Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Never had the whirlpool of London life revolved more dizzily than in these days of July; never had the revolt against quiet and rational existence reached so murderous a pitch. Just now even the attraction of Saturday-till-Monday house-parties in the country had waned before the lure of London and the restaurant-life; at the most you would see thirty or forty people in your week-end at a country-house, so, if a breath of fresh air seemed desirable before Monday came round again, what was easier than to motor down to Thames-side after lunch on Sunday, spend the afternoon in Boulter’s lock, dine and get back to town late that night, or, if some peculiar attraction beckoned, hurry off again after an early breakfast on Monday morning? The twenty-four hours of day and night must be squeezed of their last drop of possibilities; they must be drunk to the dregs and the cup be filled again. The round of hours passed like the last few minutes in some casino before closing-time; there was such a little time left before London was sheeted and silent, abandoned to care-takers and mournful cats. In a few weeks now the squares would be littered with the first fallen leaves, and the windows darkened. Till then leisure and sobriety of living were the two prime enemies of existence.

  “We’re all mad,” said Dodo breathlessly as this varied interchange of greetings went on. “Why does it please everybody to see other people like this, where you can’t talk to them, and only scream a word in greeting? Personally I love it, but I don’t know why. Why don’t we have roast beef and Yorkshire pudding at home, and read a book afterwards or talk to a friend instead of grinning at a hundred? Oh, look, Jumbo! Vanessa hasn’t got a stitch on except panther skins and pearls and mottled stockings to match. How bad for David. David, darling, eat your ice. Here she comes! Vanessa, dear, how perfectly lovely you look, and I hear you’re going to dance at Caithness House on Tuesday. Of course I shall come. They didn’t allow your great Dane in the restaurant? What hopeless management, but perhaps you’ll find he has eaten the porter when you go out. Still, you know, if we all brought great Danes, there might be rather a scrap. Hugo! I never saw anything so chic as having a red despatch-box brought you by a detective in plain clothes, in the middle of lunch. You frowned too beautifully when you opened it, and are hurrying out now exactly as if a European complication was imminent. I believe you’ve been practising that all morning instead of going to church. Mind you keep up your responsible air till the very last moment, and then you can relax and go to sleep when you get back to the Foreign Office. Darling Lady Alice, what delicious cameos! I believe you stole them; there aren’t any cameos like those outside the British Museum. Yes, of course you’re coming to me to-morrow night. I think I must have sent you two invitations, and so they probably cancelled each other like negatives. We shall finish up with eggs and bacon on Tuesday morning, and I’m sure you’ll look much fresher than any of us. Oh, there’s the Prime Minister talking to Hugo. They’re doing it on purpose so as to make us think that something terrific has happened. I like Prime Ministers to be histrionic. He’s taking something out of his pocket. It’s only a cigar; I hoped it would be an ultimatum. David, what a day we’re having!”

  It was not till half-past three that Dodo remembered that the sea-lions were fed at four, and the land-lions half an hour later, and got up.

  “We mustn’t miss it,” she said. “I’ve sworn an oath unto David — oh, that’s profane. My dear, the keeper throws large dead fish into the air and the sea-lions catch them. Thank God, I’m not a sea-lion. I couldn’t possibly eat raw fishes, heads and tails and bones and skins. And then there’s the monkey-eating eagle, which I suppose they feed with monkeys. Once when I was looking at it with Hugo who is so like a small grey ape, the monkey-eating eagle brightened up like anything when it saw him. I took Hugo away, as the bars didn’t seem very strong. Bless you, Jumbo, good-bye. Oh, may I take your motor just as far as Regent’s Park and keep it for an hour? Then you can get a taxi and come and have tea with us at home, and reclaim it. And I haven’t got any money; give me a sovereign, please, Lord Cookham, because the more you give me, the more chance there is of my remembering to repay you. How mean you were to give me five pounds at St. Paul’s for the offertory, and then contribute half-a-crown yourself. I saw you. Look, there’s Prince Albert coming; let’s go away at once, David, before he sees us.”

