Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “My father is so comic,” he said, “and unlike most great humourists his humour is absolutely unconscious. He was perfectly well aware that I meant to marry you, for I told him that last Christmas, adding that you did not mean to marry me. So since then I think he’s got used to you. Used to you — fancy getting used to you!”

  “Especially since he had never seen me,” said the girl.

  “That makes it less odd. Getting used to you after seeing you would be much more incredible. I was saying that in a way he had got used to you, just as he’s got used to my being a person, and not a clock on his chimney-piece, and what seems to have made so much difference is what Aunt Barbara told him last night, namely, that your mother was a Tracy. Sylvia, don’t let it be too much for you, but in a certain far-away manner he realises that you are ‘one of us.’ Isn’t he a comic? He’s going to make the best of you, it appears. To make the best of you! You can’t beat that, you know. In fact, he told me to ask if he might come and pay his respects to your mother to-morrow.

  “And what about my singing, my career?” she asked.

  Michael laughed again.

  “He was funny about that also,” he said. “My father took it absolutely for granted that having made this tremendous social advance, you would bury your past, all but the Tracy part of it, as if it had been something disgraceful which the exalted Comber family agreed to overlook.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I? Oh, I told him that, of course, you would do as you pleased about that, but that for my part I should urge you most strongly to do nothing of the kind.”

  “And he?”

  “He got four inches taller. What is so odd is that as long as I never opposed my father’s wishes, as long as I was the clock on the chimney piece, I was terrified at him. The thought of opposing myself to him made my knees quake. But the moment I began doing so, I found there was nothing to be frightened at.”

  Sylvia got up and began walking up and down the long room.

  “But what am I to do about it, Michael?” she asked. “Oh, I blush when I think of a conversation I had with Hermann about you, just before Christmas, when I knew you were going to propose to me. I said that I could never give up my singing. Can you picture the self-importance of that? Why, it doesn’t seem to me to matter two straws whether I do or not. Naturally, I don’t want to earn my living by it any more, but whether I sing or not doesn’t matter. And even as the words are in my mouth I try to imagine myself not singing any more, and I can’t. It’s become part of me, and while I blush to think of what I said to Hermann, I wonder whether it’s not true.”

  She came and sat down by him again.

  “I believe you have got enough artistic instinct to understand that, Michael,” she said, “and to know what a tremendous help it is to one’s art to be a professional, and to be judged seriously. I suppose that, ideally, if one loves music as I do one ought to be able to do one’s very best, whether one is singing professionally or not, but it is hardly possible. Why, the whole difference between amateurs and professionals is that amateurs sing charmingly and professionals just sing. Only they sing as well as they possibly can, not only because they love it, but because if they don’t they will be dropped on to, and if they continue not singing their best, will lose their place which they have so hardly won. I can see myself, perhaps, not singing at all, literally never opening my lips in song again, but I can’t see myself coming down to the Drill Hall at Brixton, extremely beautifully dressed, with rows of pearls, and arriving rather late, and just singing charmingly. It’s such a spur to know that serious musicians judge one’s performance by the highest possible standard. It’s so relaxing to think that one can easily sing well enough, that one can delight ninety-nine hundredths of the audience without any real effort. I could sing ‘The Lost Chord’ and move the whole Drill Hall at Brixton to tears. But there might be one man there who knew, you or Hermann or some other, and at the end he would just shrug his shoulders ever so slightly, and I would wish I had never been born.”

  She paused a moment.

  “I’ll not sing any more at all, ever,” she said, “or I must sing to those who will take me seriously and judge me ruthlessly. To sing just well enough to please isn’t possible. I’ll do either you like.”

  Mrs. Falbe strayed in at this moment with her finger in her book, but otherwise as purposeless as a wandering mist.

  “I was afraid it might be going to get chilly,” she remarked. “After a hot day there is often a cool evening. Will you stop and dine, Lord — I mean, Michael?”

  “Please; certainly!” said Michael.

