Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “I do not think anything about it at present,” said he. “I daresay you are quite right, but why?”

  Mrs. Altham gave a little shrill laugh. The sprightliness at breakfast produced by this early walk and the exercises was very marked.

  “I declare,” she said, “that I had forgotten to tell you. Mrs. Ames wrote to ask us both to dine on Saturday. I had quite forgotten! There is something in the air before breakfast that makes one forgetful of trifles. It says so in the pamphlet. Worries and household cares vanish, and it becomes a joy to be alive. I don’t think we have any engagement. Pray do not have a third cup of tea, Henry. Tannin combines the effects of stimulants and narcotics. A cup of hot water, now — you will never regret it. Let me see! Yes, dinner at the Ames’ on Saturday, and she isn’t a Suffragette any longer. As I said, one might have guessed. I daresay her husband gave her a good talking-to, after the night when she threw the water at the policeman. I should not wonder if there was madness in the family. I think I heard that Sir James’ mother was very queer before she died!”

  “She lived till ninety,” remarked Mr. Altham.

  “That is often the case with deranged people,” said Mrs. Altham. “Lunatics are notoriously long-lived. There is no strain on the brain.”

  “And she wasn’t any relation of Mrs. Ames,” continued Henry. “Mrs. Ames is related to the Westbournes. She has no more to do with Sir James’ mother than I have to do with yours. I will take tea, my dear, not hot water.”

  “You want to catch me up, Henry,” said she, “and prove I am wrong somehow. I was only saying that very likely there is madness in Mrs. Ames’ family, and I was going to add that I hoped it would not come out in her. But you must allow that she has been very flighty. You would have thought that an elderly woman like that could make up her mind once and for all about things, before she made an exhibition of herself. She thinks she is like some royal person who goes and opens a bazaar, and then has nothing more to do with it, but hurries away to Leeds or somewhere to unveil a memorial. She thinks it is sufficient for her to help at the beginning, and get all the advertisement, and then drop it all like cold potatoes.”

  “Hot,” said Henry.

  “Hot or cold: that is just like her. She plays hot and cold. One day she is a Suffragette and the next day she isn’t. As likely as not she will be a vegetarian on Saturday, and we shall be served with cabbages.”

  “Major Ames went over to Sir James’ to shoot, — she wasn’t asked,” said Henry, reverting to a previous topic.

  “There you are!” exclaimed Mrs. Altham. “That will account for her abandoning this husband and wife theory. I am sure she did not like that, she being Sir James’ relative and not being asked. But I never could quite understand what the relationship is, though I daresay Mrs. Ames can make it out. There are people who say they are cousins, because a grandmother’s niece married the other grandmother’s nephew. We can all be descendants of Queen Elizabeth or of Charles the Second at that rate.”

  “It would be easier to be a descendant of Charles the Second than of Queen Elizabeth, my dear,” remarked Henry.

  Mrs. Altham pursed her lips up for a moment.

  “I do not think we need enter into that,” she said. “I was asking you if you wished to accept Mrs. Ames’ invitation for Saturday. She says she expects Sir James and his wife, so perhaps we shall hear some more about this wonderful relationship, and Dr. Evans and his wife and one or two others. To my mind that looks rather as if the husband and wife plan was not quite what she expected it would be. And giving up all active part in the Suffragette movement, too! But I daresay she feels her age, though goodness only knows what it is. However, it is clearly going to be a grand party on Saturday, and the waiter from the Crown will be there to help Parker, going round and pouring a little foam into everybody’s glass. I do not know where Major Ames gets his champagne from, but I never get anything but foam. But I am sure I do not wish to be unkind, and certainly poor Major Ames does not look well. I daresay he has worries we do not know of, and, of course, there is no reason why he should speak of them to us. The Evans’, too! I never satisfied myself as to why they went away in October. They must have been away nearly three weeks, for it was only yesterday that I saw them driving down from the station, with so much luggage on the top of the cab I wonder it did not fall over.”

