Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

“Also this is very strange,” he said slowly. “Where is Lady Chesterford? Where is Lord Chesterford? Where are our hosts? Where is tea?”

  Princess Albert, brisk and buxom and pleasant and pleased, waddled through the house into the garden, where she met Nadine, leaving her husband to follow still wondering at the strangeness of it all. She talked voluble, effective English in a guttural manner.

  “So screaming!” she said. “Nobody here, neither dearest Dodo nor her husband to receive us, so when they come we will receive them. Where is she?”

  Nadine pointed to an aeroplane that was flying low over the house.

  “She’s there just now,” she said.

  “Flying? Albert, Dodo is flying. Is that not courageous of her?”

  “But Lady Chesterford should have been here to receive us,” said he. “It is very strange, but we will have tea. And where is my evening paper? I shall have left it in the cab, and it must be fetched. You there: I wish my evening paper.”

  The person he had thus addressed, who resembled an aged but extremely respectable butler, took off his hat, and Princess Albert instantly recognised him.

  “But it is dear Mr. Vane,” she said. “How pleasant! Is it not amusing that we should arrive when Dodo is flying and Lord Chesterford is fishing? So awkward for them, poor things, when they find we are here.”

  Prince Albert looked at him with some mistrust, which gradually cleared.

  “I remember you!” he said. “You are Lady Chesterford’s father. Let us have tea and my evening paper.”

  Once at the tea-table there was no more anxiety about Prince Albert.

  “There are sandwiches,” he said. “There is toast. There is jam. Also these are caviare and these are bacon. And there is iced coffee. I will stay here. But it is very strange that Lady Chesterford is not here. Eat those sandwiches, Sophy. And there are cakes. Why is not Lady Chesterford — —”

  “She is flying, dearest,” said she. “Dodo cannot give us tea while she is flying. Ah, and here is dearest Edith and Lord Ledgers.”

  The news of the august arrivals had spread through the house, and such guests as were in it came out on to the terrace. Dodo’s father took up an advantageous position between the Prince and the Princess, and was with difficulty persuaded to put on his hat again. He spoke with a slight Scotch accent that formed a pleasant contrast to the German inflection.

  “My daughter will be much distressed, your Highness,” he said, “that she has not been here to have the honour to receive you. And so, your Highness, the privilege falls on me, and honoured I am — —”

  “So kind of you, Mr. Vane,” said that genial woman. “And your children, Nadine? They are well. And, dearest Edith, you have been in Berlin, I hear. How was my cousin Willie?”

  Mr. Vane gave a little gasp; he prevented himself with difficulty from taking off his hat again.

  “The Emperor came to my concert there, ma’am,” said Edith.

  “He would be sure to. He is so musical: such an artist. His hymn of Aegir. You have heard his hymn? What do you think about it?”

  Edith’s honesty about music was quite incorruptible.

  “I don’t think anything at all about it,” she said. “There’s nothing to think about.”

  Princess Albert choked with laughter.

  “I shall tell Willie what you say,” she said. “So good for him. Albert dearest, Mrs. Arbuthnot says that Willie’s Aegir is nothing at all. Remind me to tell Willie that, when I write.”

  “Also, I will not any such thing remind you,” said her husband. “It is not good to anger Willie. Also it is not good to speak like that of the Emperor. When all is said and done he is the Cherman Emperor. My estate, my money, my land, they are all in Chermany. No! I will have no more iced coffee. I will have iced champagne at dinner.”

  Mr. Vane already had his hand on the jug.

  “Not just a wee thimbleful, sir?” he asked.

  “And what is a thimbleful? I do not know a thimbleful. But I will have none. I will have iced champagne at dinner, and I will have port. I will have brandy with my coffee, but that will not be iced coffee: it shall be hot coffee. And I will remind you, Sophy, not to tell the Emperor what that lady said of his music. Instead I will remind you to say that she was gratified and flattified — is it not? — that he was so leutselig as to hear her music. Also I hear a flying-machine, so perhaps now we shall learn why Lady Chesterford was not here — —”

  “Dearest, you have said that ten times,” said his wife, “and there is no good to repeat. There! The machine is coming down. We will go and meet dearest Dodo.”