  “Then I hope there will be something for you to eat. Sylvia, is there something to eat? No doubt you will see to that, darling. I shall just rest upstairs for a little before dinner, and perhaps finish my book. So pleased you are stopping.”

  She drifted towards the studio door, in thistledown fashion catching at corners a little, and then moving smoothly on again, talking gently half to herself, half to the others.

  “And Hermann’s not in yet, but if Lord — I mean, Michael, is going to stop here till dinnertime, it won’t matter whether Hermann comes in in time to dress or not, as Michael is not dressed either. Oh, there is the postman’s knock! What a noise! I am not expecting any letters.”

  The knock in question, however, proved to be Hermann, who, as was generally the case, had forgotten his latchkey. He ran into his mother at the studio door, and came and sat down, regardless of whether he was wanted or not, between the two on the sofa, and took an arm of each.

  “I probably intrude,” he said, “but such is my intention. I’ve just seen Lady Barbara, who says that the shock has not been too much for Mike’s father. That is a good thing; she says he is taking nourishment much as usual. I suppose I oughtn’t to jest on so serious a subject, but I took my cue from Lady Barbara. It appears that we have blue blood too, Sylvia, and we must behave more like aristocrats. A Tracy in the time of King John flirted, if no more, with a Comber. And what about your career, Sylvia? Are you going to continue to urge your wild career, or not? I ask with a purpose, as Blackiston proposes we should give a concert together in the third week in July. The Queen’s Hall is vacant one afternoon, and he thinks we might sing and play to them. I’m on if you are. It will be about the last concert of the season, too, so we shall have to do our best. Otherwise we, or I, anyhow, will start again in the autumn with a black mark. By the way, are you going to start again in the autumn? It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to hear that you and Mike had been talking about just that.”

  “Don’t be too clever to live, Hermann,” said Sylvia.

  “I don’t propose to die, if you mean that. Oh, Blackiston had another suggestion also. He wanted to know if we would consider making a short tour in Germany in the autumn. He says that the beloved Fatherland is rather disposed to be interested in us. He thinks we should have good audiences at Leipzig, and so on. There’s a tendency, he says, to recognise poor England, a cordial intention, anyhow. I said that in your case there might be domestic considerations which — But I think I shall go in any case. Lord, fancy playing in Germany to Germans again. Fancy being listened to by a German audience; fancy if they approved.”

  Michael leaned forward, putting his elbow into Hermann’s chest. Early December had already been mentioned as a date for their marriage, and as a pre-nuptial journey, this seemed to him a plan ecstatically ideal.

  “Yes, Sylvia,” he said. “The answer is yes. I shall come with you, you know. I can see it; a triumphal procession, you two making noises, and me listening. A month’s tour, Hermann. Middle of October till middle of November. Yes, yes.”

  All his tremendous pride in her singing, dormant for the moment under the wonder of his love, rose to the surface. He knew what her singing meant to her, and, from their conversation together just now, how keen was her eagerness for the strict judgment of those who knew, how she loved that austere pinnacle of daylight. Here was an ideal opportu
nity; never yet, since she had won her place as a singer, had she sung in Germany, that Mecca of the musical artist, and in her case, the land from which she sprung. Had the scheme implied a postponement of their marriage, he would still have declared himself for it, for he unerringly felt for her in this; he knew intuitively what delicious beckoning this held for her.

  “Yes, yes,” he repeated, “I must have you do that, Sylvia. I don’t care what Hermann wants or what you want. I want it.”

  “Yes, but who’s to do the playing and the singing?” asked Hermann. “Isn’t it a question, perhaps, for—”

  Michael felt quite secure about the feelings of the other two, and rudely interrupted.

  “No,” he said. “It’s a question for me. When the Fatherland hears that I am there it will no doubt ask me to play and sing instead of you two. Lord! Fancy marrying into such a distinguished family. I burst with pride!”

