Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “My father and my mother,” said Peter. “He has just finished the largest picture in the world.”

  “How sweet of him! Ah, they have brought some cocktails at last.”

  She waited till the servant was well out of hearing. “But how stupid the waiter is,” she said. “I am sure I told him to bring, three not four. Shall I taste it? Shall I like it, do you think?”

  It seemed not too optimistic to hope that she would, for, otherwise, she would long ago have ceased not only tasting the fourth cocktail which she was sure she had not ordered, but consuming it so completely that the strip of lemon-peel overbalanced against the tip of her pretty nose.

  “My dear, how strong!” she exclaimed. “I feel perfectly tipsy, and one of you must give me your arm, as if you were a nephew or something if I stagger or reel. Let us go in to dinner at once. I promised Ella we would get to Mrs. Wardour’s box by the beginning of the opera.”

  “Who is Mrs. Wardour?” asked Charlie Harman.

  “Oh, quite new,” said Mrs. Trentham. “Hardly anyone has seen her yet. Rich, fabulously rich. Her husband was one of the hugest profiteers — not eggs at fourpence, but steamers at a quarter of a million. He bought up everything that floats and sold it to the Government, and most of it got sunk. He died a couple of years ago. Too sad.”

  “More about her, please,” said Peter.

  “I haven’t seen her yet, my dear, but Ella Thirlmere is being her godmother — sponsor, you know — and she asked me to take people to her box and her dinners and her dances. Her name’s Lucy: it would be. I shall begin by calling her Lucy almost immediately. There’s no time nowadays to get to know people. You have to pretend to know them intimately almost the moment you set eyes on them.”

  “And pretend not to know them afterwards, if necessary,” said Peter.

  May Trentham gave a hasty glance round the room and, becoming aware that quite a sufficient number of people were looking at her and her party, slapped the back of Peter’s hand with the tips of her fingers, and gave a scream of laughter to show what a tremendously amusing time she was having.

  “You naughty boy!” she said. “Is he not cynical about Lucy? I shan’t talk to you any more. Tommy, my dear, tell me what you’ve been doing. You look flushed. I believe you’re in love.”

  “No. I’ve been playing squash,” said Tommy. “What is squash? I believe it’s one of your horrid new words and means flirting. Who is she?”

  “She is Charlie. At least, I was playing squash with Charlie,” said Tommy, with laborious precision. “He didn’t like it.”

  Charlie fingered two little tails of blond hair that grew directly below his nostrils and formed his moustache. Otherwise his face was completely feminine — plain and pink and plump. He gesticulated a good deal with his hands, flapping and dabbing with them.

  “Odious game,” he said, showing a great many teeth between his red lips. “You go on hitting a ball against a putrid wall until you’re too tired to hit it any more, and then Tommy says ‘One love.’ When you’ve done that fifteen times, he says ‘Game,’ and then you begin another one. I hoped I should never hear of it again.”

  “You shan’t, my dear; but don’t be such a crosspatch. I know you’re annoyed with me for not getting you some pretty girl to talk to. You must talk to Peter. He’s in disgrace with me. Oh, Peter, is it true about Nellie Heaton’s engagement?”

  “Perfectly,” said Peter.

  “Then why aren’t you broken-hearted? I don’t believe any of you young men have got hearts nowadays.

  “That accounts for their not being broken,” said Peter.

  It was time to laugh loudly again in order to remind the rest of the diners what a brilliant time she was having, and May Trentham did this.

  “There he goes again!” she said. “Is he not shocking? My dear, have you had a dreadful scene with her?”

  “No. I only had tea with her.”

  “Oh, don’t pretend you weren’t desperately in love with her. But never mind. I will find some other girl for you, who will adore you so violently that you will lose your heart to her, though you say you haven’t got one. She shall be rich and lovely, and we shall all be frantically jealous of her. And you shall both call me Aunt May, because I have brought you together.”

  “Thank you, Aunt May,” said Peter. “Go on about her, please.”

