Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  She ejaculated her way upstairs....

  Philip Courthope undoubtedly had two of the greatest qualifications of a good host, for he took tremendous trouble about the organization of his party beforehand, and when it was in progress enjoyed it enormously himself. To-day the soirée d’ennui was to take place in the big studio which opened on to the garden behind “Chez-moi,” and since the night was hot and still, the broad flagged walk outside the room was converted into a sitting-out annexe. Sofas and chairs, supplemented by piles of cushions on the floor, lined the walls of the studio, the room being otherwise emptied of all furniture except a piano. After dinner was cleared away, there would be a buffet for cold supper in the dining-room, which would be rather elaborate, but not lacking in the Bohemian note, for a barrel of beer on trestles, with sawdust spread below to catch drippings, stood in a comer, with quantities of pewter pots ranged by its side, while in the fireplace were churchwarden pipes. For entertainment there was a Russian violinist, a Rumanian pianist, both refugees, the floor was clear for dancing, and it was reasonable to suppose that Philip himself would be easily induced to sing some little French songs, and perform the famous Apache dance with Celia. There were charades ready in his fertile brain in case there was manifested an inclination that way, and beyond doubt the cups that he and Mrs. Muskett had won in the tennis tournament that afternoon would be presented to them by Lady Matcham. Certainly there was enough in that programme to warrant a very considerable anticipation of enjoyment for the host.

  Philip was waiting in the studio before dinner for his guests to arrive, when Celia came down. She was dressed in a long, sleeveless robe, cut rather high at the neck, buckled above her shoulders with two gold studs and girdled at her waist with a green belt with long tassels. It was of white mousseline silk with a line of silver running through it, and thickly edged with embroidery of the same colour as her girdle, and was cut with admirable simplicity, falling into straight, severe lines, as on some early Greek statue. Across the front of her hair, which was brushed back straight from the semi-circle of her forehead, she wore a fillet of enamelled leaves and tiny star-like blossoms.

  Her father ceased the little dance-steps with which he was pirouetting over the floor, to test its slipperiness, as she entered.

  “Ha! That dress suits you,” he said. ‘Très simple, mais très chic. You look as if you had walked down from the Acropolis. Does my new coat fit? It seems a little tight over the shoulders.”

  Celia’s smile accentuated itself for a moment as she ran her fingers over the shoulders of his velveteen jacket.

  “No, it is all right,” she said. “You need not be nervous.”

  “I’m not, if you mean to refer to my meeting your mother again.”

  “But I didn’t refer to that,” said Celia slowly and huskily. “I referred to your apprehension of your coat bursting. But perhaps you had better not be very violent if we do the Apache dance. That is all.”

  The rest of the party who were bidden to dinner were all assembled before Mrs. Courthope and Princess Lutloff arrived, and Philip, making a group round him, took the opportunity of showing in his most characteristic manner how trivial to him was his wife’s reappearance, and how little it affected him. Most of his guests, visitors to Merriby, knew Mrs. Courthope already.

  “My wife was always unpunctual,” he said, “and if it were not that she was bringing Princess Lutloff with her, I should go into dinner without waiting for her. A warm welcome when she comes, of course, but soup should wait for no man. Ah! Les voila!”

  The two women came in side by side through the big door of the studio, presenting a rather remarkable contrast: Princess Lutloff, like some gaunt bird of prey — a wild creature eager but caged — and Florence, small and totally undistinguished. Philip made a little French bow to the Princess, and clicked his heels together.

  “Enchanté, madame,” he said, shaking hands, and then turning to his wife. She instantly took complete control of the situation.

  “Why, Philip!” she said, effusively kissing him. “You’re younger than ever! Your gay life at Merriby! Nothing like mischief for keeping you young! And Lady Matcham! And Evan! So this is where you’ve been all these weeks instead of coming to see me. And my own Musky, looking so brown and well! And where’s the most important of all? Whichever of all of you is Celia, come here and be kissed at once! No! Is this Celia? My precious one! So tall, so distinguished, so utterly unlike poor little me, and what a blessing that is! Olga, this is my Celia. She has improved enormously since she was one year old! She has lost that crumpled look. Now she shall speak. What will she sound like? So important, Olga! You adore beautiful voices. Listen to Celia.”