  It required, then, little debate, since all three were agreed, before Hermann was empowered with authority to make arrangements, and they remained simultaneously talking till Mrs. Falbe, again drifting in, announced that the bell for dinner had sounded some minutes before. She had her finger in the last chapter of “Lady Ursula’s Ordeal,” and laid it face downwards on the table to resume again at the earliest possible moment. This opportunity was granted her when, at the close of dinner, coffee and the evening paper came in together. This Hermann opened at the middle page.

  “Hallo!” he said. “That’s horrible! The Heir Apparent of the Austrian Emperor has been murdered at Serajevo. Servian plot, apparently.”

  “Oh, what a dreadful thing,” said Mrs. Falbe, opening her book. “Poor man, what had he done?”

  Hermann took a cigarette, frowning.

  “It may be a match—” he began.

  Mrs. Falbe diverted her attention from “Lady Ursula” for a moment.

  “They are on the chimney-piece, dear,” she said, thinking he spoke of material matches.

  Michael felt that Hermann saw something, or conjectured something ominous in this news, for he sat with knitted brow reading, and letting the match burn down.

  “Yes; it seems that Servian officers are implicated,” he said. “And there are materials enough already for a row between Austria and Servia without this.”

  “Those tiresome Balkan States,” said Mrs. Falbe, slowly immersing herself like a diving submarine in her book. “They are always quarrelling. Why doesn’t Austria conquer them all and have done with it?”

  This simple and striking solution of the whole Balkan question was her final contribution to the topic, for at this moment she became completely submerged, and cut off, so to speak, from the outer world, in the lucent depths of Lady Ursula.

  Hermann glanced through the other pages, and let the paper slide to the floor.

  “What will Austria do?” he said. “Supposing she threatens Servia in some outrageous way and Russia says she won’t stand it? What then?”

  Michael looked across to Sylvia; he was much more interested in the way she dabbled the tips of her hands in the cool water of her finger bowl than in what Hermann was saying. Her fingers had an extraordinary life of their own; just now they were like a group of maidens by a fountain. . . . But Hermann repeated the question to him personally.

  “Oh, I suppose there will be a lot of telegraphing,” he said, “and perhaps a board of arbitration. After all, one expected a European conflagration over the war in the Balkan States, and again over their row with Turkey. I don’t believe in European conflagrations. We are all too much afraid of each other. We walk round each other like collie dogs on the tips of their toes, gently growling, and then quietly get back to our own territories and lie down again.”

  Hermann laughed.

  “Thank God, there’s that wonderful fire-engine in Germany ready to turn the hose on conflagrations.”

  “What fire-engine?” asked Michael.

  “The Emperor, of course. We should have been at war ten times over but for him.”

  Sylvia dried her finger-tips one by one.

  “Lady Barbara doesn’t quite take that view of him, does she, Mike?” she asked.

  Michael suddenly remembered how one night in the flat Aunt Barbara had suddenly turned the conversation from the discussion of cognate topics, on hearing that the Falbes were Germans, only to resume it again when they had gone.

  “I don’t fancy she does,” he said. “But then, as you know, Aunt Barbara has original views on every subject.”

  Hermann did not take the possible hint here conveyed to drop the matter.

  “Well, then, what do you think about him?” he asked.

  Michael laughed.

  “My dear Hermann,” he said, “how often have you told me that we English don’t pay the smallest attention to international politics. I am aware that I don’t; I know nothing whatever about them.”

  Hermann shook off the cloud of preoccupation that so unaccountably, to Michael’s thinking, had descended on him, and walked across to the window.

  “Well, long may ignorance be bliss,” he said. “Lord, what a divine evening! ‘Uber allen gipfeln ist Ruhe.’ At least, there is peace on the only summits visible, which are house roofs. There’s not a breath of wind in the trees and chimney-pots; and it’s hot, it’s really hot.”

  “I was afraid there was going to be a chill at sunset,” remarked Mrs. Falbe subaqueously.

