt will be useful all the same.”

  Jeannie joined her friend in the window-seat.

  “Yes, just the same,” she said.

  CHAPTER VII.

  There was silence for a little while. An hour had passed since they began to talk, but it was still short of midnight, and the hansoms and motors still swept about the square like a throng of sonorous fireflies. Just opposite a big house flared with lit windows, and the sound of the band came loudly across the open space, a little mellowed by the distance, but with the rhythm of its music intact.

  “Oh, I could get into a ball-dress and go and dance now for lightness of heart,” said Jeannie. “But I won’t; I will do something much nicer, and that is I will hear from you the news of your year. Now it is ‘you next.’ Tell me all you have done and been and thought of. And then I shall want to know all about Gladys and all about Daisy. I talked to Daisy — or, rather, she talked to me — for half an hour this afternoon, but I don’t think she got absolutely ‘home’ in her talk. I had the impression that she was showing me the dining-room and drawing-room, so to speak. She did not sit with me in my bedroom or in hers as we are sitting now. The only talk worth calling a talk is when you put your feet on the fender and tuck up your skirt and put the lights out — figuratively, that is. One must be taken into privacy. Daisy wasn’t very private. You have got to be. Now, dear Alice, about yourself first.”

  Alice sighed again — not appreciatively this time.

  “There’s very little to say. I am rather lazier than I was, and Daisy and Gladys — Daisy chiefly — make all arrangements. I send them out to dances alone, because they always find a chaperon of some kind; and you know, Jeannie, I don’t like hot rooms and supper. I weave plenty of plans still, and they mostly come off, but I don’t go to superintend the execution of them. I don’t think I have any very private life; if I had you should at once be admitted. I think a great deal about the people I like best. I try occasionally to straighten out their affairs for them. I want all girls to marry suitable men, and all men to marry suitable girls. I think, indeed, that the only change in me has been that I take a rather wider view than I used to of the word suitable. You see, I am an optimist, and I can’t help it; and I believe that most people are kind and nice. Oh, I don’t say that it is not great fun being critical and seeing their absurdities and their faults, but I fancy that if one wants to increase the sum of comfort and happiness in the world, it is better to spend one’s time in trying to see their charms and their virtues. Dear me, what dreadful commonplaces I am saying! However, that is my very truthful history for the last year: I want to make people jolly and comfortable and happy, but, if possible, without standing about in extremely hot rooms with the band playing into one’s ear at the distance of three inches.”

  Jeannie laughed.

  “I don’t think that is at all a bad history,” she said. “That is just the sort of history which I hope will be written of me by-and-by. Oh, Alice, I don’t want any more troubles and crises — I don’t! I don’t! — even if they are good for one. Sometimes I wonder if there is some envious power that is always on the look-out, some Nemesis with a dreadful wooden eye that waits till we are happy and then puts out a great bony hand and knocks us over or squeezes us till we scream. ‘Oh, Nemesis,’ I feel inclined to say, ‘do look the other way for a little bit.’ Yes, I just want Nemesis to leave my friends and me alone for a little.”

  “Ah! but Nemesis is looking the other way with great fixedness, it seems to me,” said Lady Nottingham. “She may be dabbing away at other people, but you must be just, Jeannie; she hasn’t been dabbing at any of us lately.”

  “Oh, hush! Don’t say it so loud,” said Jeannie. “She may hear and turn round.”

  Alice laughed.

  “No such thing,” she said. “But Nemesis will certainly send you a headache and a feeling of being tired to-morrow morning if I sit up talking to you any longer.”

  She half rose, but Jeannie pulled her back into the window-seat again.

  “Oh, no; don’t go yet,” she said. “I am not the least tired, and it is so dull going to bed. I hoard pleasant hours; I make them last as long as possible, and surely we can lengthen out this one for a little more. Besides, you have not told me one word about Daisy yet; and, as I said, though I had half an hour’s talk with her, I feel as if she hadn’t taken me into her room. All the private history she gave me was that Willie Carton still wanted to marry her, and she still did not want to marry him.”

  Lady Nottingham considered this for a moment in silence, wondering whether, as Daisy had not spoken to her aunt about Lord Lindfield, she herself was under any tacit bond of secrecy. But, scrupulous though she was, she could not see any cause for secrecy.

  Jeannie interrupted her silence.

  “Is there somebody else?” she said.

  Again Lady Nottingham thought over it.

  “I can’t see why I shouldn’t tell you,” she said, “since half London knows, and is waiting quite sympathetically and agreeably for him to ask her. She consulted me about it only this afternoon, and I think when he does — I don’t say if, because I feel sure he will — I think that when he does she will accept him. I advised her to, and I think she agreed. His name — —”

  “Ah, but perhaps Daisy wants to tell me his name herself,” interrupted Jeannie again. “Perhaps she wants to keep it as a surprise for me. Don’t tell me his name, Alice. Tell me all about him, though not enough to enable me to guess. And tell me about Daisy’s feelings towards him. Somehow I don’t think a girl should need advice; she should know for herself, don’t you think?”