  Celia looked from one to the other, and the corners of her mouth raised themselves till the laugh had to come. There was a radiant good nature beaming behind her mother’s absurdities that was irresistible.

  “But I feel rather embarrassed,” she said slowly. “And what am I to say? It is difficult to talk if one is told to talk.”

  “Celia sounds no less adorable than she looks,” said the Princess in a deep baritone and a foreign intonation. “If she comes to see me, I will quickly eat her up.”

  Philip made another little bow.

  “If Madame will honour me, I will take her to eat her dinner up,” he said. “Messieurs et mesdames, will you select your partners, those whom you like best, and come after us? It is the custom here to have no pomp. Nous sommes citoyens de Bohème.”

  It was not likely that Philip should permit the momentary eclipse into which he had been cast by his wife to be anything but temporary, and very soon his rays shone out again, gaining in brilliance as the evening went on. He had a chafing-dish brought on to the table, and made a miraculous omelette for them: he pulled crackers with the Princess, and decked himself in a paper cap and a tinsel “order”; he knelt to receive his tennis cup at the hands of Lady Matcham, and, having received it, filled it with champagne and drank his partner’s health out of it, without whom, as he observed in a neat speech, he certainly would not have overcome R. R., or the Regular Renshaw, if Major Dent would allow him to refer to him thus. As the after-dinner party assembled, his activities and ubiquitousness increased enormously: he sang his little French songs to his own accompaniment on a banjo, sitting in the middle of the room with his cracker cap on his head; he became fierce and terrible in his Apache dance, which he finished by striding out of the room with Celia, rather taller than himself, slung over his shoulder. Then the Russian violinist was allowed to be heard for a few minutes, but not for long, since, after a couple of small items, he most misguidedly embarked upon a piece of amazing virtuosity, the basis of which was “The Lost Chord,” tied firmly to the stake, so to speak, while a million fireworks of sound blazed and exploded round it. It was quite too much for Philip to hear this without taking part himself, and he reinforced the theme by singing the words, beating time for the infuriated violinist, and utterly ruining his arpeggios and coruscations by unlooked-for quickenings and retardations. He bellowed out the “Sound of the Great Amen”; he grew as mawkish and sentimental “when it flooded the crimson twilight” as even the authoress would have desired, feeling that he had his audience hanging on his lips. His voice was of poor quality, and his knowledge of singing merely non-existent, but never had prima-donna felt more radiantly satisfied than he at the conclusion of his performance. Indeed, he quite failed to suspect the smallest irony in Princess Lutloff’s speech to him when she remarked, “I see you have all the talents!” nor would she, to do her justice, have said that had she not been convinced that she was perfectly safe in so doing. Then, refreshed with a glass of beer and a cigarette lit at his flint and tinder, he announced that the pianist would regale them, adding sonorously, “Altesse, messieurs et mesdames, un beau silence, je vous prie.”

  It was at the conclusion of this piece, when Philip was warmly shaking hands with the Rumanian, saying that he offered the congratulations of a fellow-artist, that Violet
Matcham and her brother entered, and at that moment Celia came in from the sitting-out annexe in the garden, and stood with the light from the central chandelier in the studio shining directly on her. Then she saw her mother beckoning to her from near by the door where the new arrivals were standing, and came slowly down the unoccupied centre of the room. Her smile deepened a little as she saw Violet, beside whom a young man was standing, whom she instinctively took to be Bernard. He was looking straight at her with concentrated attention; as she came down the room his gaze never once left her face. Regardless of manners, he continued staring.

  She flushed a little, raising her eyebrows, and was conscious of a certain effort as she turned away from him to speak to Violet. Appreciative as she was of admiration, there was something disquietingly serious in this wide-eyed homage that was vibrant and charged with force; it was like a searchlight playing on her, and like the sun it smote her. She turned her back on it, definitely conscious of the effort. That he was rude to stare like this never struck her: all that occupied her mind was what the meaning of it was. There was a reason for it, indecipherable to her, unless it was that so might a man look who had found something that his soul had always sought.

