Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  It had been arranged by the military authorities that the private hospitals should first be evacuated now that the stream of wounded no longer poured into England from across the Channel, and gradually as the patients at Winston were discharged, the wards began to empty. Dodo resorted to all possible means to keep her hospital full. She besieged the War Office with such importunity that, had she been a widow, she must surely have had her request granted her; she threatened, flattered, and complained about the management of the Red Cross, she even considered the possibility of suborning an engine-driver of a Red Cross train going to York or some northern depôt, to bring his waggons to a standstill at the station for Winston, and then go on strike. Thus the wounded must be conveyed somewhere, and as the train could not proceed, it would be necessary to bring them to Winston, and had strikes then been as popular as they soon became, this brilliant plan might possibly have succeeded. As it was, she saw her beloved establishment growing emptier and emptier every week; there were no more operations to be performed, so the surgeon went back to his practice in Harley Street; all but one of the staff of nurses departed to get married or take up the normal threads of life again, stretchers stood in disconsolate heaps in the passages, bedding and bedsteads, drugget, tables and bath-chairs were put into lots for sale, the big ward was closed, and the beflagged pins so gleefully stuck into the map of France fell out one by one on to the floor, and were swept up by the housemaid. Soon there were but half a dozen men left in the whole place and these, like the little nigger-boys, vanished one by one. The gramophones grew mute, the smell of Virginian tobacco grew faint, nobody banged doors any more or played “There’s a Little Grey Home in the West” on the cracked piano, hour by hour with one finger and a wrong note coming after a pause always in precisely the same place. Finally one man alone remained, who had missed his train and had to stop till the next morning. He tried that evening with very small success to teach Dodo a game of cards called “Snick,” and she with even less success tried to entertain him with agreeable conversation. Under this enchantment he grew ever more morose, and when she could think of nothing more to say, a long silence fell, which was broken by his remarking, “Gawd, this place gives a man the hump!”... With that heartfelt ejaculation he shuffled up to bed, and was gone next morning before Dodo came down. The hospital fizzled out, like an oil-less lamp; it ceased to flame, the wick smouldered a little and then expired.

  Dodo had, rather mistakenly, arranged to remain here for a couple of days after everyone had gone, in order to taste the sweets of leisure in a place where she had been so absorbingly occupied, for she hoped that this would draw the fullest flavour out of the sense of having nothing to do. From habit she awoke early, and tried to cajole herself into imagining how delicious it was to stop in bed, instead of getting up and going down to her business-room. It was a dark, chilly morning, and she heard the sleet tattoo on her window-panes; how cold the business-room would be, and how warm she was below her quilt. Instead of arising and shivering, she would doze again, and tell her maid to light a fire in her bedroom before she got up. Then, instead of dozing, she made lazy plans for the day; after breakfast she would read the paper, and then, not stirring from the fireside, would go on with that extremely amusing French book which made Jack say “Pish!” and throw it into the waste-paper basket, from which Dodo had rescued it. After lunch, fine or not, she would go for a ride, and stop out just as long as she chose, instead of hurrying back to duties that no longer existed, and she would have tea in her bathroom, and lie there hotly soaking, and she would go to sleep before dinner, and have a quail and some caviare and a hot-house peach and half a bottle of champagne and then she would finish her book, go to bed early and go on reading when she got there. There was nobody except herself to please, and nothing to do except exactly that which she chose to do. To-morrow morning Jack arrived, and the day after they would go up to town together. Chesterford House had also been evacuated a week ago and by this it should have resumed its usual appointments.

  Dodo (though with slight internal misgivings) was so anxious to begin enjoying herself by doing nothing at all that she rang for her maid and got up. It was a perfect day for thinking how comfortable it was by the fire, for outside the wind screamed and scolded, and the sleet had turned to snow. She was rather glad to find that there was nothing of the smallest interest in the paper, for that made it more imperative to throw it away, put her feet on the fender and smoke one cigarette after another. “Too heavenly,” she thought to herself. “I could sit and toast myself for days and days. I haven’t got to give out bandages, nobody is going to have an operation, I haven’t got any letters to write, and if I had I shouldn’t write them. How wise I was to stop here and be lazy. The luxury of it!”

  The house was perfectly quiet; how often she had longed for an hour’s quiet during these last years, for the gramophone to be mute, and the piano to be silent, for the cessation of steps and whistling everlastingly passing down the corridor outside her door! Now she had got it, and she tried hard to appreciate it. No one could possibly come to interrupt her, no one wanted her, she had leisure to amuse herself and taste the joys of a complete holiday. So she made up the fire and got her French book which she need not begin reading till she felt disposed. But she opened it, skimmed a page or two, and thought that Jack was really rather prudish. She would have argued with him about it if he had been here. Then the clock on her mantelpiece struck the hour, which she was surprised to find was only eleven, when she had imagined it was twelve. All the better; there was an extra hour of doing nothing.