  “No, I’ve talked to you long enough. Tommy is feeling left out. When the opera is over, by the way, I want you all to come on to Ella Thirlmere’s dance. I promised to bring you all. Mrs. Wardour is sure to be coming, and she will certainly have plenty of motor-cars to take us. Oh, there is that marvellous Spanish boxer, is it not, dining alone with Ella. How gentle and kind he looks! Darling Ella! I wonder if she will have six rounds with him in the middle of her dance. I would certainly back her: look at her chest. But how daring of her to dine with him here! They say he marries again after each of his fights and settles all the money he has won on his new wife. But, after all, I suppose it’s just as daring of me to dine with three such attractive young men as for her to dine with just one Solomon like that!”

  Tommy puzzled over this for a moment. He was very good-looking, but there was no other reason for him.

  “Solomon?” he asked.

  “Yes, my dear; think of his wives. I was talking to Anthony Braille to-day, who makes all those wonderful tables about population, and what encourages and hinders it. He said the only chance for England was to close all the music-hall bars and introduce polygamy. Every Englishman, after this dreadful war — you know I was a nurse during the war — must have fifty children a year for two years — or did he say two children a year for fifty years — in order to bring up the population again to its proper level. It was all most interesting — if he only didn’t stutter so much!”

  “He seems to have stuttered out the main facts,” said Peter.

  “Oh, I couldn’t tell a young man half the things he said to me. We ought all to be Patagonians and polygamists. The birth-rate among Patagonians is colossal. They behead all women of the age of thirty-five who aren’t married, and all bachelors at the age of forty. It has something to do with eugenics.”

  The intoxication of a restaurant now crowded with people had gained complete ascendancy over Peter’s hostess. She never felt quiet and contented unless she was surrounded by a host of friends, acquaintances, and people she knew by sight, and had to shout at the top of her voice in order to be heard above the roar of other conversations and the blare of a band. It was equally necessary for the establishment of this tranquil frame of mind that several young men, and, if possible, no women, should be with her, and that she should constantly be convulsed by shrieks of laughter, and should have both her elbows on the table. A finer nuance in success was that she must appear wholly absorbed in the brilliance of her own table, and quite unconscious of the hubbub round her, though presently, when she got up, she would seem to awake to the fact that she was in a crowded restaurant, and would blow kisses all over the room, and have dozens of little smiles and words for all those whose position between her and the door she had unerringly noted. Just a sentence or two for each, reminding her “my dears” of a meeting, tomorrow, or a meeting yesterday with a phrase of flattery and a bit of whispered scandal and the conclusion: “I must fly; those boys will be so cross with me if I keep them waiting. Meet you at dearest Ella’s? Yes? Lovely — All this was faithfully performed on her part, and her face, with its pretty little features all bunched together in the middle of it, like the markings in a pansy, had expanded and contracted again sufficient times before she reached the door of the restaurant to enable a weary conclave to express itself as it waited for her.

  “Parsifal, too,” said Charlie. “Thank God we’ve missed the first act. Aged stunt — flower-maidens and grails. Can’t we get away, Peter? Come home with me. Say we’re busy at the F.O. German complications. Bolshevists on the Rhine.”

  Tommy stood first on one leg scratching a slim calf with t
he other instep, and then on the other leg scratching in a corresponding manner.

  “You simply can’t,” he said. “How am I to deal with her and Lucy? And Parsifal?”

  “Polygamy and Patagonians,” said Peter, with a vague remembrance of the preposterous conversation that had garlanded their dinner. “Flirt, Tommy. Can you flirt? Hold hands. Sigh. Beam. Can’t you manage it?”

  “No,” said Tommy.

  “Then Tommy and I will go away,” said Charlie. “After all, she doesn’t want us, except as a stage crowd. She wants you most, Peter. I say, I like your studs. Who?”

  “Nobody. I liked them, too, so I got them. But we’ve all got to go on. After all, we’ve had dinner.”

  “All the more reason for not going on,” said Charlie.

