Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  The whole speech was an utter surprise to her, and as she listened, her own “few words” completely deserted her. When nobody laughed at her, though they ridiculed everyone else, she had but determined to do better; now it appeared that she had done, in their opinion, so very much better than she had any idea of. And when, at the end of the cheering, she rose, she felt no touch whatever of the sentimentality which is supposed to choke a speaker’s voice when he returns thanks for handsome remarks. She felt merely grateful, grateful and surprised not in the region of the cheap emotions, but in her heart. They were pleased with her, and she loved her reward. She had no more inclination to choke and falter than has the man who has lain awake through a night of pain the desire to sob at the rising of the sun.

  The supper was a swift affair, for the matron had ordained that everybody must go straight to bed the moment that midnight struck, and the laughter and the tramp of feet on the oak staircase were silent again a quarter of an hour afterwards. Helen had often passed through the hall, where now she stood after bidding the men good-night, when the house was still, feeling unutterably lonely. To-night she did not feel that.

  She passed through the dining-room where the entertainment had taken place on her way to her room. There were letters for her, but none from Robin, and the rest would wait until the morning. At this moment he and the men who had tramped and laughed their way to bed were the only people who had any significance for her. She warmed her heart at that dear firelight.

  CHAPTER XIII

  JANUARY was a very busy month in the hospital at Grote; the accommodation had been increased, and now it comprised a hundred and twenty beds. Early in the month a convoy had come with many very serious eases among its numbers, and during the next fortnight there were three deaths, the first that had yet occurred. Helen had waves of abject misery over these; she could not help wondering if something more might have been done to save the men, and Miss Hawker spoke to her, so she thought, rather brutally on the subject, in connection with certain supplies, which she had undertaken and forgotten to order, running short.

  “If the work is too heavy for you,” she had said, “you had better ask for someone to help you. We can’t afford to have mistakes of that sort happen. Supposing it had been some ether you had forgotten about, and we had run short of anaesthetics?”

  This was all quite well deserved, and Helen did not resent it.

  “I know; I am very sorry,” she said. “But I have been worrying very much and that made me forget. It shan’t happen again.”

  “Yes; I saw that,” said Miss Hawker. “You were worrying over those men who have slipped through our fingers. There’s nothing so useless as that. You’ve got to do your best, and when you’ve done that, you mustn’t let yourself get soft. You’ve got to think; it’s not your business to feel, if your feeling does no good.”

  Helen made a great effort with herself; it cost her the jettisoning of all her pride to make the suggestion that she now offered.

  “You must let me know if you think I’m not up to the work,” she said, “and get someone else.”

  Miss Hawker, who was already half-way to the door, paused a moment.

  “And a pretty rebellion we should have in the wards,” she remarked. “And have you heard from your son lately?”

  “Yes, I heard this morning,” said Helen. “He’s very well.”

  “So there is something left to be thankful for,” said Miss Hawker, leaving the room.

  Miss Hawker, Helen thought, was like some mental tonic, bitter and rasping to the taste, but internally invigorating.... Then the pendulum swung back again in the hospital, and a couple more cases that hung to life by a mere thread, strengthened their hold, and passed out of danger. Though it was not permissible to feel dejection when things went badly, it was not only permissible but obligatory to be elated when things went unexpectedly well, and while Robin was safe, and doctors were satisfied with temperature charts, all that was of prime importance in life, apart from the existence of the war at all, must be accepted thankfully as outweighing the rest.

  But as the days of January went on, there were events and tendencies which, though they belonged to the class of secondary importance, were intensely pleasing to her. By far the best of these was a certain change that was taking place in her relations with her husband. For years their intimate life had lain so far apart, that they were no more than ships voyaging distantly at sea, and from time to time exchanging a perfectly friendly signal with each other; but of late the interval between them seemed to have sensibly diminished. It was as if Robin had both of them singly in tow, and, in consequence, they were rapidly approaching each other in his wake. His father, no less than she, had always been devoted to the boy, and though, when Robin was secure at home or at Cambridge, this tie failed to bring them together, now, when he was imperilled in the trenches, the steady pull of their love for him resulted in their drawing nearer to each other. To them both Robin’s safety, in their personal life, took precedence of all other desires and aims; it formed a living connection between them.

  And as when from opposite sides of some southern pergola two sprays of vine touch and are entangled, they put forth tendrils that grope for each other, seeking interlacement, so between Helen and her husband now, when once the contact was made, it was continually being strengthened by sensitive feelers put forward shyly enough at first, which grew into anchors and interlockings of living tissue. It was, for instance, a very tentative touch, ready to be withdrawn, that made him suggest, a month ago, that he should come down to Grote to spend a week-end there, if he would not be a burden on her time and the arrangements of the hospital, but after that his visits grew frequent.

  January turned sleepily over in its winter’s sleep and became February, who dreamed about spring. The moss was vividly green now below the trees, and the sides of the path down to the river were white with snowdrops. Her husband had been unable to get down for the next week-end, but looked forward to an early visit, and for Helen the days passed swiftly in the monotony of a routine that only varied in details. The main end in view was always the same, namely, that the men should move on from the hospital wards into the convalescent wards, and from lying in the loggia should be promoted to the use of their own powers of locomotion again.

  No very serious fresh cases had been brought in, and in this mild February air, soft and enervating to the hardy, but stimulating and life-giving to the weak, there was a general all-round rise in the well-being of the wards. Bad cases improved rapidly, slight cases got well, and for the present there was no influx of the severely wounded. She never could quite attain to the professional attitude of Miss Hawker, who one day when a case of pneumonia, following on a slight wound, exhibited very marked improvement, said, “The case presents no further interest.” But she knew that somewhere, down below, there was no tenderer heart than Miss Hawker’s. Her efficiency, as matron, was based on her having it in control. Sometimes Helen wished that her own heart was better drilled; sometimes she wanted to give it all the pangs of which it was capable. Experience was dearly bought, if you had to pay for it with even a superficial callousness. And then again she knew she was wrong. She did not really want Mr. Brinton to grow dim-eyed — as Aline would certainly have done — because an unconscious subject for his skill must lose a leg. Emotion must never impede efficiency, as long as there was anything practical to be done; you had to control such emotions as pity and vague compassion. You could show your compassion best by doing your work well.

  There came a morning with a throb of excitement in it. Jaye was promoted to the locomotive dignity of a bath-chair, to be pulled round the lawn by an orderly, and was allowed a half-hour on the terrace. Helen, for whom Jaye still “had a fancy,” accompanied this progress, and Jaye had questions of weight to communicate. The one that really mattered was whether it was reasonable of him to expect that his girl should feel for him now what she undoubtedly felt before when he had two legs instead of one. Apparently t
here was no question as to the sincerity of her affection when the boy was still a biped. Helen had heard something of that during his convalescence, and she knew that if she had been Jaye’s girl, she would have married him — even at the early age of nineteen, which was the case with both of them — before he had gone out to France. But in the present circumstances, was it fair of Jaye to expect constancy?

  “It’s like this, sister,” he said. “If you arsk me if I would marry my girl, she having lost a leg, and me not, well, I should say I must think about it. I dessay I shouldn’t — I don’t see as you could blame me. Now, here am I, same as what we supposed she was, and what am I to expect of her?”

  The orderly gave a suppressed giggle and said, “Gawd!”

  “Don’t you be interrupting,” said Jaye, who was waxing fat like Jeshurun, and would willingly kick with his one leg. “You don’t understand nothing with your four arms and legs.”

  Helen thought over rapidly what she knew of Jaye, for that was the first part of the problem. She had thought him a simple quiet boy when he first came, then a very nervous boy, when the time for his operation approached, then an almost angelic boy, because he had wanted her to be with him during it. (The want, it must be understood, was angelic, the demand the most trying that had ever been made of her.) Since then, as his convalescence restored him, he had ceased to be simple and quiet, and had become a bumptious life and soul of the ward, who, Miss Hawker said, should be sternly suppressed. And yet, all the time, in all his phases, he was only being a boy....

  That was only the first part of the problem: the second part was even more vital to the correct solution, but it implied a knowledge of the character of Jaye’s girl, and Helen at present had not the privilege of her acquaintanceship.

  “You must get your girl to come down and see you here, Jaye,” she said. “I don’t know what she’s like. She may be so fond of you that she doesn’t care a bit about your leg. She may not care two straws how many legs you have. But I think I should give her a chance, if I were you, instead of taking it for granted, quite straight off, that she can’t care for you any more.”

  Jaye was suddenly seized with diffidence.

  “Gawd! Fancy me talking to a real lady about my girl and me!” he said. “Seems cheek, doesn’t it?”

  “Not a bit. We’ll have her down some afternoon,” said Helen. “Where does she live?”

  “Isle o’ Man,” said Jaye uncompromisingly. “She had a situation in Hammersmith when we first met, and it was on a Bank Holiday it was, and we fair clutched each other, first time of meeting, in one of them hurly-go-rounds. Or was it a cock-shy at cocoa-nuts? I couldn’t say.”

  And this was the quiet boy, reduced to apathy by pain and injury, now blossoming out again into his ordinary self. How many identities, how many characters, seemingly complete in themselves, she asked herself, went to make up one quite ordinary human being? And did she not supply, in herself, another case in point? So few months ago she had been the engrossed pilot in extravagant and rudderless voyagings: now, anchored in the same waters, she was equally engrossed in the not very promising love-affairs of a one-legged boy, with whom she had nothing in common except a bond of humanity, and the bond of the cause in which he had suffered. So long as all was well with Robin, she could not better spend priceless irrecoverable time than in participating in Jaye’s love-affairs.

