Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “But they will be very happy.”

  “So are the bourgeoisie who change hats. At least I should have to be frightfully happy to think of putting on anybody else’s hat. I recommend you not to eat that savory unless you have a bad cold that prevents your tasting anything. Shall I send another message to Mama about it?”

  “Ah, my dear young man,” said Countess Eleanor, “we are all common when we fall in love. You will find yourself being common too, some day. And the people who are least bourgeois become the most common of all. Nadine, for instance: there is no one less bourgeoise than Nadine, but if she ever falls in love she will be so common that she will be perfectly sublime. She will be the embodiment of humanity. But she is not in love with that great boy next her, who is so clearly in love with her. Dear me, what beautiful Sèvres dessert plates. I once collected Sèvres as well as snuff-boxes.”

  “Did you — did you get together a fine collection?” asked Seymour.

  “Pretty well. It is easier to get snuff-boxes. My brother has some that used to be mine. — Ah, they are all getting up. Let me come to see your jade some other day.”

  Nadine and Esther escaped very soon after dinner from this dreadful party, and went to Seymour’s flat where he had preceded them and was busy cooking with Antoinette in the kitchen when they arrived. He opened the door for them himself with his shirt sleeves rolled up above his elbows, showing an extremely white and delicate skin. Round one wrist he wore a gold bangle.

  “I’ve left the kitchen door open,” he said, “so that the whole flat shall smell as strong as possible of cooking. There is nothing so delicious when you are hungry. We will open the windows afterwards. You and Esther must amuse yourselves for ten minutes, and then supper will be ready.”

  “Oh, may I come and cook too, Seymour?” asked Nadine.

  “Certainly not. Antoinette is the only woman in the world who knows how to cook. You would make everything messy. Go and rock the cradle or rule the world, or whatever you consider to be a woman’s sphere, until we are ready.”

  Seymour disappeared again into the kitchen from which came rich cracklings and odors of frying, and Nadine turned to Esther with a sigh.

  “My dear, I have got remorse and world yearnings to-night,” she said. “I attribute it to your mother’s awful party. But I daresay we shall all be better soon. You know, if I had asked Hugh to let me come and cook, he would have given me a golden spoon to stir with, and eaten till he burst because I cooked it. And I don’t care! He was so dear and so utterly impossible this evening. I told him I wasn’t going to the dance at the Embassy, and he said he should go in case I changed my mind. And if it had been Hugh cooking in there, I should have gone and cooked too, even if he hadn’t wanted me to. It’s no use, Esther: I can’t marry Hugh. There’s the end of it. Up till to-night I have always wondered if I could. Now I know I can’t. I think I shan’t see so much of him. I shall miss him, don’t think I shan’t miss him, but I want to be fair to him. As it is now, whenever I am nice to him, which I always am, he thinks it means that I am beginning to love him. Whereas it doesn’t mean anything whatever. I wish people hadn’t got into the habit of marrying each other, but bought their babies at a shop instead. And kissing is so disgusting. The only person I ever like kissing is Mama, because her skin is so delicious and smells very faintly of raspberries. Hugh smells of cigarettes and soap—”

  “Darling Nadine, you haven’t been kissing Hugh, have you?” asked Esther.

  “Yes, I kissed him this evening, when he was putting my cloak on, but there were ninety-five footmen there so it wasn’t compromising: we were heavily chaperoned. And I would just as soon have kissed any of the other ninety-five. But he wanted me to, and so I did, and then suddenly I saw how unfair it was for me. It didn’t mean anything: I kissed him just as I kiss my dog, because he is such a duck. Also because he wanted me to, which Tobias never does: he always cleans his face on the rug after I have kissed him, and sneezes.”

  “Did he ask you to?” said Esther,— “not Toby, Hugh!”

  “No, but I can see by a man’s face when he wants. I saw one of the footmen wanted, too, and perhaps I ought to have kissed him as well, to show Hugh it did not mean anything.”

  Nadine sat down and spread her hands wide with a surprisingly dramatic gesture of innocence and despair.

