Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  It was no wonder, then, that Jim’s affairs had been obliterated from her mind, but now as she entered that flat, she wondered what he wanted that should make him wish to see her in this appointed way. For a moment, with a sickening qualm, she went back to that quarter of an hour’s suspense on Saturday morning, when she had allowed herself to fear that he was connected in some hideous fashion with the cheque Claude could not recollect about. That had haunted her afterward, too, when she lay long awake at Grote on Saturday night; but Claude had said so emphatically that the cheque was all right, that she felt her fear to be fanciful. Meantime Jim did not yet know about Lady Osborne, and as soon as she entered she told him.

  “Oh, Jim!” she said, “we are in trouble. Lady Osborne has got to have an operation. There is something wrong, and they want to see what it is. There is a growth of some sort. And, oh, I have been so blind, so blind! They are all behaving so splendidly, and yet behaviour is the wrong word; they behave splendidly just because they are splendid. I never guessed they were like that. I’ll tell you all about it. But first, what did you want to see me about? You don’t look well, dear. What is it?”

  “I’m all right,” said he.

  “But what is it?” asked Dora again, vaguely frightened.

  Jim leaned forward, with his elbows on his knees, propping his head on his hands. This was worse than the telling of Claude had been, but it had to be done. He had promised some humble, sorry little denizen within him that he would do it.

  “Did Claude speak to you about a cheque,” he asked, “which he could not remember drawing?”

  “Yes, and then afterward he said it was all right,” said she.

  “Then I’ve got to tell you,” he said.

  Then her fear seized her again in full force.

  “Don’t, Jim,” she cried, “don’t tell me there’s anything wrong.”

  “It’s no use beating about,” he said. “I forged that cheque and cashed it. Claude knows; I told him.” Dora sat still a moment. Then she put her hands up to her head.

  “Open the window,” she said, “I am stifling.”

  He got up and threw open the window away from the street. Then he walked over to the chimney piece and leaned his elbows on it, with his back to her.

  At first Dora felt nothing but hard anger and indignation, and she knew that if she spoke at all it would be to say something which could do no good, and perhaps only make a breach between them that could never be healed.

  And it was long that she waited, it was long before any spark of pity for him was lit. Then she spoke.

  “Oh, Jim, what a miserable business!” she said. “But why did you tell me? Couldn’t you have spared me knowing? Or perhaps you were afraid Claude would tell me.”

  “No; I don’t tell you for that reason,” he said. “After I saw Claude this morning, I knew he would never tell you.”

  “Why, then?”

  “Because I want to tell you about Claude. It may do some good. Well, Claude’s treated me in a way that’s beyond my understanding. He is beyond your understanding, too, at present, and that’s why I am telling you. I wish you could have been here when I told him. He was only sorry for me. If he was God, he couldn’t have been more merciful. And it wasn’t put on. He felt it; and I wanted, for once, to see if I couldn’t be of some use.”

  He turned round and faced her.

  “I want you to know what sort of a fellow Claude really is,” he said. “I know you don’t get on well, and that’s because you don’t know him. You judged him first by his face — that, and perhaps a little bit by his wealth. And then you judged him by what you and I call vulgarity and want of breeding. That’s not Claude either. Claude’s the fellow who treated a swindler and a forger in the way I’ve told you. He’s got a soul that’s more beautiful than his face, you know, and he’s the handsomest fellow I ever saw. I wanted you to get a glimpse of it. It might help things. That’s all I’ve got to say. I’m sorry for giving you the pain of knowing what I’ve done, but I thought it might do good. He’s just broken me up with his goodness. That’s Claude.” The anger was quite gone now, and it was a tremulous hand that Dora laid on his shoulder.

  “Oh, Jim,” she said, “thank you! I am so sorry for you, you know, and I’m grateful. I shall go back and tell Claude I know, and — and thank him, and be sorry.”

  “Yes, that is the best thing you can do,” said Jim.

  Claude was alone in their sitting room when she got back, and, as he always did, he rose from his chair as she entered. For a moment she stood looking at him, mute, beseeching. Then she came to him.

  “Thank you about Jim, dear,” she said. “He has just told me about it, to make me — make me see what you were. Oh, Claude, I didn’t know.”

  And then the tears came. But his arm was around her, and her head lay on his shoulder.

  CHAPTER XII.