  “Not always. Sometimes, of course, a girl is definitely, even desperately, in love with a man before she marries — but, Jeannie, how often it is the other way! She likes him, she thinks he will be kind to her, she wants to be married, she has all the reasons for marrying except that of being in love. And such marriages so often turn out so well; some even turn out ideally. My own did. But in some circumstances I think a girl is right to ask advice.”

  Jeannie smiled.

  “I think yours is an admirably sensible view, dear,” she said, “and I confess freely that there is heaps to be said for it. But I am afraid I am not sensible over a thing like love. I think sense ought
to be banished.”

  “So do the lower classes think,” remarked Lady Nottingham, rather acutely, “and the consequence is that the gravest problem that has ever faced the nation has arisen.”

  “Oh, I take it, he is not one of the unemployed?” said Jeannie.

  “He is, but the top end of them.”

  “Oh, go on, dear; tell me all about him,” said Jeannie.

  “Well, he is rich — I suppose you might say very rich — he has a title; he has an old and honoured name.”

  “Oh, I want something more important than all that,” said Jeannie. “The old and honoured name is all very well, but is he continuing to make it honoured? To be honoured yourself is far more to the point than having centuries full of honoured ancestors. Is he satisfactory? I can easily forgive the ancestors for being unsatisfactory.”

  “I am sure he is a good fellow,” said Lady Nottingham.

  Jeannie got up and began walking up and down the room.

  “Do you know, that is such an ambiguous phrase!” she said. “Every man is a good fellow who eats a lot and laughs a lot and flirts a lot. Is he that sort of good fellow? Oh! I hate milksops. I needn’t tell you that; but there are plenty of good fellows whom I should be sorry to see Daisy married to.”

  There had started up in Jeannie’s mind that memory of Paris, which had made her hurry through and away from the town; there had started up in her mind also that which had been so hard to get over in the autumn, that of which she had spoken to Alice Nottingham, only to tell her that she hoped she would never speak of it. These two were connected. They were more than connected, for they were the same; and now a fear, fantastic, perhaps, but definite, grew in her mind that once again these things were to be made vivid, to pass into currency.

  “Is he that sort of good fellow?” she asked.

  There was trouble in her voice and anxiety, and Lady Nottingham was startled. It was as if some ghost had come into the room, visible to Jeannie. But her answer could not be put off or postponed.

  “Something troubles you, dear,” she said. “I can’t guess what. Yes, he is that sort of good fellow, I suppose; but don’t you think you generalize too much, when you class them all together? And don’t you judge harshly? Cannot a man have — to use the cant phrase — have sown his wild oats, and have done with them? Mind, I know nothing definite about those wild oats, but before now it has been a matter of gossip that he has been very — very susceptible, and that women find him charming. It is disgusting, no doubt. But I fully believe he has done with such things. Is he not to have his chance in winning a girl like Daisy, and becoming a model husband and father? Don’t you judge harshly?”

  Jeannie paused in her walk opposite her friend, and stood looking out into the warm, soft night.

  “Yes, perhaps I judge harshly,” she said, “because I know what awful harm a man of that sort can do. I am thinking of what a man of that sort did do. He was no worse than others, I daresay, and he was most emphatically a good fellow. But the woman concerned in it all was one I knew and loved, and so I can’t forgive him or his kind. You and I have both known lots of men of the kind, have found them agreeable and well-bred and all the rest of it; and, without doubt, many of them settle down and become model husbands and model fathers. But I am sorry — I am sorry. If only Daisy had cared for Willie Carton! And she does not love this man, you say?”

  “He attracts and interests her; she finds great pleasure in his company; she wants to marry him. I am not what you would call a worldly woman, Jeannie, but I think she is wise. It is an excellent match, and in spite of what you say about so-called ‘good fellows,’ he is a good fellow.”

  Jeannie’s face had grown suddenly rather white and tired. She felt as if Nemesis were slowly turning round in her direction again. She sat down by her dressing-table and drummed her fingers on it.

  “Yes, no doubt I judge harshly,” she repeated, “and no doubt, also, there is a particular fear in my brain, quite fantastic probably and quite without foundation. I have a ‘good fellow’ in my mind whose — whose ‘good-fellow proceedings’ touched me very acutely. I want, therefore, to know the name of this man. I can’t help it; if Daisy wants it to be a surprise for me, she must be disappointed. You see what my fear is, that the two are the same. So tell me his name, Alice.”