  The snow had ceased, and a patch of pale sunlight brightening the floor brought her to the window. There had been no heavy fall, but it still lay smooth and white on the broad gravel path and the lawn, for no footsteps that morning had trodden it. Just about a year ago there had been a similar fall, and by the middle of the morning the path had been swept clear, and the lawn had supplied sufficient material for the erection of a snow figure, which had been begun as a man, but had been transformed into a lady since skirts were more solid and easier of execution than legs. But she was not a satisfactory lady, and so she was snow-balled into even a more complete shapelessness.... Below the window this morning the warmth of the sun on the house had already melted the thin covering on the flower-beds, and snowdrops and aconites made a brave heralding of spring. But there was no object now in going out and picking them and making them into bedside posies. Dodo did not in the least want any snowdrops for herself; they seemed to her a depressed, frightened kind of flower that wished it had not blossomed at all. Then suddenly with an immense feeling of relief it occurred to her that she had not tidied up the business-room; there were all sorts of files and bills and papers, connected with the work of these last four years, to be arranged and put away, and delighted at having found something to do she spent a strenuous day, not stirring out of doors and sitting up into the small hours of next morning. That day there was the auction in the house of hospital furniture, and Dodo from pure sentimentality bought a gramophone, an iron bedstead with bedding complete, a bath-chair and five packets of temperature charts.

  “Darling, they’ll be so useful,” she explained to Jack, who arrived in the afternoon. “We’re growing old, you see, and either you or I, probably you, will be crippled with arthritis before many years are over, and then think how convenient to have a beautiful bath-chair all ready, without having to order it and wait for it to come. Very likely there would be a railway strike at the time, and then you wouldn’t get it for weeks and weeks, and would have to remain planted on the terrace, if you could get as far, instead of having the most delicious pushes — I suppose you call it going for a push, don’t you? — all over the woods. And the cheapness of it! Why, a new one would cost double what I paid for it, and it’s quite as good as new, if not better.”

  “I see. That was very thoughtful of you,” said he. “But why all those temperature charts! There appear to be five packets of twenty.”

&nbs
p; Dodo felt perfectly able to account for the temperature charts.

  “My dear, supposing the influenza came again this spring as it did last year,” she said. “It often attacks an entire household. Suppose we’ve got a party here, suppose there are twenty people in the house; that will mean at least fifteen valets and maids as well and that makes thirty-five. Then there are all our own servants. Bang comes the ‘flu, and without a moment’s delay everybody’s temperature chart is hanging up above his bed. Now I come to think of it, I wish I had bought more. Two such visitations will use them all up. It was penny-wise, pound-foolish not to have taken the opportunity of getting them cheap.”

  “You certainly should have bought more,” said Jack. “These will be used up in no time. I didn’t know you kept charts for people who had influenza, but — —”

  “But you know now. Don’t apologise,” said she. “Oh, my dear, I’m so glad to see you. I thought I should like being alone here with nothing whatever to do, but it was hellish. And that beautiful iron bed. Wasn’t it a good thing I bought that?”

  “I’m sure it was,” said he. “Tell me why!”

  Dodo raised her eyebrows in commiserating surprise.

  “How often has it happened that somebody has proposed himself and I’ve had to telegraph, ‘So sorry but not another bed in the house’? Now that will never happen again, for there it is!”

  “There usually was another bed in the house,” remarked Jack.

  “Then with this that will make two,” said Dodo brilliantly. “We can always have two more people. As for the gramophone — let me see, why did I buy the gramophone? A gramophone is much the most odious thing in the world for its size, worse than fleas or parsnips. I think I bought it because I hated it so. Shall I turn it on? Jack, I think I shall put it in the drawing-room where it used to play all day, and turn it on and then come back here, and you’ll guess what it was like when it went on from dewy morn to dewier eve. Frankly, I bought it to remind me of the hospital. My dear, how I miss it! Without it this house gives me the hump, as Wilcox said.”

  “Who is Wilcox?”

  “The last man who was here. He missed his train, and I tried to amuse him all evening with that result. The war’s over, by the way, I have to say that to myself, for fear I should howl at the sight of this emptiness. What are we going to do with ourselves in London all March?”

  Jack licked his lips.

  “I’m going to sit down,” he said. “I’ve stood up for four years strolling about in mud. I’m going to sleep in my nice chair, and play bridge when I awake. I’m going to matinées at theatres — —”

  “When you wake, or in order to sleep?” asked she.

  “Both. I’m going to get up later and later every morning until there isn’t any morning, and go to bed earlier and earlier until there isn’t any evening. I’m cross and tired and flat. I never want to see a horse again.”

  Dodo looked at him in consternation.

  “Oh, but that will never do,” she said. “You’ve got to wind me up, darling, and stimulate me incessantly until I perk up again and hold myself upright. At present I feel precisely like one of those extremely frail-headed snowdrops — I always despised snowdrops — and wish I had remained comfortably underneath the ground, and hadn’t come up at all. We shall never get on if you mean to be a snowdrop too! Jack, you can’t be a snowdrop: I never saw anyone so unlike a snowdrop. You really mustn’t attempt to imitate anything that you resemble so little. I might as well try to be a penny-in-the-slot machine!”