  UNCLE ALF was seated with Dora on the terrace at Grote one afternoon late in August. Dora herself was hatless and cloakless, for it was a day of windless and summer heat, but Uncle Alf had an overcoat on, and a very shabby old gray shawl in addition cast about his shoulders. His face wore an expression of ludicrous malevolence.

  “And I had to come out here, my dear, and take refuge with you,” he said, “for Maria will drive me off my head with talk of that tumour of hers. Why, she speaks as if nobody had ever had a tumour before. I said to her, ‘Maria, if it had been cancer now, and you’d got over as you have, it might have been something to make a tale of.’ But tumour, God bless me! and benignant, so Sir Henry said, at that.”

  Dora gave a little shriek of laughter.

  “Uncle Alf, sometimes I think you’re the unkindest man in the whole world,” she said, “and even when you’re most unkind I can’t help laughing. I wonder if you are unkind really. I don’t expect so.”

  Uncle Alf took no notice of this, and went on with his grievances.

  “As for Eddie, I’m sure I don’t know what to make of him,” he said. “I shouldn’t wonder if he’s going soft-headed, for he was always threatened that way, to my thinking. He can talk of nothing but the brave and beautiful Maria. Lord! my dear, it’s a wonder to me that you can stand it. Doesn’t it get on your nerves? Doesn’t it make you feel sick and ill to hear how they go on?”

  Dora laughed again.

  “No, Uncle Alf, it doesn’t, do you know? You see I was with them through all those dreadful days in the summer after the operation, when they still didn’t know what it was for certain, and had to make an examination, and it made a tremendous impression on me. I always used to think that they all, including Claude, were very ordinary people. Well, they’re not. They were very wonderful. They were cheerful, even when they were waiting for a” verdict that might have been so terrible.”

  “Bah!” said Uncle Alf.

  “Yes, if you wish. They used to get on my nerves, that is quite true, and you gave me a hint about it once which was very useful. You told me to see the humorous side of Dad and Mother.”

  “Lord, it’s Dad and Mother, is it?” said Alf, in a tone of acid disgust.

  “Yes, Dad and Mother. Just as you are Uncle Alf, but I’ll call you Mr. Osborne if you prefer. Very well, then, I took that hint, and sometimes now I laugh at them, which I never did before. I often laugh at them now, and let them see me laughing, and Dad says to Mother, ‘There’s Dora at her jokes again. What have you said?’ They know how I love them. Dear, don’t make such awful faces. They were so splendid, you know.”

  “And Claude?” asked his uncle, after a pause.

  “I didn’t do justice, or anything like it, to Claude till then,” she said. “He used to get on my nerves, too, very badly indeed. I don’t mind telling you, since I’ve told him, and we’ve laughed over that. But all that time in July, combined with something very fine that I found out he had done, made me see that what got on my nerves did not matter in the least. What mattered was Claude himself, whom I didn’t know before.”

  “I love that b
oy,” said Uncle Alf, with unusual tenderness, “and I’m glad you do, my dear, because he deserves all the love you can give him. But I am glad you laugh at him, too. There’s no sense in not seeing the ridiculous side of people.”

  “Oh yes, I laugh at him often,” said Dora. “I think he likes it. You see, he’s so dreadfully fond of me that he likes all I do.”

  Uncle Alf gave a contemptuous sniff.

  “Yes, he’s off his head about you,” he said. “I thought he had more sense. But there’s very little sense in anybody when you come to know them.”

  “I know: it’s foolish of him,” said Dora. “I tell him so. But then I’m foolish about him. I expect if two people are foolish about each other, they can stand a lot of the other’s folly, though I expect it isn’t grammar. It is rather nice to be foolish about a man, if he happens to be your husband.”

  “It seems to me you married him first, and fell in love with him afterward,” said Uncle Alf.

  “That’s exactly what I did do,” said Dora softly.

  “And what’s this fine thing Claude did?” asked the other. “Gave a cabman a sovereign, I suppose, and told him to keep the change. Much he’d miss it. And you thought that was devilish noble. Eh?”

  “I can’t tell you what it was,” said she. “Nobody must know that.”

  Uncle Alf was silent a minute: he wanted to say something ill-tempered but could not think of anything.