  Dodo dodged behind a tall waiter, whom she used as cover to effect an unobserved exit, while the Prince made his ponderous way to the table where she had been.

  “I saw here Lady Dodo,” he said to Lord Cookham, “and also now I do not see her. And I wished to see her, for she has invited me to her dance, but not to her dinner. I would be more pleased to go to her dinner and not to her dance than to her dance and not her dinner. But now she is not here, and I cannot tell her so. But soon I will telephone to her.”

  His large red face assumed an expression of infinite cunning, and he closed one eye.

  “I am here en garçon,” he said. “I have given the Princess the slip. She said ‘I will go to church, and you will come with me to church,’ and I said ‘Also I will not go to church,’ and while she was at church, I give her the slip. Ha!”

  He lumbered out into the hall, and by way of amusing himself en garçon sat down close to the band, and fell fast asleep.

  David’s happy day terminated after tea, and when Jumbo went off in his recovered car about seven, Dodo found that she had still half an hour to spare before she need dress for dinner. With an impulse very unusual with her, she lay down on her sofa, and determined to have a nap rather than busy herself otherwise. But before she had done more than arrive at this conclusion, Jack came in.

  “You and David had a good time?” he asked.

  “Lovely! Church, bus, Carlton lunch, Zoo. Any news?”

  Jack sat down on the edge of her sofa.

  “I think there’s going to be,” he said. “Do you remember the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand at Serajevo?”

  “Yes, vaguely.”

  “Well, Austria has sent an ultimatum to Servia about it,” he said, “which Servia cannot possibly accept. Hugo told me. I met him this afternoon going back to the Foreign Office.”

  “With a red despatch-box which was brought to him at the Carlton,” said Dodo. “How small the world is.”

  “Big enough. There’s a meeting of the Cabinet to-morrow morning.”

  “Oh, then they’ll have a nice long talk and settle it all,” said Dodo optimistically.

  CHAPTER VI

  A WATERLOO BALL

  On this Sunday evening, the day before her ball, Dodo had been engaged to dine at the German Embassy, but just as she was on her way upstairs to dress, a message had come, putting off the dinner owing to the Ambassador’s sudden indisposition. Jack was dining elsewhere, so Dodo, not at all ill-pleased to have an evening at home, secured Edith Arbuthnot to keep her company. She had caught Edith on her return from her golf at Mid-Surrey, and she soon arrived in large boots with three golf-balls and a packet of peppermint bull’s-eyes in her pocket, and an amazing appetite. As Dodo had not waited to hear her Mass at St. Paul’s that morning, Edith consoled her after dinner by playing the greater part of it on the piano, singing solo passages in a rich hoarse voice that ranged from treble to baritone, with a bull’s-eye tucked away in her cheek where it looked like some enormous abscess on a tooth. When no solo was going on she imitated the sounds of violin and bassoon and ‘cello with great fidelity, and when it was over she arranged round her cigarettes, bull’s-eyes and a mug of beer, put her feet up on a chair of Genoese brocade and lamented the frivolous complications of life. She took as her text the insane multiplicity of balls; since the beginning of June they had been like the stars on a clear night for multitude, and every evening from Monday till Friday three or four had bespangled the firmament. In spite of her general modernity, Edith was laudably Victorian in regard to her maternal duties, and considered it incumbent on her to chaperone her daughter wherever she went. As Madge was a firm, tireless girl, who got no more fatigued with revolving than d
oes the earth, and as Edith wanted to marry her off wisely and well as soon as possible, she had of late seen as many dawns as the driver of a night-express.

  “The whole thing is insane,” she said. “We take a girl to balls every night in order that as many young men as possible may see her and give her lobster-salad and put their arms round her waist in the hopes that one of them may want to marry her and take her away from her mother.”

  “You leave out the dancing,” interrupted Dodo. “Dancing takes place at balls.”