  “My dear, how late you are,” she said to Violet; “you have missed many wonderful things that Daddy has been doing. He danced, he sang, he resembled David before the Ark.”

  Violet’s eyes were decidedly less disconcerting: there was nothing cryptic about them, and though Bernard’s stare had given Celia a certain qualm of discomfort, it was an effort not to turn round again and see if still that salute of recognition — was it? — paid homage to her.

  Celia’s grave, slow voice gave no inflexion of sarcasm to this speech, and on the moment Philip bounded up to them.

  “Oh, it’s too bad, Mr. Courthope,” said Violet.

  “Celia tells me you have been doing all sorts of lovely things. Please do them all again! And what a delicious order you’ve got on!”

  “Première classe des ennuyants,” said he gaily. “And your brother? My wife tells me he was coming with you.”

  “Oh yes, here is Bernard. Bernard, Mr. Courthope.”

  Philip tapped his forehead.

  “I seem to have seen you before,” he said. “I have a wonderful memory for faces. Yes: it was this afternoon at the tennis tournament. You stayed to witness my triumph, I trust, though I hope I bear my honours modestly. Here is my little girl; Celia, this is Lord Matcham. And will you excuse me? They have insisted that I should show them a sword dance, and as there are no swords in the house of an art student, we must have walking-sticks instead.”

  “Oh, Daddy, that will be much safer for you,” said Celia slowly.

  “You impertinent minx! Make yourself useful. Take Lord Matcham to have some supper.”

  Celia had but given him a momentary glance at the introduction, but now she looked full at him, meeting, not without an effort, his unwavering look. Certainly he was very handsome — a male edition of Violet, reproducing in more masculine manner the outlines of her features, the gold of her hair, her wide-set eyes... Then suddenly his staring, for it was no less than that, ceased to dominate her, but merely got on her nerves, exasperating her.

  “Will you please put me out of my misery,” she said, “and tell me if my hair has come down, or if I have a smudge on my face? I feel sure something of the sort has happened to me.”

  Bernard became aware of himself and of his unconscionable conduct, for till then the moments that had passed since he had first set eyes on Celia had been no more than a single flash of consciousness. Now he recollected himself and his manners.

  “I really beg your pardon, Miss Courthope,” he said, “but you reminded me so amazingly of — of something I had seen before, that I was completely absorbed in the likeness.”

  The searchlight quality had gone out now, and he looked at her only as a man is entitled to look at an attractive girl. But there had crossed her memory that which Violet had told her about the Greek head. Immediately, however, she abandoned that connection, for what could be more unlike the faultless regularity of Greek art as she knew it than her own face? But with the removal of the searchlight she recaptured her own sense of individual privacy.

  “Oh, what is that something?” she said. “We are all like various species of animals, aren’t we? Did I remind you of a dog or a horse? Anyhow, it’s a comfort that I haven’t a smut on my face. I hate washing my face. Why should we scrub our noses with pieces of dead seaweed? Perhaps you don’t. You are like Violet, I think. If you rubbed Violet’s face in a muddy road it would still look perfectly clean. There! I am talking nonsense. I think it is your fault, Lord Matcham.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It is because you have been looking at me like that, as if I was under a magnifying glass. If I am watched, I must make a cloud of nonsense round me, like a goldfish — or do I mean a cuttle-fish? There is some fish, anyhow, that squirts when you poke it. Look, here is Daddy with two walking-sticks. He is enjoying himself so.”

  “He is very lucky: he does everything so well,” said Bernard politely.

  “He does not do the sword-dance very well,” said Celia softly. “He would cut himself into ribbons if those were real swords. But then if these were real swords, he would not do the sword-dance. Do you know my mother?”

  While Philip was instructing the Rumanian pianist how to play suitable music for his performance, Mrs. Courthope had joined Celia and Bernard. Violet, as was her wont, was holding Celia’s hand, and gazing into her face with the most transparent devotion.