  “That’s no good. It doesn’t pay. Besides, she’s awfully decent—”

  “Don’t be priggish, Peter. I say, is Nellie really going to marry Philip Beaumont? Do you mind?” This atrocious conversation was interrupted by the sprightly tripping advent of their hostess, who put her fingers in her ears, which she knew were “shell-like,” as she passed through the direct blast of the band, and consoled them for her want of appreciation of their professional functions by distributing more of her little smiles.

  “Now I know you are all going to scold me,” she said, “because I’ve kept you waiting. But there were so many dears who insisted on my having a word with them. They nearly tore my frock off. Let’s all cram into one taxi, and I will sit bodkin. And after Ella’s dance we’ll all go on to Margie Clifford’s. She specially told me to bring all of you, and scold you well first for not having talked to her on your way out. I don’t know what everybody will think when I appear at the Ritz and the Opera, and two dances with the same young men. I shall have to tell my darling Bob that the Morning Post hasn’t come, or he’ll storm at me. What a lovely white lie.”

  There flashed through Peter’s consciousness at that moment an insane wonder as to what would happen if he said calmly and clearly and genuinely. “My good woman, who cares? As for the compromising young men who accompany you, they are all dying to get away, and only the debt of the excellent dinner you gave us, of which I reminded them, prevents us from doing so.” There was the truth of the matter, and it was all rather mean and miserable. Her guests were spending the evening with her and ministering to her hopeless delight in daring situations simply because she had, on her side, administered the nosebag. They consented, with a grudging sense of honourable engagement, to plough their way in her wake merely because she had fed them. If she had asked them severally or collectively to drop in after dinner, in the way of a friend, for conversation and soda water, none of them would have dreamed of gratifying her. And now, when they had fed deliciously at her expense, they would all have preferred to go back to Charlie’s rooms in Jermyn Street, or to Tommy’s flat (Peter’s house was handicapped by the presence of parents), rather than trail along to Parsifal, and to a dance, and yet another dance. The dances, perhaps, might be amusing, for there would be girls there, and some sitting about on stairs, and some sliding about on slippery floors, and an irresponsible atmosphere, and certainly some more champagne. You had to get through the night somehow, and nowadays you could smoke while you were dancing, and you needn’t dance much. The nuisance — rather a serious one — was that Mrs. Trentham would be there all the time, screaming and dabbing at them to show how amusing and brilliant they all were, keeping them firmly planted round her while she told them that they must go away and dance and make themselves agreeable to others rather than hang round an old woman like her, and continually whistling them back if they attempted to do anything of the sort. She would take up a position where she could most advantageously be seen and heard, and get them all plastered about her, swiftly talking to each in turn, so that he could not possibly go away as long as she so volubly told him to. She had that artless art to perfection; no one had such a gift for making young men adhesive as she, while all the time she was scolding them for wasting their time on an old woman. There was no semblance of sentiment in these proceedings; the entire objective of the manoeuvres was to demonstrate to the world that these boys insisted on crowding round her and not leaving her. That was her notion of a successful evening, and since they had signed their bond by eating her dinner, she managed to exact the full pound of flesh.

  The curtain went down on the first act of Parsifal precisely as Mrs. Trentham led her shrill way into one of the two boxes that bore the name of Mrs. Wardour. She tripped in, all feather fan and stockings, like some elegant exotic hen, proudly conscious of the brood of most presentable chicks, though not of her rearing, which followed her. The house at that moment started into light again, and black against the oblong of brightness were the backs of two female heads, both of which turned round at the click of the opened door. One of them had a great tiara on, sitting firmly on a desert of pale sandy hair.

  May Trentham advanced with both hands held out.

  “My dear, how late we are,” she said, “You must scold these boys, for they kept me in such shrieks of laughter at dinner that I had no idea of the time. Dearest Ella has so often talked to me about you; always asking: ‘Haven’t I met Mrs. Wardour yet? Was it possible I had not met her great friend Lucy Wardour?’ Charmed!”

