Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  She sprang up.

  “But, Daddy: let us see if Bernard cannot come down after all,” she said. “He did not know he was asked. I will telegraph to him, shan’t I? Or have you a telephone?”

  He gave the little self-satisfied laugh that Celia knew, but now the key of its self-satisfaction was more highly pitched.

  “We are not completely out of the world yet, at Merriby,” he said. “A trunk-call to London is within our possibilities. I don’t know if I ever told you that it was I who got Merriby put on the trunk system. There was considerable opposition, but it is not my habit to be easily put off. Fais ce que voudras: I often thought that the Courthopes had the best right to the motto. I shall adopt it when I — come into the place. I have always lived up to that: there has never been the word ‘impossible’ for me in my dictionary. His number then: C’est mon plaisir — that is another motto worthy of us. So, it is your pleasure then, Contesse, that I ring up my beau-fils. I am not accustomed to doing that myself: I tell them — my people — to ring up, and call me when I am in communication.”

  Celia got up.

  “Dear Daddy,” she said, “you are so tremendously aristocratic. I feel myself to be of the people beside you. I go and sit humbly at the telephone till the proud lady of the exchange condescends to notice me, and then I say ‘Please, Miss,’ to her. It is degrading, but one gets along quicker. You stop here: I will do it. I shall manage it.”

  Celia found Bernard at home.

  “Can you come down here at once?” she said. “I am terribly frightened about Daddy.”

  “What’s the matter?” came the dim, tired voice of the telephone.

  “I don’t know. He is odd.”

  There was a slight pause.

  “If you really want me, I’ll come. You know that!”

  Celia heard a rapid step crossing the hall towards her.

  “That will be lovely then,” she said hastily. “That’s all. ‘Chez-moi.’ You know. Heaps of cabs.”

  She put the receiver bade in its place, as her father approached.

  “Ha! You shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “I really ought to have asked him. I like a little ceremony in life. There is too much slipshod, go-as-you-please spirit nowadays. I gather that Bernard’s coming. What train? I will send the motor. Il n’est pas propre que mon beau-fils arrive dam un fiacre chez moi. Fiacre pour le canaille, cette Priscilla, par example. Bernard must say what time he arrives. I will ring him up again: there is a certain decency to be observed. The aristocracy of England do not treat each other in this off-hand way.”

  Philip ascertained that Bernard would probably catch a train that got into Merriby at half-past seven, and his sense of decency was satisfied by ordering that the motor should go to the station to meet it.

  “He must expect pot-luck,” he said. “He must take me as he finds me. There will be no party, now that those invitations have not gone out, and he must put up with a glass of port that I am not ashamed to offer to anybody, and a game of picquet, where again I am not ashamed to offer myself as an adversary. I don’t know if I ever told you, how the Marquis de Rouen wanted to spend an evening at picquet with somebody who would give him a struggle. I offered myself: I think I may say I gave him a game and he was not quite so rich when he left at four in the morning. I do not know that my picquet has deteriorated much since then. Shall we play a hand, Celia, pour passer le temps? I do not remember that you are much good at it, but will serve for a pastime.”

  Celia took his arm: now that Bernard was coming down, she had no further fear on account of this solitary evening. The selfishness of her deep-seated need was satisfied, anything that got through the hour until Bernard’s arrival was welcome.

  “But I am not such a fool at picquet, Daddy,” she said. “I will rook you. I will rubicon you. I will make you sorry you despised me.”

  For the last hour this “tunnel-sense,” this feeling of unreality had possessed Philip’s brain; now it cleared off, and as he went back with Celia to his room he realized himself again. This arm in his was Celia’s, they were going to play a game of picquet, as they had done so many hundred times before, when the winter evenings closed in early. He became, to his interior sense, perfectly natural.

  “You impertinent child,” he said, “and your impertinence used always to be confirmed by your amazing good luck. Well, let us see. We will have three games, shall we? and more if we enjoy it. I almost wish Bernard was not coming down. We should be so happy alone, n’est-ce pas?”