  “Well, I’m glad the boy’s done something to deserve you, my dear,” he said, “though that sounds as if I was getting soft-headed, too, and perhaps I am, joining like this in this chorus of praise, this — this domestic symphony. But I can stand you and Claude: what I can’t stand is Eddie and Maria. Lord! if they aren’t coming out here, when I thought I had escaped. She in her bath chair, and he pushing it. A man of his age, and as stout as that. He’ll be bursting himself one of these days, and then we shall have Maria making us all sick with telling us how beautifully he bore it, and nobody behaved so bravely over a burst as her Eddie.”

  Dora giggled hopelessly.

  “Oh! you are such a darling,” she said. “I don’t mind what you say.”

  The bath chair had approached, and Lady Osborne put down her sunshade as they came into the strip of shadow where Dora and Uncle Alf sat. He edged away from her as far as the angle of the house and the flower beds would permit.

  “Well, and if this isn’t pleasant,” she said. “Eddie, my dear, we’ll stop here a bit and have a rest, if we’re not interrupting, and indeed it’s near teatime, and I want my tea badly to-day, I do. But my appetite’s been so good since my operation—”

  Alf broke in.

  “Maria, if I hear any more about you and your operation, I leave the house,” he said.

  “Well, and I’m sure that’s the last thing I want you to do,” said Lady Osborne genially, “for I’m enjoying this little family party such as never was. Why, all the time I was getting better in London I was looking forward to it, and dreamed about it too. There now, Alf, don’t be so tetchy, stopping your ears in that manner, as if you had the neuralgia and was sitting in a draught. I was only going to say I’d been looking forward to a week or two of quiet down here with you all, and pleased I was to know that you would join us, instead of setting on Richmond Hill with the motors and all buzzing round you and raising clouds of dust with germs uncountable. Mr. O., my dear, you’re all of a perspiration with pushing me, and thank you. Won’t you be wise to put a wrap on, same as your brother does, when he sits out of doors, especially with you in that heat?”

  “No, my dear, I’m comfortable enough. I was only wondering whether Dora was wise to sit here in that thin dress. It’ll strike chill before sunset.”

  Dora again burst out laughing.

  “Dad, we shall drive Uncle Alf off his head if we all think so much about each other,” she said. “He’s been making a formal complaint to me about it. He finds us all very trying!”

  “And where’s Claude and Jim?” asked Alf. “I hope they’re taking great care of each other. Claude cut his finger this morning, and he bore it wonderfully. Never a cry nor a sob. But I wonder at you, Maria, letting them ride horses all about the country, without a doctor or a pair of surgeons to follow them in case of accidents. They might fall off and be hurt. A savage and dangerous beast is a horse, and more especially a mare, such as Claude was riding.”

  Lady Osborne entirely refused to notice the sarcastic intent of this.

  “Well, to be sure, we’ve all got to take our risks,” she said. “There’d be no sense in passing your life wrapped up in cotton-wool, and waiting for the doctor!”

  “Why, and you used to ride too, when you was a lad, Alf,” said her husband. “You’re making Dora laugh at you. And I don’t wonder: I could laugh myself!” Alf got up from his chair.

  “I think you’d both be the better for an operation, you and Maria,” he said. “I should have a bit of humour put in, instead of a bit of tumour taken out. Not but what it’s a far more serious affair. I doubt if either of you would get over it.”

  “Well, and it’s you who talked about my tumour this time,” said Lady Osborne triumphantly.

  This was too much for Alf: he walked shufflingly back to the house, leaving his sister-in-law in possession of the field. But she used her victory nobly, with pity for the conquered.

  Lady Osborne looked round in a discreet and penetrating manner after he had gone and was out of hearing.

  “Dora, my dear, you mustn’t mind what Alf says,” she remarked with much acuteness. “He gets a bit sour now and then, and I’m sure I don’t wonder, with his lumbago, and no one to look after him. If only he had found a nice girl to look after him when he was young! Poor old Alf! But you can take it from me as knows him, he doesn’t really mean all he says. It’s his joke, and I’m not one to quarrel with a joke, and bless him, why shouldn’t he joke in his own way just as the rest of us do? And if sometimes he seems a bit ill-humoured over his joke — well, you let him get his bit of ill-humour off his mind, and he’ll be all the better for it. I never take no notice and it don’t hurt me. ‘Alf and his joke,’ I say over to myself, and no harm done.”