  “To a small extent, but the other is the real reason of them. Besides you can’t call it dancing when everybody merely strolls backwards and forwards and yawns. It would be far more sensible to have a well-conducted marriage-market at the Albert Hall, under the supervision of a bishop and a countess of unimpeachable morals. The girls would sit in rows mending socks and making puddings, with tickets round their necks shewing what they asked and offered by way of marriage settlements, also their age and a medical certificate as to their general health and temper. Then the boys would go round and each would taste their puddings and see how they sewed and have a little conversation, and look at the ticket and find out if Miss Anna Maria was within his means. Those are the qualities that really make for happy marriages, pleasant talk and cooking and needlework. The market would be open from ten to one every day except perhaps Saturday. Instead of which,” concluded Edith indignantly, “I have to sit up till dawn every night with a host of weary hags, who are all longing to take off their tiaras and their hair, and tumble into bed.”

  “Have a chaperone-strike instead,” said Dodo. “You’ll never get boys to go to the Albert Hall in the morning. Besides, no one ever got engaged in cold blood. But I really should recommend a chaperone-strike. It isn’t as if chaperones were the smallest good; no girl who wants to flirt is the least incommoded by her chaperone, nor does the chaperone take her away till she feels inclined to go. Get up an influential committee, and arrange a procession to Hyde Park, with banners embroidered with ‘We won’t go to more than five balls a week’ and ‘Shorter night-shifts for mothers.’ ‘We will go home before morning.’ I’ll join that, for I do the work of half a dozen mothers who haven’t so fine a sense of duty as you. Or why shouldn’t fathers take their turn and chaperone boys instead? Girls don’t want any chaperoning nowadays, boys are much more defenceless. In a few years chaperones will be as extinct as — as Dodos.”

  Edith refreshed herself in various ways, finishing up with a crashing peppermint.

  “I shall revolt next year,” she said, “for I won’t go through another season like this. Dodo, does it ever strike you that we’re all mad this year? We’re behaving as we behave when the ice is breaking up, and we will have one minute more skating. Thank goodness your ball to-morrow is the last, and there positively isn’t another one the same night. There were to have been two so I thought I should have had to take Madge to three, but they have both been cancelled. I suppose it was found that everyone would stop all night at yours.”

  “I hope so,” said Dodo greedily. “It’s delicious to make other competitors scratch on your reputation.”

  Edith pointed an accusing finger at her.

  “Now you’ve said competitors,” she announced. “What’s the competition? What’s this insane will-o’-the-wisp that’s being hunted?”

  Dodo considered this direct and simple question.

  “Oh, it’s an art,” she said. “It’s a competition to see who can give most pleasure to the greatest number of people. That sounds as if it were something to do with a fine moral quality, but I don’t claim that for it. It’s partly a competition in success too, and Grantie, the sour old angel, would say that it is a competition in imbecile expenditure, and just for two minutes I should agree with her.”

  Dodo gave a great sigh, and shifted the subject of the conversation a little.

  “And it concerns burning candles at both ends and in the middle,” she said, “and seeing how many candles you can keep alight. It’s squeezing things in, and don’t you know what a joy that always is, even when it concerns nothing more than packing a bag and squeezing in something extra which your maid says won’t go in anyhow, my lady?”

  “My maid never says that,” remarked Edith. “I’m a plain ma’am.”

  “The principle is the same, darling, however plain you are. Life in London is like that. We are all trying to squeeze something else into it, and to extract the last drop of what life has to give. You are just the same, with your bull’s-eyes and your beer and your golfing-boots and your cigarettes. You’re making the most of it, too. What will our luggage look like when it comes to be unpacked at the other end?”

  “I don’t care what mine looks like,” said Edith. “I only do things because I think it’s right for me to do them.”