  This return of her father to his normal voice, his normal gestures, all those minute things that made up the whole impression, confirmed rather than modified Celia’s desire to have Bernard with her. Any moment Philip might be queer again, and who knew what fresh and disquieting attitude might be his? But she would feel safe if Bernard was here: he alone could give her the sense of security, with his patience, his wisdom, his quiet reliability.... Her thought hung a moment fluid in her mind before it crystallized.

  “His love for her,” finished the crystallization. It was that to which she commended herself without reserve or misgiving. She surprised herself by finding that she trusted that as she trusted nothing else.

  Bernard arrived in time for dinner, and had no reason to wonder why Celia had sent for him, for it was perfectly clear that there was something wrong. Philip kept up an interminable harangue of inconsecutive noisy talk, and, when dinner was over, proposed, started and abandoned a dozen diversions for the passing of the evening. He took them into the studio, which was emptied and made ready for the guests who had not been invited, turned on the gramophone and began waltzing with Celia. He quickly tired of that, and sat down to the piano to play to them. But he soon found that it was out of tune, and stopped in the middle of A bar.

  “I must get it timed,” he said, “it is perfect agony to any one like myself who has an extremely sensitive ear, to play on a piano that is not in perfect tune. I should have had it done before, and then I could have played to you. I have been practising a good deal: I do not find that my execution has deteriorated. I don’t know if I told you before, Bernard — stop me if I have — but I wrote some invitations for a soirée d’ennui, such as you favoured by your presence the first time you saw Celia, and then forgot to send them. That is why you find the studio décolleté, in evening dress, so to speak, with very little on. Presently we will have some supper: it will be laid in the dining-room. Ha! I have given no orders about it. But until then, I will engage you at picquet. I won’t play with Celia any more. We played three games before dinner: it was impossible to do anything against such cards as she held. I don’t know if I ever told you about the great battles I used to have with the Marquis de Rouen: Paris was all a-gog about them. I see you are looking at the portrait of my wife. The artist? Your humble servant. It used to hang in my bedroom, you will remember, Celia. I always regretted not having sent it to the Salon. I think I will send it there for next year’s exhibition. I dare say there are some artists left in Paris who have not forgotten Philip Courthope. Coupez s’il vous plait, monsieur. Aha! Le valet: je donne” Celia was waiting for a word with Bernard when he came upstairs.

  “You were a darling to come, Bernard,” she said. “Now tell me what you think. I wasn’t fussy and over-nervous, was I, in asking you?”

  “No: you did quite right. Now your father must see a doctor. I’ve talked that over with him already, and I shall telephone to town to-morrow to get Atkinson to come. He is very good at this kind of case.”

  “What is the matter with Daddy?” asked Celia quickly.

  “That’s what we shall find out. My dear, don’t be frightened. It’s some neurasthenic condition, I expect, the sort of thing for which people go into rest-cures. Don’t let us think about it any more to-night. We must wait for a proper opinion. Anyhow, you did absolutely right in sending for me. It was clever of you to manage it.”

  “And it wasn’t dreadfully inconvenient for you?” she asked. “I hope not.”

/>   He smiled at her, grave next moment.

  “I wonder if you will ever learn that nothing you want me to do for you can be inconvenient,” he said.

  She knew she was paying him in base coin as she kissed him. But the reality of her gratitude to him for having responded like that made her think she was not cheating him. It would have been horrible to have spent this evening alone with her father.

  “But it was dear of you,” she said. “I feel so secure now you are here. I had a horrid afternoon. I thought it would be a quiet little pleasant time with Daddy. Instead it was all different: it was alarming.”