  “It can’t have been yesterday, my dear,” said Mr. Altham, “because you spoke of it to me two days ago.”

  “You shall have it your own way, Henry,” said she. “I am quite willing that you should think it was a twelvemonth ago, if you choose. But I suppose you will not dispute that they went away in October, which is a very odd time to take for a holiday. Of course, Mrs. Evans stopped here all August, or so she says, and she might answer that she wanted a little change of air. But for my part, I think there must have been something more, though, as I say, I cannot guess what it is. Luckily, it is no concern of mine, and I need not worry my head about it. But I have always thought Mrs. Evans looked far from strong, and it seems odd that a doctor’s wife should not be more robust, when she has all his laboratory to choose from.”

  Henry lit his cigarette, and strolled to the window. The lawn was still white with the unmelted hoar-frost, and the gardener was busy in the beds, putting things tidy for the winter. This consisted in plucking up anything of vegetable origin and carrying it off in a wheelbarrow. Thus the beds were ready to receive the first bedded-out plants next May.

  “I remember, my dear,” said Henry, “that you once thought that there had been some — some understanding between Mrs. Evans and Major Ames, and some misunderstanding between Major Ames and Dr. Evans.”

  Mrs. Altham brought her eyebrows together and put her finger on her forehead.

  “I seem to remember some ridiculous story of yours, Henry, about a bunch of chrysanthemums in the road outside Dr. Evans’ house, how you had seen Major Ames take them in, and there they were afterwards in the road. I seem to remember your being so much excited about it that I made a point of going round to Mrs. Ames’ next day with — with a book. I think that at the time — correct me if I am wrong — I convinced you that there was nothing whatever in it. . . . Or have you seen or heard anything since that makes you think differently?” she added rather more briskly.

  “No, my dear, nothing whatever,” said he.

  Mrs. Altham got up.

  “I am glad, very glad,” she said. “At any rate, we know in Riseborough that we are safe from that sort of thing. I declare when I went to London last week, I hardly slept with thinking of the dreadful things that might be going on round me. Dear me, it is nearly ten o’clock. I do not know whether the hours or the days go quickest! It is always half-an-hour later than I expect it to be, and here we are in November already. I shall rest for an hour, Henry, and I will write to Mrs. Ames before lunch saying we shall be delighted to come on Saturday. November the twelfth, too! Nearly half November will be gone by then, and that leaves us but six weeks to Christmas, and it will be as much as we shall be able to manage to get through all that has to be done before that. But with these Swedish exercises, I declare I feel younger every day, and more able to cope with everything. You should take to them, Henry; by eleven o’clock they are finished and you have had your rest. With a little management you would find time for everything.”

  Henry sat over the dining-room fire, considering this. As has been mentioned, he did not want to make any change in his excellent health, but, on the other hand, a little rest after breakfast would be pleasant, and when that was over it would be almost time to go to the club.

  But it was impossible to settle a question like that offhand. After he had read the paper he would think about it.

  Mrs. Altham came hurrying back into the room.

  “Henry, you would never guess what I have seen!” she said. “I glanced out of the window in the hall on the way to my room, and there was Mrs. Ames wobbling about the road on a bicycle. Major Ames was holding it upright wit
h both hands, and it looked to be as much as he could manage. Yet she has no time for Suffragettes! I should be sorry if I thought I should ever make such a hollow excuse as that. And at her age, too! I had no time to call you, but I dare say she will be back soon if you care to watch. The window-seat in the hall is quite comfortable.”

  Henry took his paper there.