  Jack had taken a cigarette and held it unlit as he looked about.

  “Do try,” he said. “I happen to be in want of a box of matches.”

  “I daresay you do,” said Dodo, “but I’m not in want of snowdrops. You must think of me, Jack.”

  He took a coal out of the hearth with the tongs, lit his cigarette and singed his moustache.

  “My job is over too, as well as yours, Dodo,” he said, “and I’m damned if I want to have another job of any sort. I believe the railwaymen are going to strike next week — —”

  “My dear, we must get up to town before that happens,” said she.

  “I don’t see why. What’s the use of going anywhere, or doing anything? I’m quite in sympathy with people who strike. Why shouldn’t I sit down if I choose and do nothing? I have worked hard; now I shall strike.”

  Dodo gave him a quick, sidelong glance.

  “Are you tired, Jack?” she asked. “Fed up?”

  “No, not the least tired, thanks, but I’m the most fed-up object you ever saw. I shall strike.”

  Dodo tried a humourous line.

  “Get up a trades-union of landowners,” she said. “Say you won’t perform the duties of landowner any longer. My dear, you could hold on with your strike for ever, because you are rich. Other strikes come to an end, because the funds come to an end, or because the Government makes a compromise. But you needn’t compromise with anybody, and as long as you live within your income, you will never starve. I shall join you, I think. What fun if all the peeresses went on strike, and didn’t give any more balls or get into divorce courts, or do anything that they have been accustomed to do.”

  “Very amusing,” said Jack drily.

  “Then you ought to laugh,” said Dodo.

  “I daresay. But why should I do anything I ought to do?”

  Dodo suddenly became aware that she had got somebody else to think about besides herself. Up till to-day she had been completely engrossed in the fact that, with the passing of the hospital, she had got nothing to do, and, for the present, did not feel inclined to take the trouble to bestir herself for her own amusement. But now it struck her that other people (and here was one) might be feeling precisely as she felt herself. She had supposed that some day somebody or something would come along and begin to interest her again, and then no doubt she would rouse herself. She had thought that Jack would be the most likely person to do that; he would propose a month’s yachting, or a few weeks in London, and be very watchful of her, and by all means in his power try to amuse her. She knew quite well that the faculty of living with zest had not left her, for long before her first twenty-four hours of complete laziness were over, she had pined for employment, and hailed the fact of an untidy business-room as a legitimate outlet for energy. But now she found herself cast for a very different part; she had imagined that Jack would help her on to her feet again, and it seemed that she had to help him. For all these years he had found in her his emotional stimulus without any effort on her part. He had never failed to respond to her touch, nor she, to do her justice, to answer his need. But at this moment, though the symptoms were so infinitesimal, namely the failing to be amused at the most trivial nonsense, she diagnosed a failure of response.... And at that, she felt as if she had been suddenly awakened by some noise in the night, that startled her into complete consciousness, and meant danger; as if there were burglars moving about the house. All her wits were about her at once, but she moved stealthily, so that they should not guess that anyone had heard or was stirring.

  “My dear, you’ve hit it,” she said in a congratulatory voice. “Why should we do anything we ought to do? Don’t let us. Oh, Jack, you’re old and I’m old. For a couple of years now I have suspected that our day was done. We’ve had the hell of a good time, you know, and we’ve had the hell of a bad time. Let’s have no more hells, or heavens either for that matter. Probably you thought that I should want to go skylarking about again; indeed, I’ve said as much, and told you that you had to stimulate me, and get me going again. But oh, I wish I could convey to you how I hated the idea of that. I thought you would come back with your work over, and all your energy bursting to be employed again, and that you would insist on my ringing the curtain up, and beginning all the old antics over again. I would have done it too, in order to please you and keep you busy and amused. But what a relief to know you don’t want that!”

  Dodo suddenly became afraid that she was putting too much e
nergy into her renunciation of energy, and gave a long, tired sigh.

  “Think of Edith,” she said. “How awful to have that consuming fire of energy. The moment the war was over she threw her typewriter out of the window and narrowly missed her scullery-maid in the area. She had locked up her piano, you know, for the period of the war, and of course she had lost the key, and so she broke it open with a poker, and sat down on the middle of the keys in order to hear it talk again. She has gone straight back to her old life, and oh, the relief of knowing that you don’t want me to. I couldn’t possibly have done it without you to whip me on, and thank God, you dropped your whip. Jack, I thought you would expect me to begin again, and would be disappointed if I didn’t. So, like a good wife, I resigned myself to be spurred and whipped, just telling you that you would have to do that. But the joy of knowing that you want to be tranquil, too! Don’t let us go up to town to-morrow, or next week, or until we feel inclined.”