Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  The Genoese brocade curtains which separated the outer hall from the inner hall, out of which opened the dining-room and drawing-rooms, and from which aspired the new German staircase of iron scroll-work and marble steps, were of far too magnificent a solidity to belly in draughts, and the cedar-wood doors that drew out from their resting-places in the walls were seldom used. One end of this inner hall was taken up by an immense organ case brought from Nuremberg, the pipes of which came right up to the ceiling; indeed, some of them had been cut to admit their insertion. The rash visitor, with knowledge of organs, might have lamented the loss of tone which this would imply, but he would speedily be relieved of his melancholy, for Sir Hermann would take him round the end of the organ, where once a blower supplied it with the inspiration for its many-throated singing, and show him that the case alone and the front pipes remained, and that the whole interior of the organ was but an electric lift, which would save him the necessity of mounting those slippery German stairs. But as if to perpetuate the memory of the old “house of sounds,” as if indeed to materialize its ghost, Aline had hit on a very quaint and pretty notion, and the mechanism of the lift was so arranged that all the time during which it was in motion, a colossal musical box, embedded in the perforated roof, played old German chorales.

  Sir Hermann never entered the lift without thinking how dichterlich was this contrivance, and sometimes he was moved to hum an approximate solo to the tinkling accompaniment of the ceiling of the lift. The walls of this inner hall were decorated with the heads of stags and bisons and antelopes, the spoils of some unknown hunter. They had been left in the house by the former owners, and, in Sir Hermann’s opinion, gave a sporting touch to the inner hall, a characteristically English note. A trophy of blunderbusses and other antique fire-arms endorsed this pleasant impression.

  Three velvety drawing-rooms lay en suite down the length of the house. Here the German taste had been permitted to assert its legitimate claim, and the general effect was that of saloon carriages, station waiting-rooms decorated for the arrival of royal visitors, and wedding-cakes. The dining-room reverted to the ancestral atmosphere again, for Sir Hermann had collected together half a dozen Romneys and Reynoldses; and side by side at one end of the room hung portraits of himself and his wife by Laszlo. The rest of the house consisted mainly of bedrooms with bathrooms attached.

  Aline Gurtner found to her great pleasure when she arrived at Ashmore that her husband had not yet started for town, but had waited to dine with her, and drive up afterwards. He and the three children met her half-way up the avenue, and she got out, and put her lovely new muff, in the manner of a bearskin, on to Hermann’s head.

  “Look, Kinder,” she said. “Daddy has become a great Guardsman.”

  “O-oh! Daddy’s a soldier,” said Freddy excitedly. “Let’s all march and kill the French. Ein, zwei, drei....”

  The Guardsman east one glance at the chauffeur and footmen, who waited with perfectly blank, impassive faces. Aline rushed in where Freddy dared to tread....

  “No, darling, Daddy’s an English Guardsman,” she interpolated. “Yes, you can drive on, Giles. I will walk. Now, darlings, tell me all you have been doing since Mummie went away.”

  “First we had tea,” began Bertie, “and then Freddy was sick—”

  “No, I wasn’t,” screamed Freddy. “I was sick first, and had tea afterwards. Have you had tea, Mummie?”

  “Yes, my darling, but I wasn’t sick. What were you sick about?”

  “About cherries,” said Freddy promptly. “And then I was quite well again and had tea. May we play horses? May you or Daddy be my horses?”

  She took Hermann’s arm, who began prancing in the most equine manner.

  “Yes: here we go. But you mustn’t drive us too fast, liebster, because Mummie has just been shod with high-heeled shoes, and she can’t run as fast as usual.”

  The two other boys insisted on being postillions, and thus loaded, the steeds soon had enough of their transmigration, and became human again.

  “And you enjoyed your afternoon, heart’s dearest?” asked Hermann.

  “Very much. I went to chapel, and then had tea with Robin. Those English boys are such dears; they were so jolly and friendly. And I was very careful.”