  “It isn’t my fault,” she said; “it’s me. C’est moi: son’ io! I would translate it into all the languages of the world, like the Bible, if that would make Hugh understand. People can’t be different from what they are. It’s a grand mistake to suppose otherwise. They can act and talk in accordance with what they are, or they can act and talk otherwise, but they, the personalities, are unchangeable except by miracles. I could act contrary to my own self and marry Hugh, but it would be no particle of good. I want him to understand that I can’t love him, and I am too fond of him to marry him without. I wish to heaven he would marry somebody else.”

  “He won’t do that,” said Esther.

  “I am afraid not. I think it is rather selfish. It is putting it all on me. I shall have to marry somebody else, I suppose, and that will be very unselfish of me, because I don’t want to marry. Of course one has to: I don’t want to grow old, but I shall have to grow old. They are both laws of nature, and perhaps neither the one nor the other is so disagreeable really.”

  Esther gave her long, appreciative sigh.

  “It would be too wonderful of you to marry somebody else, in order to make it clear to Hugh that you couldn’t marry him,” she said. “It would be the most illustrious thing to do and it shows that really you are devoted to Hugh. But you really think that people don’t change, Nadine?”

  “Not unless a moral earthquake happens and earthquakes are not to be expected. Only an upheaval of that kind makes any difference in the essential things. Their tastes change, as their noses and hair change, but the thing that sits behind like some beastly idol in a temple never moves and looks on at all that changes round it with the same wooden eyes. Oh, dear, I am so tired of myself, and I can’t get out of sight of myself.”

  Nadine looked at herself in a Louis Seize mirror that hung above the fireplace and pointed a contemplative finger at the reflection of her pale loveliness.

  “I wish I was anything in the world except that thing,” she said. “I am genuine when I say that, but having said that there is nothing else about me but what is intolerable. But I am aware that I don’t really care about anybody in the world. The only thing that can be said for me is that I detest myself. I wish I was like you, Esther, because you care for me: I wish I was like Aunt Eleanor because she cares for stealing. I wish I was like Daddy because he cares for old brandy. You are all better off than I. I envy anybody and everybody who cares for anybody with her heart. No doubt having a heart is often a very great nuisance, and often leads you to make a dreadful fool of yourself, but it gets tedious to be wise and cool all the time like me.”

  Seymour entered at this moment carrying a little silver censer with incense in it.

  “The smell of food is sufficiently strong,” he said. “And supper is ready. Also the smell of incense reminds one of stepping out of the blazing sunlight into St. Mark’s at Venice. Nadine, you look too exquisite, but depressed. Has not the effect of Mama worn off yet?”

  “Oh, it’s not your mother, it’s me,” said she.

  “You think about yourself too much,” observed Seymour. “I know the temptation so well, and generally yield to it. It is a great mistake: one occasionally has doubts whether one is the nicest person in the world and whether it is worth while doing anything, even collecting jade. But such doubts never last long with me.”

  “Don’t you ever wish you had a heart, Seymour?” she asked. “You and I have neither of us got hearts.”

  “I know, and I am so exceedingly comfortable without one, that I should be sorry to get one. If you have a heart, sooner or later you get into a state of drivel about somebody, who probably doesn’t drivel abo
ut you. That must be so mortifying. Even if two people drivel mutually they are deplorable objects, but a solitary driveler is like a lonely cat on the tiles, and is a positive nuisance. Poor Hugh! Nadine, you suit my wall-paper quite exquisitely. Also it suits you. Don’t let any of us go to bed to-night, but see the morning come. The early morning is the color of a wood-pigeon’s breast, and looks frightfully tired, as if it had sat up all night too. Most people look perfectly hideous at that moment, but I really don’t believe you would. Do sit up and let me see.

  “I look the color of an oyster at dawn,” said Esther, “it is just as if I had gone bad.”

  Her brother looked at her thoughtfully.

  “Yes, my dear, I can imagine your looking quite ghastly,” he said. “You had better go away before dawn. It might make me seriously unwell.”

  “I shall. I shall go to the dance at the Embassy, I think. Madame Tavita is so hideous that she makes me feel good-looking for a week.”

  “You always behave as if you were pretty, which matters far more than being pretty,” said Seymour. “It matters very little what people look like, if they only behave as if they were Venuses, just as it does not matter how tall you are if you consistently look at a point rather above the head of the person you are talking to.”

  Nadine was recovering a little under the influence of food.

  “That is quite true,” she said. “And if you want to look really rich, you must be shabby, or not wash your face. Seymour, let us try and write a little book together, ‘Fifty ways of appearing enviable.’ You should eat a great deal in order to make it appear you have a good digestion, although you may be quite sick afterwards, and refuse a great many invitations to show what a wild social success you are, even though you dine all by yourself at home. My dear, what delicious food; did you cook it, or Antoinette?”

  “Both. We each threw in what we thought would be good, and stirred it together. I am sorry for people who are not greedy. I am told that when you are old, food and saving money are the only pursuits that don’t pall. At present food and spending money are particularly attractive, and a piquancy is added if you haven’t got any money. And now we all feel better.”

  Seymour had a piece of needlework which he often produced when he was staying with friends, in order to irritate them. He seldom worked at it when at home, but to-night he got it out, in order to irritate his sister into going to the ball without delay, for Esther was always exasperated to a point almost beyond her control by the sight of her brother with his thimble and needle. So before long she took her departure, leaving Nadine to follow (which was Seymour’s design), and he put the needlework back into its embroidered bag again.

  “I am afraid my methods are a little obvious,” he said, “but poor Esther sees nothing but the most obvious hints. You have to say things very loud and clear to her, like the man in ‘Alice in Wonderland.’”

  “Who was that?” asked Nadine absently. “And what did you want Esther to do?”

  “To go away, of course. I wanted to talk to you, Nadine. I have never known you look so beautiful as to-night. You look troubled too. Troubles make people feel plain but look beautiful.”

  Nadine shifted her position, so that she faced him.

  “Yes, do talk to me,” she said. “See if you can distract me a little from myself. My mind hurts me, Seymour. I wish I had a hard bright mind as some people have. Their minds are like ... I don’t know what they are like: I can’t trouble to think to-night. How stupid are all the jinkings and monkey-tricks we go through! I have worn an inane smile all day, and when I tried to read my Plato, it merely bored me. Nothing seems worth while. And don’t be commonplace, and say that it is liver. It is nothing of the sort. Would you be surprised if I burst into tears?”

  “You have been thinking of the old ‘un,” remarked Seymour.

  “Whom do you mean?”

  “Hugh, of course. Do you know you are rather like a boy watching the struggle of a butterfly he has impaled? You are sorry for it, but you don’t let it go.

  “He impaled himself,” said Nadine.

  “Well, you gave him the pin. But as you don’t mean to marry him, make that quite clear to him.”

  “But how?”

  “Marry me,” said Seymour.

  CHAPTER VI

  Edith Arbuthnot had conceived the idea, an unhappy one as regards her family and neighbors, that every one who aspired to the name of Musician (it is not too much to assert that she did) should be able to play every instrument in the band. Just now she was learning the French horn and double-bass simultaneously. She kept her mind undistracted by the hideous noises she produced, and expected others to do so. Thus unless she was practising some instrument that required the exclusive use of the mouth, she would talk (and did so) while she learned.

  Just now she was seated on the terrace wall at Winston, which was of a convenient height for playing the double-bass, which rested on the terrace below, and conversing at the top of her voice to Dodo who sat a yard or two away. These stentorian tones of course were necessary in order that she should be heard above the vibrating roar of the ill-played strings. She could not at present get much tone out of them; but for volume, it was as if all the bumblebees in the world were swarming in all the threshing-machines in the world, which were threshing everything else in the world.

  “I used to think you were heartless, Dodo,” she shouted; “but compared to Nadine you are a sickly sentimentalist.”

  When Dodo did not feel equal to shouting back, she spoke in dumb show. Now she concisely indicated “Rot” on her fingers.