  There was something so desperately serious in her tone that Lady Nottingham did not think of reassuring her out of her fears, but answered at once.

  “Lord Lindfield,” she said.

  The drumming of Jeannie’s fingers on the table ceased. She sat quite still, looking out in front of her.

  “Lord Lindfield?” she asked. “Tom Lindfield?”

  “Yes.”

  Jeannie got up.

  “Then thank Heaven she doesn’t love him,” she said. “It is quite impossible that she should marry him. Since you began to tell me about this man I was afraid it was Tom Lindfield, hoping, hoping desperately, that it was not. She can never marry him, never — never! What are we to do? What are we to do?”

  “There is some reason behind this, then, that I don’t know?” asked Alice.

  “Of course there is. I must tell you, I suppose. We must put our heads together and plan and plan. Oh, Alice, I hoped so much for peace and happiness, but it can’t be yet, not until we have settled this.”

  “But what is it? What is it?” asked Lady Nottingham.

  A hansom jingled round the corner and stopped just below at the front door.

  “The girls are back,” said Jeannie. “Daisy is sure to come and see if I am up. I wonder why they are home so early. You must go, dear Alice. I will tell you about it to-morrow. I am so tired, so suddenly and frightfully tired.”

  Lady Nottingham got up.

  “Yes, I will go,” she said. “Oh, Jeannie, you are not exaggerating things in your mind? Can’t you tell me now?”

  “No, my dear, it would take too long. Ah, there is Daisy.”

  A gentle tap sounded at the door; it was softly opened, and Daisy, seeing the light inside, came in.

  “Ah, but how wicked of you, Aunt Jeannie,” she said, “when you told me you were going to bed early. Yes, we are early too, but it was stupid and crowded, and so Gladys and I came away. Oh, you darling, it is nice to know you are here! But how tired you look!”

  “Yes, dear, I am tired,” said Jeannie. “I was just sending Aunt Alice away. And you must go away too. But it was dear of you just to look in to say good-night.”

  When the two had gone Jeannie sat down again in the window, her head resting on her hands, thinking vividly, intently.

  “Thank Heaven she does not love him!” she said at length.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  The geography of breakfast at Lady Nottingham’s was vague and shifting. Sometimes it all happened in the dining-room, sometimes, and rather oftener, little of it happened there, but took place, instead of on that continent, in the scattered islands of bedrooms. Gladys, however, was generally faithful to the continent, and often, as happened next morning, breakfasted there alone, while trays were carried swiftly upstairs to the bedrooms of the others. She alone of the inmates of the house had slept well that night. But she always slept well, even if she had the toothache.

  Daisy had not slept at all well. It would be nearer the mark, indeed, to say that she had not even lain awake at all well, but had tossed and tumbled in a manner unprecedented. There was no wonder that it was unprecedented, since that which caused it had not occurred before to her. She had left the dance quite early, dragging Gladys away, because she had got something to think about which absorbed her. She had never been really absorbed before, though it was a chronic condition with her to be intensely and violently interested in a superficial manner. But this went deeper; from the springs of her nature now there came forth something both bitter and sweet, and tinged all her thoughts and her consciousness.

  In herself, as she lay awake that night hearing the gradual diminuendo of the noises of traffic outside, till, when s
he thought there would be a hush, the crescendo of the work of the coming day began, she felt no doubt as to what this was which absorbed her and kept sleep so far aloof from her eyelids. It had started from as small a beginning as a fire that devastates a city, reducing it to desolation and blackened ash. A careless passenger has but thrown away the stump of a cigarette or a match not entirely extinguished near some inflammable material, and it is from no other cause than that that before long the walls of the tallest buildings totter and sway and fall, and the night is turned to a hell of burning flame. Not yet to her had come the wholesale burning, there was not yet involved in it all her nature; but something had caught fire at those few words of Lord Lindfield’s; the heat and fever had begun.

  Well she knew what it was that ailed her. Hitherto love was a thing that was a stranger to her, though she was no stranger to intense and impulsive affection like that which she felt for Aunt Jeannie. But how mysterious and unaccountable this was. It seemed to her that the phenomenon known as “love at first sight,” of which she had read, was a thing far less to be wondered at. There a girl meets some one she has not seen before whom she finds holds for her that potent spell. That could be easily understood; the new force with which she comes in contact instantly exercises its power on her. But she, Daisy, had come across this man a hundred times, and now suddenly, without apparent cause, she who thought she knew him so well, and could appraise and weigh him and settle in her own mind, as she had done after her talk to Lady Nottingham the afternoon before, whether she would speak a word that for the rest of her life or his would make her fate and destiny, and fashion the manner of her nights and days, found that in a moment some change of vital import had come in turn on her, so that she looked on him with eyes of other vision, and thought of him in ways as yet undreamt of.