Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Archie turned over on to his back, and lay with arms and legs spread out to the sun, warming himself as with the memory of that expedition to London. But he had not in the least wished to postpone his return, since the joy of life lay so largely in its contrasts, and after thirty-six hours of that fiery furnace there had come a temporary satiety, and he wanted to lie and sleep like a gorged tiger. Soon he would awake and be hungry again, but it was part of the joy of life to be satisfied and doze, and stretch out tranquil limbs. And, lying there, his ribs began to twitch again into laughter as he thought of the contract he had made with his father last Sunday. Archie had entered into it, with the view of encouraging and helping his father to rid himself of the chain that was riveted so closely round him, and he was delighted to do it, if his father derived support for his abstinence in the thought that he was helping Archie. But Archie need not abstain, so long as his father thought he was doing so, and only just now he had filled with water and sunk in the weeds several empty bottles that he had brought out in his towels from his bedroom. He knew perfectly well that he was in no danger of becoming a slave to the habit, it had served him as medicine to mitigate his misery with regard to Helena, and, now that that was quite removed, it helped him to get into communication with Martin. Of that he felt convinced. Once or twice he had tried to do so without drinking, and had failed; but alcohol seemed to drug the surface-consciousness and clear the way of access, and it was for that he used it now. It was more that it cleared the access than that it drugged him, for he found that it produced not the least effect in the way of making his head hazy or his movements wavering: it only seemed to sweep clean those mysterious channels through which communication came. The power of communicating he could not possibly give up: all happiness and joy of life sprang from it; therefore he could not possibly give up that which facilitated it. But he performed the purpose of the contract by keeping his indulgences secret from his father, and once again Archie’s ribs, with their smoothly swelling muscles under his brown skin, throbbed with amusement as he pictured his father’s heroic struggle with himself. Occasionally Archie had doubts whether that struggle was quite consistently successful, for once or twice Lord Tintagel had shown signs of evening content and serenity, followed by morning shakiness, which indicated that he had made some temporary armistice. Archie thought that perhaps he would lay some trap for his father, or make some quiet detective investigations to satisfy himself on this point. But beyond doubt his father was putting up quite a good fight on behalf of a non-existent cause. His will was to abstain, and, if occasionally he failed, it was unchristian to judge failure hardly. Besides, Archie only conjectured that sometimes his father’s resolution was unequal to the strain imposed on it; he did not know.

  * * * * *

  All this week Archie’s sense of comradeship and brotherliness with Martin had marvellously increased. There was nothing priggish or puritanical about Martin, nor anything namby-pamby that suggested wings and halos and hymns. He was intensely human, and sympathized completely with the fact of Archie’s being a glorious young animal, bursting with exuberant health. That seemed quite clear, for when this morning, sometime about four o’clock, Archie had gently let himself into the house in Grosvenor Square a little ashamed and weary, and went up to his bedroom, he became instantly aware that Martin was waiting for him. There was no need for him to light his electric lamps, for dawn was already breaking, and, drawing his curtains apart, he threw off his clothes, so as to let the delicious chill of morning refresh his skin, and sat down for a moment in front of his dressing-table and looked fixedly at a bright point of light on the bevel of his looking-glass. Almost immediately the waves of light and shadow began to pass before his eyes, and the room was full of vivid, peremptory tappings. Then he was aware that there appeared in the reflected image of himself a strange luminous focus over his left breast and a little wisp of mist, like a puff of escaping steam, began to come from it. This grew and collected in wavering masses of weaving lines, formless at first, but then arranging themselves into definite shapes, and he saw, with a thrill of excitement and wonder, that out of them there was being built up the image of Martin, which had issued out of himself. Soon it was complete, and Archie in the glass beheld Martin’s face leaning lovingly over his shoulder, and Martin’s arm bare like his own, and, warm and solid to the touch, was thrown round his neck.