  “Das ist gut.”

  He continued to speak in the language in which he thought, when, as so often, he thought definitely, as he had been taught to do as a child. He could remember his mother saying to him, “Never be vague when you think, mein Hermann: vague thought makes weak action. Articulate your thought, as if you were speaking aloud. That makes for thoroughness....”

  “But I have no longer any doubt whatever that the situation is beyond cure, Aline,” he said. “That is why I must certainly be in the City to-morrow morning. I must make the best of a bad job.”

  “But you arc going to make a good job out of it, are you not?” she asked.

  “As far as a little money goes, yes.” said he. “If I do not bring you home half a million pounds, you may smash my silly face for me.”

  Freddy followed this.

  “Daddy’s going to bring home half a million pounds,” he shrieked. “Daddy, how much may I have?”

  Aline picked him up.

  “You may have half a million kisses from Mummie, dearest,” she said.

  “Me, too,” cried Bertie.

  “Me, too,” cried Jackie.

  She bent down and smothered herself in the midst of those soft, warm faces.

  “Darlings, Mummie’s own darlings,” she said. “You are a million times better than Daddy’s pounds which he is going to bring home. Look, what is that under the trees there? Why, it’s a pig! It must have got out of its pig-house. Run across to the farm and tell Whalley that there is a pig got loose.”

  “But it won’t bite us?” asked Bertie.

  “Not if you salute it. Call out, ‘Guten Tag: Morgen ist Mittwoch.’”

  “But it’s only Sunday,” said Freddy.

  “Never mind. That’s what you must always say to a pig when you meet it, and then it will be pleased.... Now, run along, and then we’ll all go home, and you shall have your supper, and when you’re in bed Mummie will come to see you, and wish you goodnight.”

  The children ran gaily off across the grass, shouting out their salutations to the pig, delicious little figures, two in their Sunday sailor suits, the third barelegged to above the knee, and soon they were half swallowed up in a tall belt of bracken. Aline’s eyes followed them till they disappeared, her whole face tender and shining with mother-love, and then she turned to Hermann again. The light died from her eyes: they became hard and unhappy again.

  “Hermann, what is to happen to us all?” she said. “Already, even before we are at war, the war has begun in me. You told me I should have to decide where my sympathies lay, and I have decided. At least, there was no decision about it. I only knew that I knew.”

  “And what do you know?” he asked.

  “I will tell you. It happened this afternoon. I was having tea with Robin, feeling tremendously English, and then some boy who was having tea with us said something about Germany being crushed between Russia and France. And I had spoken before I knew I had spoken, and found that I had said that not all the armies of Europe could stand against Germany. It — it flared out, like flame when you strike a dull brown head of a match against a dull brown strip on the side of its box. I couldn’t bear anyone to talk of Germany like that.”

  “But, dearest, you must keep a guard on yourself,” said he. “You are too impulsive. Remember, you have great English sympathies as well. Your home is here, your friends are here, you have boys who will go to Eton.”

  She began to get voluble and excited, as she always did when anyone hinted that she was not completely wise and admirable and marvellous.

  “I know, and it’s just that which makes it so difficult for me,” she said, “and you don’t consider for a moment what terrible anguish I shall suffer. Apart from me and
the children, there is no one in the world that you care for as I care for hundreds of my friends. You don’t love people as I do, Hermann; but I am too affectionate. Of course it is my fault, I ought to be colder and less tender-hearted, but I am made like that. And I love Germany, too, in a way that you have no conception of. You are taken up with your money-getting, and you don’t care where it comes from, so long as you know where it goes to. Sometimes I think we made a mistake: we ought to have gone away when Kuhlmann went. It was my affection for my home and my friends, which you now throw in my teeth, that kept me from dreaming of going.”

  “I throw nothing in your teeth,” said he. “But I do tell you to keep a guard on yourself.”

  “And that is very unkind of you,” said she, scaling up the heights of egoism. “You ought to sympathize with me, instead of scolding me. It makes me miserable to think of what may be coming. I do not know what I have done that such unhappiness should be sent me. Just when everything was going so well, and the children were strong and healthy, and I was making so many friends.”

  “Ah, enough, enough,” said he impatiently, “it is just that sort of talk of the struggle in your tender heart which you must utterly avoid. And there must be no more matches struck. Aline: there is too much inflammable material about. There! Do not cry, I beg you. You know very well I am not unkind.”

  They had come into the Italian hall, and her eyes fell on the sables which reposed on one of the cassoni. The effort of realizing that he was not unkind was much mitigated by the sight....

  There followed the hour which, apart from great social triumphs, she loved almost best in all the day. The three boys had already had their baths, and clad in their brilliant wool-and-silk pyjamas were careering about the night-nursery in a wild romp before going to bed. But the moment she appeared they all ran to her, and Freddy sat on her right knee, and Bertie on her left, and Jackie squeezed himself somehow in between. They had, so it was shrilly announced, already said their prayers to Nanna, so that tiresome business being over, there was nothing but sheer enjoyment for as long as Mummie would stop. She often thought what a divine picture could be made of her sitting half submerged in this beloved wave of children, but she could not think of any living artist capable of doing justice to the exquisite theme....

  “Well, darlings, what are we going to do to-night?” she said. “Shall I tell you a story?”

  “No!” said Freddy firmly.

  “Stories are stupid,” said Bertie. “Let’s sing. We’ll sing ‘Stille Nacht.’”

  So all together, Aline Gurtner in her pretty contralto voice, and the three piping childish trebles sang, “Stille yacht, hcilige Nacht,” while Nanna turned down their beds, and made the night-nursery tidy.

  “That was lovely,” said Bertie with complete conviction, at the end. “Now we’ll have ‘The Watch by the Rhine.’”

  “No, darlings, not to-night,” said she. “I must go and dress, because Daddy and I are dining early, as he’s going to drive up to London afterwards.”

  “To get his half a million pounds?” asked Jackie.

  “Some of it, perhaps. Now, then, I shall say, ‘One, two, three,’ and see who’s in bed first.”

  They counted with her, Bertie preferring to do it in German, and a wild scamper across the nursery followed.

  But the concert apparently was not over yet, for as she went downstairs, she heard, obscuring the chorale that was rising from the lift, which was on its journey up, a trio rendering of “The Watch by the Rhine,” with curious intervals, but of unmistakable identity.... She felt that she must instantly begin to teach them “God Save the King.”

  Two days later the English ultimatum was delivered in Berlin, and the war of the world, the thought of which made Aline Gurtner so depressed, had begun. The same evening Mr. Waters had occasion to write a note to Mr. Jackson, and did not forget to date it at the top, “The Greek Calends.”

  CHAPTER IX

  AS suddenly as the first wave from the wash of a great liner breaking on the shore of a tranquil sea, a billow of utter loneliness reared itself up and thundered over Helen Grote. It came without warning, for she had not been looking seawards.

  Robin had just left her with a very troubled face, but with his determination absolutely unshaken. On the morning after the declaration of war he had come straight up to town from Cambridge, and had been given a commission in the Grenadier Guards. That had met with her entire approval, she loved to think that her son had been among the very first to answer to the call, even anticipating it. Then she had done her part, and had got a promise for him of a staff appointment, which implied useful and necessary work, would give scope to his excellent abilities, and, above all, would not plunge him after a few months of training into the fiery hell, which, having by now burned its way almost within gun-range of Paris, had at length been stayed, and the edges of it turned back upon itself. But there was other work to do in the service of the country, just as important, just as primarily essential as being plunged into that inferno of shot and shell, and this appointment, so entirely suitable to Robin’s capabilities, was his if he chose to take it: it would be offered him in answer to his grateful assent. Instead, he had given an ungrateful negative, and had left her in order to request that the offer might not be made him in any form that obliged him to accept it.