  THE END

  DODO’S DAUGHTER

  OR, DODO THE SECOND

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER I

  Nadine Waldenech’s bedroom was a large square apartment on the ground floor at her mother’s cottage at Meering in North Wales. It was rather a large cottage, for it was capable of holding about eighteen people, but Dodo was quite firm in the subject of its not being a house. In the days when it was built, forty years ago, this room of Nadine’s had been the smoking-room, but since everybody now smoked wherever he or she chose, which was mostly everywhere, just as they breathed or talked wherever they chose, Nadine with her admirable commonsense had argued uselessness of a special smoking-room, for she wanted it very much herself, and her mother had been quite convinced. It opened out of the drawing-room, and so was a convenient place for those who wished to drop in for a little more conversation after bed-time had been officially proclaimed. Bed-time, it may be remarked, was only officially proclaimed in order to get rid of bores, who then secluded themselves in their tiresome chambers.

  The room at this period was completely black with regard to the color of carpet and floor and walls and ceiling. That was Nadine’s last plan and since it was the last, of necessity, a very recent one. She had observed that when it was all white, people looked rather discolored, like mud on snow, whereas against a black background they seemed to be of gem-like brilliance. But since she always looked brilliant herself, the new scheme was prompted by a wholly altruistic motive. She liked her friends to look brilliant too, and she would have felt thus even if she had not been brilliant herself, for out of a strangely compounded nature, anything akin to jealousy had been certainly omitted. There had been a good many friends in her bedroom lately, and there were a certain number here to-night. She expected more. Collectively they constituted that which was known as the clan.

  The bed was an enormous four-poster with mahogany columns at the corners of it. At present it was occupied by only three people. She herself lay on the right of it with her head on the pillow. She had already taken off her dinner-dress when her first visitor arrived, and had on a remarkable dressing-gown of Oriental silk, which looked like a family of intoxicated rainbows and, leaving her arms bare, came down to her feet, so that only the tips of her pink satin shoes peeped out. In the middle of the bed was lying Esther Sturgis, and across it at the foot Bertie Arbuthnot the younger, who was twenty-one years old and about the same number of feet in height. In consequence his head dangled over one side like a tired and sunburnt lily, and his feet over the other. He and his hostess were both smoking cigarettes as if against time, the ash of which they flicked upon the floor, relighting fresh ones from a silver box that lay about the center of the bed. They neither of them had the slightest idea what happened to the smoked-out ends. Esther Sturgis on the other hand was occasionally sipping hot camomile tea. What she did not sip she spilt.

  “Heredity is such nonsense,” said Nadine crisply, speaking with that precision which the English-born never quite attain. “Look at me, for instance, and how nice I am, then look at Mama and Daddy.”

  Esther spilt a larger quantity of camomile tea than usual.

  “You shan’t say a word against Aunt Dodo,” she said.

  “My dear, I am not proposing to. Mama is the biggest duck that ever happened. But I don’t inherit. She had such a lot of hearts — it sounds like bridge — but she had, and here am I without one. First of all she married poor step-papa — is it step-papa? — anyhow the Lord Chesterford whom she married before she married Daddy. That is one heart, but I think that was only a little one, a heartlet.”

  “Rhyme with tartlet,” said Bertie, as if announcing a great truth.

  “But we are not making rhymes,” said Nadine severely. “Then she married Daddy, which is another heart, and when she married him — of course you know she ran away with him at top-speed — she was engaged to the other Lord Chesterford, who succeeded the first.”

  “Oh, ‘Jack the Ripper,’” said Esther.

  Bertie raised his head a little.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Jack Chesterford, because he is such a ripper,” said Nadine. “And he’s coming here to-morrow. Isn’t it a thrill? Mama hasn’t seen him since — since she didn’t see him one day when he called, and found she had run away—”

  “Did he rip anybody?” asked Bertie, who was famed for going on asking questions, until he completely understood.

  “No, donkey. You are thinking of some criminal. Mama was engaged to him, and she thought she couldn’t — so she ripped — let her rip, is it not? — and got married to Daddy instead. He was quite mad about darling Mama, but recovered very soon. He made a very bad recovery. Don’t interrupt, Berts: I was talking about heredity. Well, there’s Mama, and Daddy, well, we all know what Daddy is, and let me tell you he is the best of the family, which is poor. He is a gentleman after all, whatever he has done. And he’s done a lot. Indeed he has never had an idle moment, except when he was busy!”