  “Isle o’ Man,” repeated Jaye again. “Her mother drank herself to death, and, like a good girl, she went back to see after her father. That was before I had my little accident.”

  Helen rapidly reviewed those premises. There was really a great deal to be said in defence of the girl if she decided to throw Jaye over. If she had been just attracted by this brilliant half-back in League matches, with his speed and his swiftness, and his certainty for some years to come of a good income, it would be requiring a heroism on her part to stick to a bargain which had lost its allurement. And yet you found heroisms where you would never look for them: her going back to the Isle of Man showed a capacity for devotion. Again, the real Jaye, something she had found in him, independent of his right leg, might have drawn her. Certainly, she must come down and see Jaye, but Helen wished that her family did not live quite so far away. Or would it be better for Jaye to go up there, when he had got his new leg and a facility in its use....

  She was debating this when she saw her husband approaching them across the grass. He had not let her know that he was coming to-day, though she had been expecting to hear from him, by any post, that he could get down for a day and a night. The posts, too, were very irregular, he might easily have written, and the letter not yet arrived. But even as this went through her mind, and seemed all reasonable enough, she knew that she was holding at arm’s length a fear that threatened to spring upon her.

  “We must talk about it again, Jaye,” she said, “for I must leave you now, as I see Lord Grote is coming to look for me. But I like her for having gone to the Isle of Man to see after her father.”

  She left him with a smile and a nod, and struck on to the grass to meet her husband.

  “I did not expect you,” she said, as they came within speaking distance, “but it is quite delightful to see you. Did you write or telegraph to say that you were coming? I have not received anything.”

  “No, my dear,” said he. “I didn’t write or telegraph. I — I just came.”

  She faced him quite quietly, knowing already that she knew. There was no tremor in her voice when she spoke.

  “It’s about Robin, then,” she said. “Tell me: what about Robin?”

  He took both her hands in his, and she spoke again: “Robin has been killed,” she said.

  “Yes, Helen,” said he.

  They stood there looking at each other, with hands still clasped, and the steadfast love which had illuminated the sky above her came swiftly down the stairs of heaven and shone on them. And her lips smiled, and the light of that love was in her eyes as she kissed him.

  “Robin gave himself,” she said. “We have to give him, too.”

  “Can you do that, Helen?” he asked. “I can’t.”

  “We must learn to,” said site.

  He was silent a moment.

  “There arc no details yet,” he said. “Just the bare news was sent me. I thought I would tell you myself.”

  “That was good of you,” she said. “I always dreaded a telegram, but I didn’t dread you.”

  For that moment they came together more closely than their love of Robin had ever yet brought them.... More clearly than anything, more clearly even than the memory of her last day with him, she remembered now, how twenty years ago she stood with her husband here, and told him that she was with child. And through the estrangements, the unfaithfulness, and all the sequel of the marriage that had so soon been void of honour and of love, there shone, as through rent mists, the gold of a gathered harvest.

  Together thus they walked back to the house. So short a time had elapsed since she left Jaye’s bath-chair, that it had still not arrived at the end of the terrace. The post had come in, and there was a pile of letters for her in the hall. The topmost of them was unstamped and addressed in pencil. “From Robin,” she said, and she took it up as she would have taken up some sacred thing....

  She was alone again that evening, for her husband had to get back to town, sitting in the white room where she had seen the last of Robin, and the inevitable reaction from that first splendid spring of her spirit to accept what had happened, and not to grudge the gift he had made of himself, came upon her like some wind that withers.

  Robin was dead, and she knew now that it was his unconscious inspiration entirely that had caused her to devote herself to the hospital which, together with the thought of him, had filled her life for the last months with the zest of unselfish and loving living. Apart from that, the only other cause of her taking it up was her inability to divert herself with her old amusements.

  Now the light that had inspired her had gone, and
her life here, which, when the light shone on it had seemed so real and solid, was nothing more than a shell of ash ready to crumble at a touch. Probably, for mere decency’s sake, she would continue at her work, especially since she had already proved her inability to amuse herself otherwise; but for the future it would be but a filling of the hours that passed more quickly if she was busy. She thought of the New Year’s party: she thought of Jaye: she thought of the incessant works and rewards that filled her day; but in this black flood of reaction that passed over her they signified no more than a flock of dispersed dreams.

  Long ago she had foreseen that Robin’s death would leave her with nothing that was worth the trouble of living for, and her foresight was fulfilled. But it had underestimated the quality of the loneliness, the outer darkness of it. Perhaps she was vaguely, carelessly glad that she had been of some use to Jaye, that she had comforted her husband to-day with the high courage that had now utterly evaporated, leaving only the black sediment of despair; but she was glad only with such a remembrance as she might have had in having assisted a fly to escape from the web of a spider. It was easy to help it: it meant nothing. For her it was midnight with no star, nor any dawn to follow: a timeless, eternal midnight. In the course of years the moment would come that she would cease to be conscious of the midnight, and that was all she could look forward to.