  Some judgment, verdict and condemnation, just verdict and just punishment, suddenly surged up from within into Celia’s consciousness, disturbing its security, splitting the spider-web of her momentary content. With Bernard here, she had, so she thought a moment ago, all she desired. Now she knew that what she truly wanted was the sense of Bernard being here without Bernard. She wanted not him, but what he could do, and what he was doing for her. No one but Bernard could do it, but she clung to him for what he did, not for what he was. And, even in the first flush of her secure content, she found herself wondering what would happen to-morrow. Vincent, she felt sure, would present himself unless she stopped him; that had been arranged without arrangement. He had only said he would come down to Merriby on Sunday morning, and she had replied that it would be delightful.... She had not asked him to come to see her at “Chez-moi”: he was going to take a Sunday morning train to Merriby, and she would be at Merriby. Naturally he would not have designed this expedition in order to observe the beauties of Merriby, without a further inducement. But why, why, so she asked herself now, did she find it difficult to tell Bernard that Vincent might be confidently expected to call next day?...

  And then she recognized the nature of the difficulty. She had already begun to make petty concealments about him. She had pretended, for instance, that his arrival on the evening that she had pledged herself to a Darby and Joan was an accident, a thing accountable for by the carelessness of a parlourmaid. How many accidents of that kind would Bernard swallow? It came to that.

  These thoughts engrossed her: she knew that, having said that her father’s condition alarmed her, her mind went out on this new skirmish. Should she tell Bernard — it mattered importantly — that Vincent, boisterous and loquacious, would probably appear next day? Or should she not tell him, and be mildly surprised, mildly pleased, if Vincent did appear? She had to decide.

  There came a knock at the door, and her father’s voice.

  “Celia,” he said. “You are showing a light from your window. Pardon: may I come in?”

  Celia glanced at her husband, feigning an impatience at this interruption, feeling, now that Bernard was here, a relief at it. It made that sort of procrastination to decide which really amounts to a decision.

  “Come in, Daddy,” she said, “if you don’t mind seeing me with my hair down.”

  Philip entered in a marvellous dressing-gown. He had certainly wanted to show Celia his dressing-gown.

  “Excusez,” he said, “je suis en dishabille. But the lighting orders are strict, mon beau-fils knows that. I stepped into the garden just now and saw a light from your room. I don’t know if I told you that when I was in London last—”

  “Yes, Daddy, you told me,” said she.

  “Perhaps then Bernard hasn’t heard it. It was the night when there was a raid, and I was at your mother’s house. Let me see — ah yes, I went downstairs, and found a curtain not down. I saved her a fine, I expect. There! That excludes the light altogether. I make a tour of the house every night. It would never do if lights were seen from the windows of ‘Chez-moi.’ Excuse me. I am now perfectly satisfied. I shall go for a brisk walk before breakfast. I have long made a habit of that. Perhaps you will join me, Bernard? How do you like my dressing-gown?”

  “It’s lovely, Daddy,” said Celia. “But it’s time to take it off now and go to bed. Bernard was just going to bed, and so was I.”

  He marched out, closing the door with a snap.

  “I am worried, Bernard,” said Celia. “It is lovely that you are here: I should be miserable otherwise. But I am so tired.”

  “Good-night then, my darling,” said he. “Sleep well.”

  Even as he turned to leave her, she saw, thinking of him no longer, nor of her father, how foolish and how dangerous her concealment with regard to Vincent was. He might run into Bernard not here only, but by a chance meeting in the street, and as before Vincent might blurt out her previous knowledge of his presence.

  “Ah, I forgot to tell you,” she said, “that Vincent is coming down to-morrow morning, just for the inside of the day. He is to lunch with us.”

  “You had better put him off,” said Bernard.

  Celia paused.

  “Yes,” she said, “I will meet his train in the morning and tell him. I want to see him, as he goes to Rome to-morrow.”

  The doctor, who arrived next day, was serious but not alarming. Philip was certainly in a state to which nervous breakdown might easily succeed, unless proper steps were immediately taken. He must leave Merriby, and have a period of entire rest away from the normal associations and business of his life. A regular rest-cure in some nursing-home was probably not necessary: it would, at least, be worth while seeing what effect a complete change would have. He must have some one permanently with him, companion more than nurse, and take a house or lodgings, or live in a hotel. Periods of depression evidently alternated with exaltation and undue activity of the brain, but there was nothing to be alarmed at. Such cases were very common, and rest usually proved quite efficacious. His wife would be his natural companion, but Dr. Atkinson understood....