  The Prince considered this proposition on its merits.

  “No: I will sit,” he said. “I will eat a cake. And I will see what is a thimbleful. Show me a thimbleful. A pretty young lady could put that in her thimble, and I will put it now in my thimble inside me.”

  Fresh hedonistic plans outlined themselves.

  “And when I have sat, I will have my dinner,” he said. “And then I will play Bridge, and then I will go to bed, and then I will snore!”

  Dodo had frankly confessed that she was a snob; otherwise her native honesty might have necessitated that confession when she found herself playing Bridge in partnership with Nadine against her princely guests. She knew well that she would never have consented to let the Prince stay with her, if he had not been what he was, nor would she have spent a couple of hours at the card-table when there were so many friends about. But she consoled herself with desultory conversation and when dummy with taking a turn or two in the next room where there was intermittent dancing going on. Just now, the Prince was dealing with extreme deliberation, and talking quite as deliberately.

  “Also that was a very clever thing you said, Lady Chesterford, when you came in from your flying,” he said. “I shall tell the Princess Sophy, Lady Chesterford said to me what was very amusing. ‘I flew to meet you,’ she said, and that is very clever. She had been flying, and also to fly to meet someone means to go in a hurry. It was a pon.”

  “Yes, dearest, get on with your dealing. You have told me twice already.”

  “And now I tell you three times, and so you will remember. Always, when I play Bridge, Lady Dodo, I play with the Princess for my partner, for if I play against her, what she wins I lose and also what I win she loses, and so it is nothing at all. Ach! I have turned up a card unto myself, and it is an ace, and I will keep it. I will not deal again when it is so nearly done.”

  “But you must deal again,” cried his partner. “It is the rule, Albert, you must keep the rule.”

  He laid down the few cards that remained to be dealt, and opened his hands over the table, so that she could not gather up those already distributed.

  “But I shall not deal again,” he said, “the deal is so near complete. And there is no rule, and my cigar is finished.”

  Dodo gave a little suppressed squeal of laughter.

  “No, go on, sir,” she said. “We don’t mind.”

  He raised his hands.

  “So there you are, Sophy!” he said. “You were wrong, and there is no rule. Do not touch the cards, while I get my fresh cigar. They are very good: I will take one to bed.”

  He slowly got up.

  “But finish your deal first,” she said. “You keep us all waiting.”

  He slowly sat down.

  “Ladies must have their own way,” he said. “But men also, and now I shall have to get up once more for my cigar.”

  “Daddy, fetch the Prince a cigar,” said Dodo.

  He looked at her, considering this.

  “But, no; I will choose my own,” he said. “I will smell each, and I will take the smelliest.”

  During this hand an unfortunate incident occurred. The Princess, seeing an ace on the table, thought it came from an opponent, and trumped it.

  “But what are you about?” he asked. “Also it was mine ace.”

  She gathered up the trick.

  “My fault, dearest,” she sai
d. “Quite my fault. Now what shall I do?”

  He laid down his hand.

  “But you have played a trump when I had played the ace,” he said.

  “Dearest, I have said it was a mistake,” said she.

  “But it is to take five shillings from my pocket, that you should trump my ace. It is ridiculous that you should do that. If you do that, you shew you cannot play cards at all. It was my ace.”

  The rubber came to an end over this hand, and Dodo swiftly added up the score.

  “Put it down, Nadine,” she said. “We shall play to-morrow. We each of us owe eighty-two shillings.”

  The Prince adopted the more cumbrous system of adding up on his fingers, half-aloud, in German, but he agreed with the total.

  “But I will be paid to-night,” he said. “When I lose, I pay, when I am losed I am paid. And it should have been more. The Princess trumped my ace.”

  The entrance of a tray of refreshments luckily distracted his mind from this tragedy, and he rose.