  “My dear, how noble! But isn’t it faintly possible that you may be mistaken?” asked Dodo. “You seem to think it right to cover that chair with large flakes of mud from your boots, but I’m not sure that it is. Oh, my dear, don’t move your feet; I only took that as the first instance that occurred to me. Naturally, we don’t deliberately do what we believe to be wrong, but then that’s because we none of us ever stop to consider whether it is. When we want a thing we go and take it, and only wonder afterwards whether we should have done so.”

  “If you wonder afterwards whether you should have done anything,” said Edith austerely, “it means that you shouldn’t.”

  “Oh, I don’t agree. It probably means that you are not certain that you wouldn’t have enjoyed yourself more wanting it, than getting it. Nothing is really as nice when you have got it — I’m talking of small things, of course — as you thought it was going to be. Acquisition always brings a certain disillusionment, or if not quite that, you very soon get used to what you have got.”

  Again Edith pointed an accusing finger at her.

  “That’s the worst of you,” she said. “You have a fatal facility. You have always got what you meant to get. You’ve never had to struggle. Probably that means that you have never had high enough aims. What will the world say about you in forty years?”

  “Darling, it may say exactly what it pleases. If in forty years’ time there is anybody left who remembers me at all, and he tells the truth, he will say that I enjoyed myself quite enormously. But why be posthumous? Have another peppermint and tell me about your golf.”

  Edith did not have any more peppermints, so she took a cigarette instead.

  “I have a feeling that we are all going to be posthumous with regard to our present lives long before we are dead,” she remarked. “We can’t go on like this.”

  “I don’t see the slightest reason for not doing so,” said Dodo. “I remember we talked about it one night at Winston when you fished in my tea-gown.”

  “I know, and the feeling has been growing on me ever since. There have been a lot of straws lately shewing the set of the tide.”

  “Which is just what straws don’t do,” said Dodo. “Straws float on the surface, and move about with any tiny puff of air. Anyhow, what straws do you mean? Produce your straws.”

  She paused a moment.

  “I wonder if I can produce some for you,” she said. “As you know, I was to have dined with the Germans to-night and was put off. Is that a straw? Then, again, Jack told me something this evening about an Austrian ultimatum to Servia. Do those shew the tide you speak of?”

  “You know it yourself,” said Edith. “We’re on the brink of the stupendous catastrophe, and we’re quite unprepared, and we won’t attend even now. We shall be swept off the face of the earth, and if I could buy the British Empire to-day for five shillings I wouldn’t pay it.”

  Dodo got up.

  “Darling, I seem to feel that you lost your match at golf this afternoon,” she said. “You are always severe and posthumous and pessimistic if that happens. Didn’t you lose, now?”

  “It happens that I did, but that’s got nothing to do with it.”

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nbsp; “You might just as well say that if you hit me hard in the face,” said Dodo, “and I fell down, my falling down would have nothing to do with your hitting me.”

  “And you might just as well say that your dinner was put off this evening because the Ambassador really was ill,” retorted Edith.

  Dodo woke next morning to a pleasant sense of a multiplicity of affairs that demanded her attention. There was a busy noise of hammering in the garden outside her window, for though she was the happy possessor of one of the largest ballrooms in London, the list of acceptances to her ball that night had furnished so unusual a percentage of her invitations, that it had been necessary to put an immense marquee against the end of the ballroom fitted with a swinging floor to accommodate her guests. The big windows opening to the ground had been removed altogether, and there would be plenty of rhythmical noise for everybody. At the other end of the ballroom was a raised dais with seats for the mighty, which had to have a fresh length put on to it, so numerous had the mighty become. Then the tables for the dinner that preceded the ball must be re-arranged altogether, since Prince Albert, whom Dodo had not meant to ask to dine at all, had cadged so violently on the telephone through his equerry on Sunday afternoon for an invitation, that Dodo had felt obliged to ask him and his wife. But when flushed with this success he had begun to ask whether there would be bisque soup, as he had so well remembered it at Winston, Dodo had replied icily that he would get what was given him.