  Bernard talked this over with Celia that afternoon. —

  “Your father refused to entertain the idea at all at first,” he said, “and insisted on remaining at Merriby. He couldn’t endure living in lodgings or at hotels. Then luckily the thought of Stonepitts occurred to me, and he liked that. I explained what Stonepitts was like to the doctor, who considered it ideal. You and I will be able to be with him more there than we otherwise could.”

  “But what about your Christmas plans?” she asked. “You were thinking of taking your work down there. You won’t be able to do much if Daddy is there.”

  He turned to her, smiling.

  “I can manage that somehow,” he said. “But what I did regret is that you and I won’t have our fortnight to ourselves. That’s what I mind. Ought I to have asked you first before I suggested Stonepitts?”

  Bernard paused, feeling a sudden yearning that she should be disappointed at the collapse of this plan. One word, one touch would convey it, and he longed for that assurance: the authenticity of it would be plain to him. Eagerly, then hopelessly he waited for that.

  CHAPTER VI

  ONE night late Bernard was sitting in his room at Stonepitts finishing a memorandum on which he had been engaged for the last week. The house had long been silent, for it was a couple of hours since Philip had gone up to bed after his usual games of picquet, and Celia had gone up with him. Since then Bernard had anchored himself down to his work, only rising now and again to replenish the logs that burned and flared on the big open grate and yet scarcely vanquished the bitterness of the night, occasionally walking up and down the room to assist his mind to the clarified statement of some intricate point, or for a moment listening to the wind that buffeted his windows and the soft whisper of the snow driven against them. For a while there had been also the muffled sound of steps from the room above where Celia slept, but those had long ago ceased.

  Bernard, in spite of his powers of concentration, had to exert an unusual effort of control in order to keep his mind steady at its task. This section of it should have been finished yesterday, but the continual interruptions, owing to Philip’s presence here, had unduly delayed him. Half a dozen times in the morning Philip would look in, saying at considerable length that he knew how busy Ber
nard was, and that he would not interrupt him, but sit quietly by the fire and read his book. Then in a couple of minutes he would jump up for fresh fuel on the fire, and vent a short dissertation as to how to lay the logs so that they gave out their maximum of heat. Next moment some paragraph in his paper about Turkey would cause him to bring it over to Bernard, saying: “I don’t know if you’ve seen this: it might interest you.” But though for these hours he was secure from his father-in-law, he found it almost as difficult to keep his attention on his work as when Philip kept jumping up and down, so insistently did another topic and the subject cognate to it press in upon him. He refused, however, to focus his mind at all on that, and only saw it, so to speak, out of a corner of the eye he steadily averted from it. Soon, when he had finished this note on the German scheme of irrigation at Adana, he would wheel round in his chair and stare this other topic in the face. At present there was a veil over it, which he had thrown there himself. That must be twitched away: there was no use in covering it up from himself any longer. Half an hour later he arranged and read through what he had written, made a correction here and there, and turned his chair round to the fire.

  He faced first the main fact. Celia was not in love with him at all: there it was now for the first time definitely admitted to himself, numbly and coldly admitted without for the moment any emotion springing therefrom. Working backwards from that, he looked for the time, the occasion, or the series of occasions when her love for him had first begun to wane, and could not find it. In certain ways, quite minor ways in comparison with that, she had changed towards him: she let him see, for instance, with growing frequency and with growing distinctness, that his affection wearied and irritated her; but, bitter though that was, it was nothing in comparison of the fact that in the one great point she had not changed. She had never loved him at all. He believed that she had desired to, had tried to, but her admission to him on the day he asked her to marry him that she did not love him had always remained good. She had allowed him to love her, and that was all. A second conclusion followed, noting another change in her. Her nature, so he believed, when he married her was still asleep: she did not love him, nor did she love any other. He was sure that she had liked him in strong preference to other men, but no flame was at that time alight in her. It was alight now.