  “So I will eat,” he said, “and then I will be paid eighty-two marks. I should be rich if every evening I won eighty-two marks. I should give the Princess more pin-money. But I will fly to eat, Lady Chesterford. That was your joke: that I shall tell Willie, but not about his music.”

  Dodo took the Princess up to her room, followed by her maid who carried a tray with some cold soup and strawberries on it.

  “Such a pleasant evening, dear,” she said. “Ah, there is some cold soup: so good, so nourishing. This year I think we shall stop in England till the review at Kiel, when we go with Willie. So glorious! The Cherman fleet so glorious, and the English fleet so glorious. What do you say, Marie? A little box? How did the little box come here? What does it say? Vane’s patent soap-box.”

  Dodo looked at the little box.

  “Oh, that’s my father,” she said. “Really, ma’am, I’m ashamed of him. His manufacture, you know. I expect he has put one in each of our rooms.”

  “But how kind! A present for me! Soap! So convenient. So screaming! I must thank him in the morning.”

  Then came a tap from the Prince’s room next door, and he entered.

  “Also, I have found a little box,” he said. “Why is there a little iron box? I do not want a little iron box.”

  “Dearest, a present from Mr. Vane,” said his wife. “So kind! So convenient for your soap.”

  “Ach! So! Then I will take my soap also away inside the box. I will have eighty-two marks and my soap in a box. That is good for one evening. Also, I wish it was a gold box.”

  Dodo went downstairs again, and found her father in a sort of stupor of satisfaction.

  “A marvellous brain,” he said. “I consider that the Prince has a marvellous brain. Such tenacity! Such firmness of grasp! Eh, when he gets hold of an idea, he isn’t one of your fly-aways that let it go again. He nabs it.”

  His emotion gained on him, and he dropped into a broader pronunciation.

  “And the Princess!” he said. “She speaking of Wullie, just like that. ‘Wullie,’ as I might say ‘Dodo.’ Now that gives a man to think. Wullie! And him his Majesty the Emperor!”

  Dodo kissed him.

  “Daddy, dear,” she said, “I am glad you’ve had a nice evening. But you put us all out of the running, you know. Oh, and those soap-boxes, you wicked old man! But they’re delighted with them. She is going to thank you to-morrow.”

  “God! An’ there’s condescension!” said he reverently.

  CHAPTER III

  CROSS-CURRENTS

  Dodo had been obliged to go to church on Sunday morning by way of being in attendance on Princess Albert. She did not in the least mind going to church, in fact she habitually did so, and sang loudly in the choir, but she did not like going otherwise than of her own free-will, for she said that compulsion made a necessity of virtue. Church and a stroll round the hot-houses, where the Prince ate four peaches, accounted for most of the morning, but after lunch, when he retired to his room like a flushed boa-constrictor, and Jack had taken the Princess off in a motor to see the place where something happened either to Isaac Walton or Isaac Newton, Dodo felt she could begin to devote herself to some of the old friends, who had originally formed the nucleus of her party. For this purpose she pounced on the first one she came across, who happened to be Miss Grantham, and took her off to the shady and sequestered end of the terrace. Up to the present moment she had only been able to tell Grantie that she was changed; now she proceeded to enlarge on that accusation. Grantie had accepted (you might almost say she had courted) middle-age in a very decorous and becoming manner: her hair, fine as floss silk had gone perfectly white, thus softening her rather hard, handsome horse-like face, and she wore plain expensive clothes of sober colours with pearls and lace and dignity.

  “You’ve changed, Grantie,” said Dodo, “because you’ve gone on doing the same sort of thing for so long. Nothing has happened to you.”

  “Then I ought to have remained the same,” said Grantie with composure. She put up a parasol as she spoke, as if in anticipation of some sort of out-pouring.

  “That’s your mistake, darling,” said Dodo. “If you go on doing the same thing, and being the same person, you always deteriorate. I read in the paper the other day about a man whose skin became covered with a sort of moss, till he looked like a neglected tombstone. And going on in a groove has the same effect on the mind: if you don’t keep stirring it up and giving it shocks at what you do, it vegetates. Look at that moss between the paving-stones! That’s there because the gardeners haven’t poked them and brushed them. The terrace has changed because it hasn’t been sufficiently trodden on and kicked and scrubbed. It has been let alone. Do you see? Nothing has happened to you.”