  “Archie, I’ve been with you all night,” he said. “I love to see you and feel you realize yourself. Throw yourself into life: live to the uttermost, and have no thought for the morrow. There is nothing in the world but love and joy. Cling to them, press close to them, lose yourself in them…”

  Martin’s smile was compassionate no longer: it was a sunbeam of radiant happiness, and that happiness, so it seemed to Archie, had its source in sympathy with and love for him.

  “Don’t ever think you are yielding to base impulses,” he went on, “provided only you are happy. Happiness is the seal and witness of what is right for you: it is the mark of God’s approval. Evil is always painful and repugnant; that is the seal and witness of it. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace; and aren’t you more at peace, more full of joy now that you have resolved to put hate out of your heart? Isn’t it sweeter to kiss Helena than to curse her?”

  * * * * *

  Suddenly, like the stroke of a black wing, there passed through Archie an impulse of sheer abhorrence. All that Martin said sounded divinely comforting and uplifting, but did there not lurk in it the whole gospel of Satanism? And, as that thought crossed his mind, he saw an expression of the tenderest reproach dim for a moment the brightness of his brother’s eyes, and the mouth drooped.

  “But you are tired now,” said he, “and your trust in me is a little weakened. Sleep well: it is dawn already.”

  The apparition faded, or rather it appeared to be withdrawn again into himself, and, emerging from the light trance, Archie was conscious only of an overpowering but delicious fatigue, the fatigue of utter satisfaction. He had had a glorious thirty-six hours, and, as Martin said, he was tired. And Martin approved.

  He slept the deep, recuperative sleep of youth for four or five hours, and awoke hungry and eager, and clear-eyed. He left town immediately after breakfast, motored himself down home with William holding on to the side of the car as he slowed round corners and came straight out to his beloved bathing-place. It was bliss to be alive.

  * * * * *

  He had not seen Jessie during his short raid on London, for really there had not been a moment to spare; besides, Jessie was coming down next day for the week-end. But she knew he had been in town, for Helena said she had seen him, and, with her usual acuteness, had told her sister that Archie was deliciously his old self again, and that they were the greatest friends. That, to Jessie’s very sensible judgment and to the intuition her love gave her, was the most inexplicable of developments. Only a week ago there was no reproach bitter enough for Archie’s opinion on Helena’s conduct to him, no angry taunt of misery sufficient for her vilification. And then, in a moment, the whole of that bitterness had been dried up, the Marah had been sweetened. More than that, the normal joy of life had returned in full flood to him, and the cause of all this was, in his account, the fact that the spirit of Martin had shown him the true light. That Archie possessed that mysterious, and, in her view, dangerous gift of mediumistic perception she did not doubt, for there was no questioning those weird manifestations of occult power which she knew had occurred in his childhood, and she felt now that she ought only to stand in an awed wonder and thankfulness that this supernormal perception of his had, in a moment, worked in him what could be called no less than a miracle. But, though she ought to feel that, she knew that she felt nothing of the kind, and, as she travelled down next day to Lacebury, she set herself to analyse the causes of her mistrust.

  They were simple enough. First of all, there was her rooted antipathy to the whole notion of spirit-communication. Instinctively it shocked her and seemed o
pposed to all religious faith. Beyond that, there were but a couple of the most insignificant matters that appeared to her possibly connected with her mistrust, the one that Archie had made a false, swift invention to account for the noises she had heard coming from his room, the other that he had proposed to get William to spy on his father with a view to ascertaining whether he was keeping his part of their bargain. She knew they were both tiny incidents, but the spirit that prompted them was in both cases utterly unlike Archie. She could not imagine Archie making such an invention or such a suggestion, from what she knew of him, it was outside him to do so. And if it was the influence — to call it no more than that — of Martin which prompted these things, if it was the same direction as that which had taken away all his bitterness towards Helena, what sort of influence was that? Finally, could it be right that the boy whom Helena had so cruelly led on only to disappoint should, on the eve of her marriage, suddenly become close friends with her again? There certainly he obeyed the precept of that which had spoken with him, and had promised to communicate again, and she could not but think it a dangerous, if not a diabolical counsel. But she tried to reserve her judgment; in a few minutes now she would see Archie again, and could note what change for good or ill this week had brought. Very likely she had been disquieting herself in vain, making wounds out of pin-pricks and mountains out of mole-hills.