  She had looked forward to this interview with the most delighted anticipations, for she knew what Robin’s feelings with regard to his duty were. He, personally, hated and loathed the idea of war, and all that military service implied. He was a peaceful, easy-going young gentleman, fond of friends, and cricket, and Cambridge and the sunshine of the secure and pleasant life into which he had been born. But the moment the call had come, he had responded to it, he had put everything else aside, habit, and inclination and security, and had been among the earliest to present himself, never contemplating it as possible to do anything else. Surely, then, he had done his part: he had said, “Here am I, take me,” and they had taken him. Now, as if in reward of that, had come this offer, which she had procured for him.... But at the back of her delighted anticipation of telling Robin about it, there had been a doubt lurking in the dark, which she trusted would never open its baleful mouth in discourse, but sit there dumb. Instead, the doubt had instantly leaped out into the light, and instead of being dumb, had expressed itself with great lucidity through Robin’s mouth.

  “It’s awfully good of you,” he had said, “to take so much trouble, but don’t you see — I’m sure you do — that for me it would be mere shirking to take it? It’s a job which a fellow with four fingers on his hand could do. I’ve got five.”

  Even while he spoke some instinct within her cordially agreed. But she did not intend to heed that instinct: she slammed the door on it. Mightn’t a mother avert a great peril from her only son?...

  “Shirking, darling?” she said, still only faintly doubting his eventual acquiescence. “I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know much about war, any more than you do, but I’m sure it doesn’t merely consist in having men with guns and rifles. There have to be supplies, haven’t there, brought up? Armies have got to be fed; there must be lines of communication, there must be organization behind them, transport, intelligence.”

  A little soft crease appeared between Robin’s eyebrows, which she knew. It appeared there when he was proposing to be obstinate about something, and familiarly it was known as the mule-face.

  “Of course there must,” said he, just as if there wasn’t such a thing in the world as a mule.

  “Well, then, don’t make the mule-face, Robin,” she said. “Listen to what I am saying. All that organization is the brain behind the mere mechanism. When you doubt about taking this appointment, it is the same as if you were not sure that you would not sooner be a puff of steam that came from an engine, than part of the intelligence of the man who drives it.”

  For a moment the “mule-face” vanished, and Robin laughed with boyish appreciation.

 
“Oh, mother, you are clever!” he said. “That’s just like you.”

  “My dear, I’m not clever in the least: it’s the plainest common sense.”

  He shook his head.

  “No, it was clever,” he said. “I am bound to admit the excellence of your simile. But you can’t convince people by similes.”

  “You can if the simile is just,” she said, “and if people are logical.”

  He got up, the creased forehead outlining itself again, and pulled, at his sword strap and belt which were still not quite familiar, as if he was wearing some new sort of cuff or collar.

  “Well, the simile is just, and I am logical,” he said.

  “If I choose to think, I see your logic. But as well as thinking, I feel. I don’t say that I choose to feel, but I have to feel. I wonder if you understand that.”

  Suddenly she became aware of the immense change between the Robin of two months ago and the Robin who stood before her now. He was still the same Robin, too; the change, immense though it was, was not due to any new characteristic that had come to him: it was but the emergence and revelation of what she had known was there all along. The secure prosperity of his active, unreflective boyhood had but veiled it over as with thin ice: that bright, dazzling covering had caused a glitter on the surface, and you had not been able actually to see below it. But now that had melted and she could see into the deep water that lay so tranquilly beneath. Yet it was not that he had become a man: he was just as young as ever....

  “Yes, darling,” she said, “but feeling is no guide. If we all did what we felt, the world would become a madhouse. It is the control of reason that keeps it sane.”

  He looked at her with a sort of humorous interrogation.

  “I wondered if you would say something of the sort,” he said. “You don’t believe it, you know, in so far as it applies to my choice now!”

  She thought over her simile about the engine’s puff of steam and the engine’s driver. It seemed to her extremely apt.