  Miss Grantham certainly preserved the detached calm which had always distinguished her.

  “No, it’s true that I haven’t been kicked and scrubbed,” she said. “But all my relations have died. That’s happened to me.”

  “No; that happened to them,” said Dodo. “You want routing out. Why do you live in the country, for instance? I often think that doctors are so misunderstanding. If you feel unwell and consult a doctor, he usually tells you to leave London at once, and not spend another night there. But for most ailments it would be far more useful if he told you to leave the country at once. It’s far more dangerous to get mossy than to get over-done. You can but break down if you get over-done, but if you get mossy you break up.”

  Dodo had a mistaken notion that she was putting Grantie on her defence. It amused Grantie to keep up that delusion for the present.

  “I like a life of dignity and leisure,” she said, “though no doubt there is a great deal in what you say. I like reading and thinking, I like going to bed at eleven and looking at my pigs. I like quiet and tranquillity — —”

  “But that’s so deplorable,” said Dodo.

  “I suppose it is what you call being mossy. But I prefer it. I choose to have leisure. I choose to go to bed early and do nothing particular when I get up.”

  Dodo pointed an accusing finger at her.

  “I’ve got it,” she said. “You are like the poet who said that the world was left to darkness and to him. He liked bossing it in the darkness, and so do you. You train the village choir, Grantie, and it’s no use denying it. You preside at mother’s meetings, and you are local president of the Primrose League. You have a flower-show in what they call your grounds, just as if you were coffee, on August bank-holiday, and a school-feast. You have a Christmas-tree for the children, and send masses of holly to decorate the church. At Easter, arum lilies.”

  Miss Grantham began to show that she was not an abject criminal on her defence.

  “And those are all very excellent things to do,” she said. “I do not see that they are less useful than playing bridge all night, or standing quacking on a stair-case in a tiara, and calling it an evening party.”

  “Yes, we do quack,” conceded Dodo.

  “Or spending
five hundred pounds on a ball — —”

  “My dear, that wouldn’t do much in the way of a ball,” began Dodo.

  “Well, a thousand pounds then, if you wish to argue about irrelevancies. All the Christmas-trees and Easter decorations and school-feasts don’t cost that — —”

  “Grantie dear, how marvellously cheap,” said Dodo enthusiastically. “What a good manager you must be, and it all becomes more appalling every minute. You know that you don’t boss it in the darkness because of the good you do, and the pleasure you give, but because it gives you the impression of being busy, and makes so little trouble and expense. Now if you ran races, things in sacks, at the school-feasts yourself, and pricked your own delicious fingers with the holly for the Christmas decorations, and watered your flowers yourself for the flower-show, there might be something in it. But you don’t do anything of that kind: you only give away very cheap prizes at the school-feast, and make your gardeners cut the holly, and take the prizes yourself at the flower-show. You like bossing it, darling: that’s what’s the matter, and it’s that which has changed you. You don’t compete, except at the flower-show, and then it’s your gardeners who compete for you. You ought to run races at the school-feast, if you want to be considered a serious person.”

  “I couldn’t run,” said Miss Grantham. “If I ran, I should die. That would make a tragic chord at the school-feast, instead of a cheerful note.”

  “It would do nothing of the sort,” said Dodo. “The school-children would remember the particular school-feast when you died with wonderful excitement and pleasure. It would be stored for ever in their grateful memories. ‘That was the year,’ they would say, ‘when Miss Grantham fell dead in the sack-race, and such a lovely funeral.’ They wouldn’t think it the least tragic, bless them.”

  To Miss Grantham’s detached and philosophic mind this conclusion, when she reflected on it, seemed extremely sound. She decided to pursue that track no further, for it appeared to lead nowhere, and proceeded violently upwards in a sort of moral lift.