  Archie had come to meet her, and, as the train slowed down into the station, she saw him out of the carriage window. But he did not see her, for his eyes were intent on a very horrible sight. There were two tipsy women violently quarrelling, and, just as the train got in, they flew at each other, scratching and striking. The encounter lasted not more than a few seconds, for a couple of porters ran in and separated them, but Jessie had seen Archie’s face alight with glee and amusement. As they were separated he frowned and shrugged his shoulders, and seemed to remonstrate with the man who had stopped their fighting. At that instant he saw her get out of her compartment, and ran to meet her, his face quite changed. But the moment before it had not been Archie’s face at all: it had been the face of some beautiful and devilish creature, alert with evil excitement.

  “Hullo, Jessie, there you are,” he said. “It’s ripping to see you. Look at those two viragos there; they flew at each other like wild beasts. It was a horrible sight.”

  He turned a sideways eye on her, cunning and watchful, which utterly belied the frankness of his speech, and her heart sank, and a vague, nameless terror seized her, as once again she found herself thinking that this was not Archie, who so gaily took her bag for her, and ever and again looked back to where a small crowd had collected round the two women. They had a few minutes to wait, while her luggage was brought out, and once more he sauntered back into the station, leaving her in the car. From outside she could hear hoarse screams, and, long after her trunk had been put into the car, she watched the door for Archie’s exit. First one and then the other of the women were brought out to be taken to the police-station, and at last he emerged.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting, Jessie,” he said. “But my mother wanted some magazine from the bookstall. Now, if you aren’t nervous, we’ll make up for lost time.”

  The road lay straight and empty before them, opening out like torn linen as they raced along it. Some way ahead there were a couple of cottages by the road-side, and, as they came near them, there wandered out into the road an old and lame collie. Instantly Archie’s face changed into a mask of impatient malignancy.

  “Archie, take care,” said Jessie, “there’s a dog on the road.”

  “Well, that’s the dog’s look-out,” said he. “What right has a mangy brute like that to stop us?”

  He made no attempt whatever to slow down, but just at the last moment he caused the car to swerve violently, and they missed the dog by a hair’s-breadth. And he turned on her a face from which all impatience and anger had vanished, and from it looked out Archie’s soul in agonized struggle.

  “I couldn’t, I couldn’t!” he said. “I didn’t touch it, Jessie: it’s all right.”

  “I thought you must run over it,” said she. “Why didn’t you slow down, Archie?”

  That glimpse of the agonized soul utterly vanished again.

  “People have got no business to keep a decrepit old beast like that,” he said. “I expect the kindest thing I could do would be to turn round and put it out of its misery. Never mind. I’ll do it some other day.”

  Jessie clung to her glimpse of the other Archie.

  “No, you won’t,” she said. “You’ll risk your life and mine, too, not to hurt it.”

  He laughed.

  “One can’t tell what one will do,” he said. “I hated and loathed that dog, but I couldn’t run over it, when it came to. Hope I didn’t give you an awful shaking, Jessie.”

  After lunch Archie proposed a campaign against a certain great pike which he had seen, and, while he went to his room to change his clothes, Jessie paid a visit to Blessington. The old lady was delighted to see her, and dusted a perfectly speckless chair for her.

  “And it’s jolly for you, isn’t it, Blessington, having Archie here so long?” said Jessie.

  Blessington made no answer for a moment.

  “I make no complaints,” she said, “and I daresay Master Archie is very busy.”

  “Why, what do you mean?” asked the girl.

  Blessington’s wrinkled old face began to work, and she looked piteously at Jessie.

  “It’s a week since Master Archie set foot in my room,” she said. “Why does he never come to see me now, Miss Jessie? And when I meet him about the house, he’s never got a word to give me. Me, who has looked after him and loved him since he was born.”

  At this moment Archie’s step was heard outside, and he came in.

  “Oh, Blessington, I wish you wouldn’t go meddling with my things,” he said roughly. “William tells me you took some flannels of mine away to mend or put a button on. Where are they?”

  Blessington got up without a word and went to her cupboard.

  “Here they are, my lord,” she said. “I have mended them.”

  “Well, please don’t carry my clothes away again. Come on, Jessie. I’ll be ready in a moment.”

  Blessington’s hands came together with a trembling movement as Archie twitched the flannel coat away from her. But he did not even look at her, and went out of her room, banging the door.

  Blessington sat down again, and began to cry quietly. “There now, you see, Miss Jessie,” she said. “And that’s my own Master Archie.”

  For a minute or so Jessie sat with her, trying vainly to comfort her, and shocked beyond expression at Archie’s brutal callousness to his old nurse. And then the door opened again, and Archie looked in. Once again all his anger and impatience had died out of his face, his real soul looked from his eyes as from a prison-house, and his voice shook as he spoke.

  “Go away, please, Jessie, and leave me with Blessington for a minute,” he said.

  And then he came across the room to her, and knelt down by her, and took her withered old hand in his, and stroked it and kissed it. So much Jessie saw before she closed the door behind her.

  “Blessington, my old darling,” said Archie, “I can’t think why I have been so beastly to you. It wasn’t me, that’s all I can tell you. I always love you. Can you forgive me?”

  Blessington’s loyal devotion rose triumphant.

  “Eh, I know how busy you’ve been, Master Archie,” she said, “and I know what a thoughtless body I am with your things. But I’d like you to be angry with me fifty times, if you’ll only come back to me at the end. There pray-a-don’t kiss my hand, dear. It isn’t right for you to do that.”

  “Where’s your darling face then?” said Archie. “If you don’t give me a kiss this minute, I shall know you’ve been flirting with father’s keeper again.”

  Blessington gave a little squeal of laughter.

  “Eh, and him dead this twenty years,” she sa
id. “And you know, my dear, that whatever you did, and asked me to give you a kiss afterwards, give it you I would, because nothing you could do would stop my loving you.”

  Blessington’s love, Helena’s love… which was real? Two things so utterly different could not both be love. And for him, too, which love was real, his love for Blessington, all ashed over save for the little spark that somehow lived below the cold cinders, or his love for Helena that blazed and scintillated? Suddenly the thought of that glowed within him, and it seemed dreadful to kiss this withered cheek. And yet the dim old eyes had never wavered in their loyalty and love for his worthless, corrupted self.

  “And shall we have a talk this evening again before dinner?” he asked.

  “Eh, that would be nice if you’re not too busy,” said she.

  “All right, then. But I must run along now: Jessie’s waiting.”

  “That’ll never do to keep her waiting,” said Blessington. “And if you’re going on the lake, Master Archie, pray be careful and don’t fall in.”

  * * * * *

  Lady Tintagel with Jessie and Archie were going up to town on Monday to attend Helena’s wedding the day after, and all through the hours of that week-end there was piling up ever higher and more menacingly the storm that so soon was to burst upon Europe in tempest of shot and shell. Before they left on Monday afternoon war was already declared between Russia and Germany, between Germany and France, the territory of Belgium was violated by the barbarian hordes who issued from the Central Empires, and Belgium had appealed to England to uphold the treaty which Germany had torn up to light the fires or war. But, as in so many English homes in these days, the inevitable still seemed the incredible, and, though from time to time they discussed the situation, life went on its normal course. Indeed, there was nothing else to be done: whether England was going to war or not, dinner-time came round as usual…