  “It isn’t Rot,” shouted Edith; “ah, what a wonderful thing a double-bass is: I shall write a Suite for the double-bass unaccompanied — I really mean it. If you seemed to me without a heart, Nadine would seem to have an organ which is all that a heart is not, very highly developed. Probably she inherited a tendency from you, and has developed and cultivated it. What do you say?”

  “I said, do stop that appalling noise, darling,” screamed Dodo. “I shall burst a blood-vessel if I try to talk against it.”

  “Very well: I must just play two or three scales,” said Edith.

  The hoarse clamor grew more and more vibrant and Dodo stopped her ears. Eventually the bow, as Edith brought it down upon the first note of a new scale, flew from her hands, and describing a parabola in the air fell into a clump of sweet-peas in the flower-bed below the terrace.

  “I must learn not to do that,” she said. “It happened yesterday and I shan’t consider myself proficient until I am safe not to hit the conductor in the face. About Nadine: She is going to perpetrate the most horrible cruelty, marrying that dreadful young man, while Hugh is just dying for her. Hugh reminds me of what Jack was like, Dodo.”

  “Oh, do you think so?” said Dodo. “Except that Jack was once twenty-five, which is what Hugh is now, I don’t see the smallest resemblance. Jack was so good-looking, and Hugh only looks good, and though Hugh is a darling, he is just a little slow and heavy, which Jack never was. You will be able to compare them, by the way, because Hugh is coming here this afternoon. I asked him not to, but he is coming just the same. I told him Nadine and Seymour were both here.”

  “Perhaps he means to kill Seymour,” said Edith thoughtfully. “It certainly would be the obvious thing to do—”

  “Hughie would always do the obvious thing,” said Dodo.

  “I will finish my sentence,” said Edith. “It certainly would be the obvious thing to do, provided that the public executioner would not hang him, and that Nadine would marry him. But things would probably go the other way about, which would not be so satisfactory for Hugh. Really the young generation is very bloodless: it talks more than we did, but it does absolutely nothing.”

  “We used to talk a good deal,” remarked Dodo, “and we are not silent yet. At least you and I are not. Edith, has it ever struck you that you and I are middle-aged? Or is middle-age, do you think, not a matter of years, but of inclination? I think it mu
st be, for it is simply foolish to say that I am forty-five, though it would be simply untrue to say that I was anything else. That is by the way; we will talk of ourselves soon. Where had I got to? Oh, yes, Hugh is coming down this afternoon though I implored him not to. Nadine says I was wrong. She wants me to be very nice to him, as she has been so horrid. They have not seen each other for a whole week, ever since her engagement was announced. I am sure Nadine misses him; she will be miserable if Hugh deserts her.”

  Edith plucked impatiently at the strings of the double-bass, and aroused the bumblebees again.

  “That’s what I mean by bloodless,” she said. “They are all suffering from anemia together. Their blood has turned to a not very high quality of gray matter in the brain. Nadine wants you to be kind to Hugh, because she has been so horrid! Dodo, don’t you see how fishlike that is? And he, since he can’t marry her, takes the post of valet-de-chambre, and looks on while Seymour gives her little butterfly kisses and small fragments of jade. I saw him kiss her yesterday, Dodo. It made me feel quite faint and weak, and I had to hurry into the dining-room and take half a glass of port. It was the most debilitated thing I ever saw. Berts is nearly as bad, and though he is nine feet high and plays cricket for his county, he is somehow ladylike. I can’t think where he got it from: certainly not from me. And as for Hugh, I suppose he calls it faithfulness to hang about after Nadine, but I call it anemia. I am surprised at Hugh; I should have thought he was sufficiently stupid to have more blood in him. He ought to box Nadine’s ears, kick Seymour and instantly marry somebody else, and have dozens of great red-faced, white-toothed children. Bah!”

  Dodo had subsided into hopeless giggles over this remarkable tirade against the anemic generation and Edith plucked at her double-bass again as she concluded with this exclamation of scorn.