  Esther gave a great sigh: she always sighed when she appreciated, and appreciation was the work of her life. She never got over the wonderfulness of Nadine and was in a perpetual state of deep-breathing. She admired Bertie too, and they used often to talk about getting engaged to each other some day, in a mild and sexless fashion. But they were neither of them in any hurry.

  “Aren’t your other people gentlemen?” he asked. “I thought in Austria you were always all right if you quartered yourself into sixteen parts.”

  Nadine threw an almost unsmoked cigarette upon the floor with a huge show of impatience.

  “Of course one has the ordinary number of great-grandparents, else you wouldn’t be here at all,” she said, “and you quarter anything you choose. Two quarterings of my great-grandfathers were hung and drawn apart from their quarterings. But really I don’t think you understand what I mean by gentlemen. I mean people who have brains, and who have tastes and who have fine perceptions. English people think they know the difference between the bourgeoisie and the aristocrats. How wrong they are! As if living in a castle like poor Esther’s parents had anything to do with it! Look at some of your marquises — Esther darling, I don’t mean Lord Ayr — what cads! Your dukes? What Aunt Sallys! Always making the float-face, don’t you call it, the bêtise, the stupidity. Is that the aristocracy? Great solemn Aunt Sallys and the rest brewers! Show me an idea: show me a brain, show me somebody with the distinction that thoughts and taste bring about. I do not want a mere busy prating monkey thinking it is a man. But I want people: somebody with a man or woman inside it. Ah! give me a grocer. That will do!”

  Bertie put down his head again.

  “Let us be calm,” he said. “I’ll find you a grocer to-morrow.”

  Nadine laughed. She had a curiously unmelodious but wonderfully infectious laugh. People hearing it laughed too: they caught it. But there was no sound of silvery bells. She gave a sort of hiccup and then gurgled.

  “I get too excited over such things,” she said. “And when I get excited I forget my English and talk execrably. I will be calm again. I do not mean that a man is not a gentleman because he is stupid, but much more I do not mean that quarterings make him one. The whole idea is so obsolete, so Victorian, like the old mahogany si
deboards. Who cares about a grandfather? What does a grandfather matter any more? They used to say ‘Move with the Times.’ Now we move instead with the ‘Daily Mail.’ I am half foreign and yet I am much more English than you all. The world goes spinning on. If we do not wish to become obsolete we spin too. I hate the common people, but I do not hate them because they have no grandfathers, but just because they are common. I hate quantities of your de Veres for the same reason. Their grandfathers make them no less common. But also I hate your sweet people, with blue eyes, of whom there are far too many. Put them in bottles like lollipops, and let them stick together with their own sugar.”

  There was a short silence. Bertie broke it.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Going on twenty-two. I am as old as there is any need to be. There is only one person in the house younger than me, and that is darling Mama. She is twenty.”

  Esther gave another huge sigh. She appreciated Nadine very much, but she was not sure that she did not appreciate Aunt Dodo more. It may be remarked that there was no sort of consanguinity between them: the relationship was one of mere affection. She had a mother and Dodo must be the next nearest relative. Frankly, she would have liked to change the relationship between the two. And yet you could say things to an aunt who wasn’t an aunt more freely than to a woman who happened to be your mother. Apart from natural love, Esther did not care for her mother. She would not, that is to say, have cared for her if she had been somebody else’s mother, and indeed there was very little reason to do so. She had a Roman nose and talked about the Norman Conquest, which in the view of her family was a very upstart affair. She had not a kind heart, but she had an immense coronet in her own right, and had married another. Indeed she had married another coronet twice: there was a positive triple crown on her head like the Pope. In other respects also she was like a Pope, and was infallible with almost indecent frequency. Nadine loved to refer to her as “Holy Mother.” She felt herself perfectly capable of managing everybody’s affairs, and instead of being as broad as she was long, was as narrow as she was tall, and resembled an elderly guardsman.