  “Rum old cove is Alf,” said her husband; “he seems sometimes to want to quarrel with us all. But it takes two to make a quarrel, and he’ll have hard work to find the second in this house, if I know who lives in it. And he was just as anxious as he could be, Maria, when you was at your worst in the summer, telephoning five and six times in the day, till I said down the tube, ‘Maria’s love, and she’s asleep till morning.’ And what it’ll be when Dora here—”

  “Mr. O., you go too far,” said his wife in a shrill aside. “But as you were saying about Alf, if there’s crust outside there’s crumb within. It’s a soft heart like your own, Mr. O., though he don’t know it.”

  “Dad, when last were you angry with anybody?” asked Dora. “Can you remember?”

  Lord Osborne considered this: it was a question that required research.

  “Well, my dear, if you leave out things like my being angry with the Mother for giving us all such a fright last July — there’s one for you, Maria — I couldn’t rightly say. I had a dishonest foreman I remember at the works whom I had to dismiss, summary, too, one Monday morning, but I think I was more sorry for his wife and children than I was angry with him. Nine children there was, and another expected, poor lamb! and stillborn when it came, for I inquired.”

  Dora saw Lady Osborne shoot out a furtive finger at him, and he understood.

  “Then I was angry with Claude one day,” he continued, “when he was a little lad. I think the devil must have been in the boy, for what must he do but rake out the fire from his mother’s drawing room grate, and dump it all on the hearthrug. And yet I could scarce help laughing even when I gave him his spanking. What was in the boy’s head that he should think of a trick like that? Perhaps it was his joke, too, something that looks mischievous at first, like old Alf’s jokes. I’ll take another c
up of tea, Mother, for here’s Claude coming with Jim, and such a tea-pot drainer as Claude I never saw.”

  “Yes, I doubt he’ll injure his stomach,” said Lady Osborne, “for I’m told that tea tans the coats of it like so much leather. Sir Henry told me so when we were having a chat one morning, after he’d dressed the place for me.”

  “Well, the less we know about our insides the better, to my way of thinking,” said her husband, “until there’s some call to see what’s going on. Eat your dinner and drink your wine and get your sleep of nights, and you’ve done what you can to keep it contented.”

  “And I’m sure none’s got a better right to tell us how to keep well than you, my dear,” said Lady Osborne appreciatively, “for bar a bit of gout now and then, as it isn’t reasonable you should be spared, there’s not an hour’s anxiety your health’s given me since first we met, Mr. O., and here’s the boys ready for their tea, I’ll be bound. Old Alf, and his saying that he wondered at me allowing them to go horseback!”

  All this, these quiet ordinary domestic conversations, as well as things of far greater import, had entirely changed in character for Dora. But it was for her only that they had changed; in themselves they were exactly as they had been before there came those days which, so she put it to herself, had opened her eyes and given sight to them. For she had labelled them trivial or tiresome, according as her own mood had varied, and though discussion on subjects of high artistic or spiritual import was not rare but unknown among the Osbornes, she had now the sense to see that the kindly utterances of simple people possibly illustrated though they did not allude to qualities that were not at all trivial. For she saw now the personalities that lay behind these details of their life, the hearts out of which the mouths spoke. It was that which gave its tone to what had become music: and if Lord Osborne lingered in his cellar to find a bottle of wine that Sir Thomas appreciated, it was no longer Sir Thomas’s undoubted greediness that concerned her, but his host’s desire that his guest should enjoy himself. And she knew now that the spirit which did not think it trivial to see that the dinner was good, or that the wine was plentiful, was perfectly capable of rising to higher levels than these. When there was a call for courage, courage of a very wonderful sort had answered; when endurance was needed, endurance was there; when charity, as in the case of Jim, the charity that met the difficult and disgraceful situation was complete, and had all the fineness and delicacy which only perfect simplicity can give. How Claude had done it she did not know; there seemed no question of finesse or of diplomatic behaviour. He had merely behaved without difficulty, like Claude, and but a few weeks afterward there was Jim, sensitive and highly strung as he always was, staying with them all, not like a guest, but as one of the family, as Lady Osborne loved to think. And it was not that he was lacking in the sense of shame that made his friendship with Claude possible: it was that he, like Dora, had had his eyes opened. A heart as kind as Claude’s counted for something after all: they both, it must be supposed, had taken it for granted until it was shown them. But the sight of it, the practical knowledge of it, worked the miracle, worked it easily, as if there was no miracle about it.