  “Old times!” exclaimed Mrs. Courthope. “What an aroma! Like lavender! All the memories of the past swarming up like bees without any stings. All but Celia, who I thought might be Sheila, but she shall be a memory for the future. How mad we all are to be sure! It is like a music-hall. Lord Matcham, tell me exactly what you think of Celia. Violet, what does Bernard think of Celia? St. Bernard with all his beautiful dogs! My poor Pekinese was vaccinated yesterday for trench-fever, because I took him to a hospital. Oh, look, Philip jumped on to the middle of a walking-stick then. What a blessing it was not a sword. Thank you, Philip. Too lovely! They do it all day in the Highlands, I believe, which is another reason for not going to Scotland. And the railway fares! Olga, dear, we were talking about railway fares and Gretna Green, where all those marriages used to be.”

  She kept turning to one or other of the group as she put these wonderful questions and made these remarkable reflections, not quickly, but with a slightly puzzled air as if enlisting help for difficult situations. But, though all the time she was the mouthpiece of the little group, it was clear that Celia was the centre of it; her mother was no more than a whirling vocal point on its circumference. Violet still held Celia’s hand, Mrs. Courthope talked at her, Bernard kept looking at her, and Princess Lutloff, who now joined them, thrust out her head towards her, as if, as she had threatened, she was about to begin eating her.

  “We must be going, Florence,” she said. “It will be too much pleasure for one evening, and I shall be sick. Ah, Celia smiles in her enigma way. I have made some slide in my absurd English. Now for to-morrow—”

  Mrs. Courthope broke in —

  “The enigma variations!” she said. “Scriabine and the Albert Hall. Poor Prince Consort with the Crystal Palace and everything here in England, and he a German. He would have been simply pulled in half. I am just the same, for if we go on to Bournemouth to-morrow, Olga, I leave all these charming people behind, and if we don’t go to Bournemouth, we shall never get there. Let us get Philip to go to the station at dead of night, which I am sure it is now, with a pot of paint, and paint Bournemouth on the board which tells you where you are. Or shall I ask them all to come and stay with you, Olga? Celia and Violet and Bernard and everybody? What are we to do? Philip, my dear, what a lovely sword-dance! Why does one ever stir from those beautiful Scotch Highlands with their kilts and their cairngorms? Such fun! Now, my dear, you have been so b
usy and popular to-night that I haven’t had a word with you. Will you come and see me some time to-morrow, if we don’t go to Bournemouth? I will send you a note. Darby and Joan! So charming! My own precious Celia! Look, there is dear Olga stamping her foot with rage because I am keeping her waiting. So deliciously Russian, Moscow and the Kremlin, and the poor Czar and all his family! Was it not unkind? What had they done? Politics are so confusing. Bernard, you are in the Foreign Office: you must tell me all about politics. Good-night, darling Celia. Yes, Olga, I am coming. So clever of you, Philip, to give such a lovely party. I got a quantity of hints.”

  She stepped into the Princess’s car and drew up the window.

  “The outside air is poison to me,” she said. “Now, dear Olga, let us talk. Conversation! What should we do without conversation? Is not Philip a marvellous bounder? Tell me how I could have married him?”

  “He is like the man at a circus, who cracks the whip and the horses go round,” said Olga. “He is the horses too, he is everything. And the sawdust. But Celia — where did Celia get such chic, such charm?”

  “She inherited it from her mother,” said Mrs. Courthope. “How stupid of you, dear, not to think of that. I am delighted with Celia. Something must be done about Celia. Her fate now, her destiny! Soft clay and all that sort of thing, and the potter’s thumb. It is terrible for her to be in a circus.”

  “Ah, we are all in a circus,” said Olga. “Somebody cracks the whip to us all, and we trot round and round and jump through hoops. But such a circus! Take her away: make her come and live in your circus in London. That young man — what is his name — wants her in his. Anyhow, take her away. She is impressionable: she is like a chameleon. She will take her colour from her surroundings, for what happens to a girl when she is between nineteen and twenty-two make her scarlet or white or green for ever. Do not let her become the colour of your poor husband’s circus. He is vieux jeu for all his skippings, while she is of the stuff of the new generation.”