  “Then you were afraid even where no fear was, mother darling,” said he, “and if you would like to sit out in the garden I’ll take a chair out for you, and a table and candles. Let’s all sit out; it’s a divine hour, this hour after sunset. There are but a score of days in the whole year when the hour after sunset is warm like this. It’s such a pity to waste one indoors. The young people” — and he pointed to Sylvia and Michael— “will gaze into each other’s hearts, and Mamma’s will beat in unison with Lady Ursula’s, and I will sit and look at the sky and become profoundly sentimental, like a good German.”

  Hermann and Michael bestirred themselves, and presently the whole little party had encamped on chairs placed in an oasis of rugs (this was done at the special request of Mrs. Falbe, since Lady Ursula had caught a chill that developed into consumption) in the small, high-walled garden. Beyond at the bottom lay the road along the embankment and the grey-blue Thames, and the dim woods of Battersea Park across the river. When they came out, sparrows were still chirping in the ivy on the studio wall and in the tall angle-leaved planes at the bottom of the little plot, discussing, no doubt, the domestic arrangements for their comfort during the night. But presently a sudden hush fell upon them, and their shrillness was sharp no more against the drowsy hum of the city. The sky overhead was of veiled blue, growing gradually more toneless as the light faded, and was unflecked by any cloud, except where, high in the zenith, a fleece of rosy vapour still caught the light of the sunken sun, and flamed with the soft radiance of some snow-summit. Near it there burned a molten planet, growing momentarily brighter as the night gathered and presently beginning to be dimmed again as a tawny moon three days past the full rose in the east above the low river horizon. Occasionally a steamer hooted from the Thames and the noise of churned waters sounded, or the crunch of a motor’s wheels, or the tapping of the heels of a foot passenger on the pavement below the garden wall. But such evidence of outside seemed but to accentuate the perfect peace of this secluded little garden where the four sat: the hour and the place were cut off from all turmoil and activities: for a moment the stream of all their lives had flowed into a backwater, where it rested immobile before the travel that was yet to come. So it seemed to Michael then, and so years afterwards it seemed to him, as vividly as on this evening when the tawny moon grew golden as it climbed the empty heavens, dimming the stars around it.

  What they talked of, even though it was Sylvia who spoke, seemed external to the spirit of the hour. They seemed to have reached a point, some momentary halting-place, where speech and thought even lay outside, and the
need of the spirit was merely to exist and be conscious of its existence. Sometimes for a moment his past life with its self-repression, its mute yearnings, its chrysalis stirrings, formed a mist that dispersed again, sometimes for a moment in wonder at what the future held, what joys and troubles, what achings, perhaps, and anguishes, the unknown knocked stealthily at the door of his mind, but then stole away unanswered and unwelcome, and for that hour, while Mrs. Falbe finished with Lady Ursula, while Hermann smoked and sighed like a sentimental German, and while he and Sylvia sat, speaking occasionally, but more often silent, he was in some kind of Nirvana for which its own existence was everything. Movement had ceased: he held his breath while that divine pause lasted.

  When it was broken, there was no shattering of it: it simply died away like a long-drawn chord as Mrs. Falbe closed her book.

  “She died,” she said, “I knew she would.”

  Hermann gave a great shout of laughter.

  “Darling mother, I’m ever so much obliged,” he said. “We had to return to earth somehow. Where has everybody else been?”

  Michael stirred in his chair.

  “I’ve been here,” he said.

  “How dull! Oh, I suppose that’s not polite to Sylvia. I’ve been in Leipzig and in Frankfort and in Munich. You and Sylvia have been there, too, I may tell you. But I’ve also been here: it’s jolly here.”

  His sentimentalism had apparently not quite passed from him.

  “Ah, we’ve stolen this hour!” he said. “We’ve taken it out of the hurly-burly and had it to ourselves. It’s been ripping. But I’m back from the rim of the world. Oh, I’ve been there, too, and looked out over the immortal sea. Lieber Gott, what a sea, where we all come from, and where we all go to! We’re just playing on the sand where the waves have cast us up for one little hour. Oh, the pleasant warm sand and the play! How I love it.”