  In the hard light of the theatre, Mrs. Wardour’s face appeared to her to be quite flat; the shadows on it looked like dark smudges applied to the surface with a brush, rather than markings derived from projections and depressions. This apparition of a diamond-crowned oval of meaningless flesh was slightly embarrassing, and she turned to the second occupant of the box. There, in the younger face, she saw what Lucy might, perhaps, once have been like, before the years had flattened her out. Obviously this was a daughter, though Ella Thirlmere had altogether omitted to mention such a thing. Then, with her rather short-sighted eyes growing accustomed to the staring light, Mrs. Trentham observed that her first impression of her hostess’s face was an illusion, though founded on fact; just as when the figure of a man resolves itself into a hat and coat hanging on the wall. There was nothing, in fact, abnormal about Mrs. Wardour’s countenance: it was just blankish. She had large cheeks of uniform surface, a nose of small elevation, no eyebrows, and eyes set in very shallow sockets. Then another shadow came on to her face; but this time, without delay, May Trentham saw that it was her mouth opening. When she had opened it, she spoke, but she did not conduct both processes simultaneously.

  “Well, I’m pleased to see you,” she said; “but there are so many friends of Lady Thirlmere — Ella, I should say; she told me always to say Ella — there are so many of Ella’s friends visiting me to-night that I don’t quite seem to know your name.”

  May Trentham felt that her brain was giving way. Here was a perfectly empty box, except for Mrs. Wardour and her daughter, and yet here was Mrs. Wardour assuring her that so many friends of Ella were here.... Where were the friends? Were they invisible? Was the box in reality crowded with unseen presences?...

  “I’m Mrs. Trentham,” she said, clinging firmly to that sure and certain fact. “May Trentham. Ella told me you would expect me.”

  Mrs. Wardour appeared to be making an effort of recollection. This, in a few moments, seemed successful.

  “That’s correct,” she said. “I remember; and this is my daughter Silvia.”

  For a moment her face slipped off its sheath of meaninglessness, and something homely and kindly and simple gleamed in it.

  “I’ve got two boxes to-night, Mrs. Trentham,” she said. “This and the next, as Lady Thirlmere — Ella — so kindly sent along such a quantity of her friends. That’s what it is; and so Silvia and I (didn’t we, Silvia?) we left the other box, seeing that it was so full, and came in here, for, naturally, I wanted to put my guests where they could see the play, and Silvia and I, we wanted to see, too. Mrs. Trentham was it? And I’m sure I’m very glad to; see you and your young friends. I should like them all to be introduced to me and Silvia.
”

  Charlie had hung up his hat and coat during this; amazing conversation, and now came forward.

  “How-de-do?” he said.

  “I haven’t caught the name yet,” said Mrs. Wardour. The sheath had gone back over her face again.

  “This is Lord Charles Harmer,” said Mrs. Trentham.

  “Indeed. The son of the Marquis of Nairn?” asked Mrs. Wardour.

  Charlie opened his mouth very wide.

  “Brother!” he exclaimed, as if he were saying “Murder!” on the Lyceum stage.

  Tommy and Peter were less important; the latter, when the introductions were over, found himself sitting between Silvia and her mother. On the further side of Mrs. Wardour was May Trentham between the other two young men and already absorbed in identifying the occupants of boxes opposite and blowing kisses.

  “There! There’s just room for all of us,” said Mrs. Wardour, “without squeezing each other. We were too squeezed in the other box, weren’t we Silvia? There’s six in the other box, and now we’re six here. Let me think; there’s Lord Poole and there’s Lady Poole. There’s Mrs. Heaton, and there’s Miss Heaton, and there’s Mr. Philip Beaumont. That’s five. Miss Heaton is engaged to Mr. Beaumont; isn’t that it, Silvia? I want to get it clear.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Peter.

  “Indeed! Do you know Miss Heaton?” asked Mrs. Wardour.

  “Yes, very well,” said he.

  “That’s what’s so pleasant,” said she. “Just to sit here and know everybody. That’s what we want, Silvia, isn’t it? Just to sit and know everybody. But that only makes five. Who’s the other one?” His name began with F, and he was very fat.”

  “Perhaps that was his name,” said Peter. He was beginning to enjoy himself; the whole thing was such complete nonsense. What kept up the high level of it was that Mrs. Wardour replied with seriousness: