Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Certainly it was a waste of that most precious and unpurchasable commodity to devote a single moment to a regret so unavailing, but she did not at once pull herself up (while waiting for Miss Armitage to unravel the complication of engagements that caused the hours of Tuesday to overlap in so inconvenient a manner), or use the minutes in skating a little further on the very thin ice of the French short stories that had been recommended her, or even call in her manicure. Every now and then, and, so it seemed to her, with increasing frequency during this last year or two, some shadow fell across the brilliance of the sunshine that lay on her path. It did not come from any intervening object, any troublesome circumstance that interposed itself between her and the sun, it seemed rather as if the sun itself blazed less brightly, making a dusk even at noonday.

  Nor was this failure to be laid to the door of that thief, Time, the inveterate flower-stealer, for she had still too many flowers in her garden, and even buds yet undeveloped, to miss the spoils of his maraudings. Nor again did she fear the approach of old age, for it was mere waste of energy to spend a thought over the inevitable, or the final arrival of the grim doorkeeper, who equally certainly would open the portals that led into whatever lay beyond.

  For herself, she had no doubt as to what lay beyond: she was so sure that when once that door closed behind you there would be nothing any more, fair or foul, bright or dark, that no speculation on the subject could have the smallest interest. It would all be over and done with: out of the dark stream above which in the sunshine the fly danced and hovered would come a great sucking mouth, and gulp it down. There would be a ripple on the surface which would in a moment die away, and most assuredly there would be no fly there in the sunshine. Sometimes the great fish rose at you, and missed you, and you had another dance, but sooner or later he swallowed you. Sometimes you were already floating, water-logged, on the stream, not dancing any more — that was what old age meant — and then, perhaps, the sooner the great ugly mouth caught you, the better.

  But the shadow that sometimes, as now, lay across her garden was not of this nature: it was derivable from no fear of old age or death. It was rather due to a certain obstinate, uninvited questioning as to what was the good of it all, this intense pursuit of distraction of any kind that frightened away tranquillity and leisure, this hot fever of living. But good or bad, the only alternative to amusing yourself was boring yourself, which was a more obvious idiocy. Yet was there, possibly, a certain tedium arising out of the mere repetition of experience and excitements, however delightful in themselves, if there was nothing, in Mrs. Cyril Pounce’s inimitable American phrase, “back of them?”

  Well, her secretary had disentangled Tuesday for her, and read out in her calm, monotonous voice the hours of her engagements. One had to be omitted, but as that was only a bazaar in aid of something, it was quite as easy to send a suitable cheque without demanding an equivalent, as to visit the bazaar in person and carry away something she didn’t want. Certainly there was nothing “back of” the bazaar. She was sorry for the blind or for indigent spinsters, or for anybody who wasn’t enjoying himself, but she couldn’t make them any happier by buying an object, than by paying for it without getting it.... Mrs. Pounce! That wonderful woman was coming down in time for lunch to-day, and was to motor back to town after dinner. She would probably be dressed in diamonds, with a petticoat of pearls. She was much richer than anybody else had ever been, and so was entitled to respect, but at the moment what Lady Grote envied her for was her simple rule of life, which was never to do anything “back of” which there was not something more.

  At present her chief ambition seemed to be to know the whole of London. She had nearly accomplished that, but one of the few vacant spaces in her social stamp-book was the place where the Lord Thorley specimen should have been. She knew she would meet him here, and so, with great good nature, Helen Grote had invited her down for Sunday afternoon. That seemed about fair — Henry had a vague horror of her as a collector, so Lady Grote had not asked her down from Saturday till Monday. But Henry must just put up with her for a few hours, that was not too much to ask, especially since so many other people were coming down for this curtailed visit, people she had not room to saddle herself with for a whole week-end, but people who wanted so much to get to Grote somehow. Mrs. Pounce! And at the thought of Mrs. Pounce and the divine applicability of her name to her methods, Helen began to come out of the shadow again. There was Mrs. Pounce, who had travelled ten or fifteen years longer than she in this vale of tears, and yet had abated not one jot of her insatiable demands on life, or had ever begun to weep. But then, Mrs. Pounce had had the great luck to begin her explorations from the very bottom of the ladder, whereas poor Helen had started on the very topmost rung. If you started there, you had either to descend, or, take wings and soar. But for soaring there had to be something “back of it” all.... Mrs. Pounce could never really arrive at the haven where she would be, and certainly long before she ever thought she had got there, the great fish would have got her instead.... And even if she ever thought she had quite got there, her whole time would be taken up in maintaining her precarious balance, whereas Helen Grote would be obliged to do something quite outrageous ever to lose hers.

  Society, success, position, all that vocabulary of ridiculous phrases, had only a meaning for such as had not got them. If you had all these things, not even round you but at your feet, you were unconscious of them: the words became gibberish. The only happiness was in getting: what you had got you took for granted. You didn’t want to possess anything of which the essence was yours, just as you never bought a book you had already read. And Lady Grote had read a very large number of such books.

  But the shadow cleared off when Miss Armitage produced such a smooth Tuesday for her, and the thought of Mrs. Pounce proved such a tonic. She was about a hundred times as clever as Mrs. Pounce, and it would be absurd to allow even a half-hour of shadow to darken her own existence, when Mrs. Pounce so gladly stepped ahead through thunderclouds and baffling storm to secure her ultimate serenity.

  So, dismissing Miss Armitage, she sent for the manicurist, who always paid a visit here on Sunday morning, coming down from London, quite at his own expense in the sure and certain hope of securing an admirable return on his speculation. There were always half a dozen woman in the house who would take advantage of his services and, since Mr. Boyton was here, at least one man. Mr. Pantitzi, for such was his florid name was also an expert on the hair, and brought down in his discreet wallet little bottles, whose contents, judiciously selected and mixed, produced colours that defied detection. Lady Grote adored talking to Mr. Pantitzi about the wickedness of the world as he, with his sad, cynical face, made the requisite mixture. “And our tears,” as she once expressed it, “mingle with the poisonous dye.”

  The passing of the shadow produced a reaction, and, looking at herself in the glass, after Miss Armitage had gone to the telephone, she determined to have a crowded hour of glorious Mr. Pantitzi, and to introduce a rather deeper shade of red into her hair. As a girl, she had owned a superb Titian hue, but Mr. Pantitzi’s ministrations had only in part preserved it. But now was the time to start again: it had not yet “gone so far” as to render a rejuvenescence absurd, and she intensely wanted to encourage herself by presenting to the world the vivider hues of youth.

  She was forty, and she owned, even with eagerness, to that exact number of years, conscious that she looked not within six years of that age which gives pause to every Ionian. Probably nobody believed her, for apart from the fact that she had a son of nineteen there was no record in the kindly page of Peerages which gave away what she quite freely admitted. But the right criterion of youth is the consciousness of youth, and this morning, after the passage of the shadow, she felt ten years younger than her age.... It was worth while looking the age you felt, and recalling the excitements of the early thirties, she knew that she could live back into those agitating days, if her hair would back her up. At the moment it
had got a little cendré; there was a dullness as of ashes about it. But with an hour to spare she would rectify all that.

  The room where she sat adjoined her bedroom, on the other side of it was her bathroom; beyond that again was her maid’s room. It was not quite an ideal arrangement, since she had to pass through her sitting-room to reach her bathroom, but the little suite formed a corner of the house, and was pleasantly withdrawn by baize doors and a little passage of its own from the big corridor. Her maid, as a matter of fact, never slept in the room beyond the bathroom, but only used it as a sort of dress-wardrobe, and sewing-room by day. In fact, the little nest of rooms was really a sort of flat, an island of her own in the great hotel of a house. No one penetrated there uninvited: if anyone from the rest of the house, even Gracie or Grote, wanted to see her, inquiry must first be made over the silver and white enamel telephone that stood on her table as to whether she was disengaged.... Silver and white were indeed the only two colours used in the furnishing and decoration of the room. The floor was painted white, and on it were strewn white skins: the walls were of white boiseries with silver panels: there were silver brocade chairs and chairs of white embroidery: silver fire-dogs stood on the white-tiled hearth, and Gracie the consistent used to tell her that she should have the logs of wood white-washed. Without accurately knowing why, she, with all her vivid colour-scheme of life, felt an intense satisfaction in this uncoloured nest that somehow represented her, and, as all rooms should be, was a projection of herself.

  People were apt to smile at the mention of the famous little white room: those unkindly disposed called it the most finished cynicism, while even her friends were inclined to think it an affectation, though they would have been puzzled to be obliged to mention any other instance of pose in her works and days. But, as a matter of fact, both friends and foes were wrong in their judgments; the room was the sincerest possible translation of something that she truly and intimately felt.

  Those who knew her superficially, and, even more, those who knew her with a certain thoroughness, would have beggared the rainbow of its hues before they hit on white as the colour that matched her, and there was only one person in the world, and that Robin, to whom this white room seemed the real setting for his mother.

  Naturally enough, the boy was utterly ignorant concerning the sum of what the “world gabbled or whispered about her, and had he been told it, or any portion of it, he would have believed not a single syllable. But on the other hand he had that instinctive knowledge, not of what she did but of what she actually was, which no man but a son can have, and that only when it concerns just one woman in the world. For if the love of a boy for a girl is the blindest of passions, that of a son for a mother, when it has any real existence at all, is the most clear-sighted, piercing through mind and husk unimpeded, like some magical ray, and recording only the bone, the structure itself, on which the skin and tissues are hung.

  Robin alone, then, in his right of entry into a certain secret place in his mother’s heart, was alone also in his right of entry into this room without inquiry, and presently he came whistling in.

  “Morning, mother,” he said. “When are you and I going on the river? Oh, I say, I was sorry for you last night, being left with that fellow. Or do you like him?”

  “Mr. Kuhlmann? Yes, don’t you?”

  Robin picked up a cigarette.

  “Well, speaking quite candidly, isn’t he rather a bounder?”

  She laughed. Nobody but Robin could possibly have said that to her: there was the unique refreshment of it.

  “I rather think he is,” she said. “But, then, you and I settled long ago, darling, that I liked bounders.”

  “I know. Frightfully catholic of you. Sings, doesn’t he?”

  “So much so that nobody else can be considered to sing.”

  Robin considered this.

  “Well, that’s something,” he said. “He wanted to tip me, too, which was quite kind in intention. He thought I was at school.”

  “You do look about sixteen,” said his mother. “How much was it? Did you take it?”

  “Very likely, isn’t it? Especially when I won eleven pounds last night.”

  The mournful Mr. Pantitzi, who had been sent for, entered at this moment with his restorative little wallet. He looked as if he had come to announce a death, and Lady Grote felt a slight tremor of suppressed laughter run through Robin’s side as he leaned against her, perched on the arm of her chair.... So Mr. Pantitzi was sent to be sad in the bathroom.

  Robin waited, heroically self-contained, until he had vanished.

  “My!” he said. “Who sent for the undertaker? What is it?”

  “My Italian stainer and polisher, dear. He’s going to stain and polish me. Mind you don’t scream when you see me at lunch, because I shall have red hair by then!”

  “Whaffor?” asked Robin.

  “Just a change, darling. Besides, it used to be red. Not too red, you know; coppery, like a new penny.”

  “Why shouldn’t I have mine dyed, too?” asked Robin. “I’ll have it dyed emerald green, I think. We should be a pretty pair.”

  “Do, darling, and we might give an aerobatic performance as the Polychromatic Linnets. Don’t talk such nonsense, but tell me exactly all about yourself. Are you playing cricket for Cambridge?”

  “Rather not. There came a day after which I didn’t make a run.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Robin. I know you wanted to,” said she. “And to think that I spent a whole hour at Lord’s the other day, in order to try to understand what it was all about.”

  “Any success?”

  “No, dear, not a particle. It seemed to me the most confused thing I ever saw. Everyone kept walking about every minute or two. Why did they do that? And if I made the rules, the man who hit the ball away would have to go and fetch it.”

  Robin pondered over this remarkable innovation.

  “Certainly it sounds fairer,” he admitted, “but, then it wouldn’t be the same game.”

  “I thought that would be such an advantage. But I was determined to understand something about it, if you were going to play for Cambridge. I was going to Lord’s again this week.”

  “Well, you needn’t now. That’s a silver lining to the black cloud.”

  “What cloud?” she asked. “Oh, I see, the fact of your not getting into the — the — eleven, aren’t there?”

  “Yes. You used to know that well enough when I was at school.”

  “I know I did. But I’ve forgotten. You see, cricket doesn’t enter really very essentially into my life, except when it concerns your precious self. Go on, Robin; tell me heaps more about yourself. My appetite for cricket is rather bird-like. I peek and go away. Birds, isn’t that what they call you?”

  “If you happen to be a Robin and a Linnet there’s not much else to say,” remarked Robin.

  “No, it sounds natural. But go on — I didn’t mean to interrupt. Have you fallen in love with anybody lately?”

  “Yes, last night, with Mrs. Lockwater. O-oh!” Lady Grote burst into a peal of laughter.

  “My dear, she’s a little old for you, isn’t she?” she said. “And she’s got a husband already, which is a pity.”

  “But you don’t want to marry everyone you fall in love with, do you?” asked he. “You want — you just want. I don’t mind about her husband a bit.”

  “You would if you saw him. But perhaps she would divorce him. He’s got whiskers.”

  “Lor! Why did she ever marry him, then? Or perhaps he grew them afterwards!”

  “No, he’s the sort of person who always had whiskers. Do promise me that you will never grow whiskers, darling. They seem to damn the soul, don’t they! I should turn in my grave if I thought you were growing whiskers. So if by chance, when I am quite dead, you want to grow whiskers, mind you dig me up with an order from the Secretary for Cemeteries, whoever it is, and you’ll find me lying on my face, and — and a trace of mineral poison in my lungs.”

>   “Why that?” asked Robin.

  “Just to make it more exciting. I was only adding detail to a bald narrative. Isn’t there anybody else besides Mrs. Lockwater? Surely there was somebody last Easter.”

  Robin laughed.

  “Yes, there was,” he said. “There was a girl in Tiddlewinks “What are they? How do you get there?”

  “It’s a revue, mother. I had forgotten all about it till you suggested it. She sang ‘Oysters on the Pier.’ You never saw anybody so fetching.”

  “Oh, but she mustn’t fetch you. I don’t think I should like her as a daughter-in-law. Or are oysters ‘off’ now, since it is June?”

  “Fairly off. But they might come on again. I wish you’d go and see her. You might tell me what you thought.”

  “That is a very odd thing to ask of an aged and respectable mother,” said Lady Grote, looking about twenty-five.

  “No, it isn’t. I could ask you to do anything, because you would understand. Of course it’s all chaff—”

  She laid her hand on his, interrupting.

  “My dear, you’ve said something that isn’t all chaff,” she said. “You told me you could ask me to do anything because I would understand. Oh, Robin, don’t ever forget that you felt that. It’s an enchanting thing for a mother to have said to her by her son. Oh, you bone of my bone! I almost wish you would do something quite out of the pale, in order to see whether I didn’t stick to you. Do be had up for some really awful charge, like taking a penny from a blind beggar.... There’s that damned telephone ringing. Just see what it wants, or tell it quite straight that it can’t have it.”