Works of e f benson, p.485
Works of E F Benson, page 485
“Do you suppose she would come away?” said Jack, coughing a little at the dust his great feet had raised from the loose soil.
“Yes, if you can persuade her that her presence isn’t good for Hugh. So you will try; that’s all right. Nadine has a great respect for Papa Jack’s wisdom, and I can’t think why. I always thought a lot of your heart, dear, but very little of your head. You mustn’t retort that you never thought much of either of mine, because it wouldn’t be manly, and I should tell you you were a coward as the Suffragettes do when they hit policemen in the face.”
“And why should it be I to do all this?” asked Jack.
“Because you are Papa Jack,” said Dodo, “and a girl listens to a man when she would not heed a woman. Oh, you might tell her, which is probably true, that Edith is going away to-morrow, and you want somebody to take care of you at Winston. I think even Nadine would see that it would not quite do if she was left here alone with Hughie. At least it is possible she might see that: you could use it to help to preach down a stepdaugher’s heart. You must think of these things for yourself, though, because in my heart I am really altogether on Nadine’s side. I think it is wonderful that she should now be waiting so eagerly and humbly for Hugh, poor crippled Hugh, as he at present is, to speak. She has chosen the good part like Mary, and I want you for the present to take it away from her. It’s wiser for her to go, but am I,” asked Dodo grammatically, “to supply the ruthless foe, which is you, with guns and ammunition against my daughter?”
“You can’t take both sides,” remarked Jack.
“Jack, I wish you were a woman for one minute, just to feel how ludicrous such an observation is. Our lives — not perhaps Edith’s — are passed in taking both sides. My whole heart goes out to Hugh, who has been so punished for his gallant recklessness, and then the moment I say ‘punished’ I think of Nadine’s awakened love and shout, ‘No, I meant rewarded.’ Then I think of Nadine, and wonder if I could bear being married to a cripple, and simultaneously, now that she has shown she can love, I cannot bear the thought of her being married to anybody else. After all Nelson had only one eye and one arm, and though he wasn’t exactly married to Lady Hamilton, I’m sure she was divinely happy. But then, best of all, I think of Hugh making a complete recovery, and once more coming to Nadine with his great brown doggy eyes, and telling her.... Then for once I don’t take both sides, but only one, which is theirs, and if it would advance their happiness, I would even take away from poor little Seymour his jade and his Antoinette, which is all that Nadine left him with, without a single qualm of regret.”
Jack considered this a moment.
“After all, she has left him where she found him,” said Jack, who had rather taken Edith’s view about their marriage. “He had only his Antoinette and his jade when she accepted him, and until you make a further raid, he will have them still.”
Dodo shook her head.
“Jack, it is rather tiresome of you,” she said. “You are making me begin to have qualms for Seymour. She had found his heart for him, you see, and now having taken everything out of it, she has gone away again, leaving him a cupboard as empty as Mother Hubbard’s.”
“He will put the jade back — and Antoinette,” said Jack hopefully.
Dodo got up.
“That is what I doubt,” she said. “Until we have known a thing, we can’t miss it. We only miss it when we have known it, and it is taken away, leaving the room empty. Then old things won’t always go back into their places again; they look shabby and uninteresting, and the room is spoiled. It is very unfortunate. But what is to happen when a girl’s heart is suddenly awakened? Is she to give it an opiate? What is the opiate for heart-ache? Surely not marriage with somebody different. Yet jilt is an ugly word.”
Dodo looked at Jack with a sort of self-deprecation.
“Don’t blame Nadine, darling,” she said. “She inherited it; it runs in the family.”
Jack jumped up, and took Dodo’s hands in his.
“You shall not talk horrible scandal about the woman I love,” he said.
“But it’s true,” said Dodo.
“Therefore it is the more abominable of you to repeat it,” said he.
But there was a certain obstinacy about Dodo that morning.
“I think it’s good for me to keep that scandal alive in my heart,” she said. “Usen’t the monks to keep peas in their boots to prevent them from getting too comfortable?”
“Monks were idiots,” said Jack loudly, “and any one less like a monk than you, I never saw. Monk indeed! Besides, I believe they used to boil the peas first.”
Dodo’s face, which had been a little troubled, cleared considerably.
“That showed great commonsense,” she said. “I don’t think they can have been such idiots. Jack, if I boil that pea, would you mind my still keeping it in my boot?”
“Rather messy,” said he. “Better take it out. After all, you did really take it out when you married me.”
Dodo raised her eyes to his.
“David shall take it out,” she said.
Jack had not at present heard of this nomenclature. In fact, it does him credit that he instantly guessed to whom allusion was being made.
“Oh, that’s settled, is it?” he said. “And now, David’s mother, give me a little news of yourself. Is all well?”
Dodo’s mouth grew extraordinarily tender.
“Oh, so well, Jesse,” she said, “so well!”
She was standing a foot or so above him, on the steep hillside, and bending down to him, kissed him, and was silent a moment. Then she decided swiftly and characteristically that a few words like those that had just passed between them were as eloquent as longer speeches, and became her more usual self again.
“You are such a dear, Jack,” she said, “and I will forgive your dreadful ignorance of the name of David’s mother. Oh, look at the sea-gulls fishing for their lunch. Oh, for the wings of a sea-gull, not to fly away and be at rest at all, but to take me straight to the dining-room. And I feel certain Nadine will listen to you, and it would be a good thing to take her away for a little. She is living on her nerves, which is as expensive as eating pearls like Cleopatra.”
“Drinking,” said Jack. “She dissolved them—”
“Darling, vinegar doesn’t dissolve pearls: it is a complete mistake to suppose it does. She took the pearls like a pill, and drank some vinegar afterwards. Jack, pull me up the hill, not because I am tired, but because it is pleasanter so. I am sorry you are going to-morrow, and I shall make love to Hughie after you’ve gone and pretend it’s you. I do pray Hughie may get quite well, and he and Nadine, and you and I all have our heart’s desire. Edith too: I hope she will write a symphony so beautiful that by common consent we shall throw away all the works of Beethoven and Bach and Brahms just as we throw away antiquated Bradshaws.”
She was rather out of breath after delivering herself of this series of remarkable statements, and Jack got in a word.
“And who was David’s mother?” he asked, with a rather tiresome reversion to an abandoned topic.
“I don’t know or care,” said Dodo with dignity. “But I’m going to be.”
It required all Jack’s wisdom to persuade Nadine to go away with him, more particularly because at the first opening of the subject, Edith, who was present, and whom Jack had unfortunately forgotten to take into his confidence, gave a passionate denial to the fact that she was departing also. But in the end she yielded, for during this last fortnight she had felt (as by the illumination of her love she could not help doing) that at present she ‘meant’ very little to Hugh. Her presence, which on that first critical night had not done less than set his face towards life instead of death, had, she felt, since then, dimly troubled and perplexed him. Every day she had thought that he would need her, but each day passed, and he still lay there, with a barrier between him and her. Yet any day he might want her, and she was loth to go. But she knew how tired and overstrained she felt herself, and the ingenious Papa Jack made use of this.
“You have given him all you can, my dear, for the present,” he said. “Come away and rest, and — what is Dodo’s phrase? — fill your pond again. You mustn’t become exhausted; you will be so much wanted.”
“And I may come back if Hughie wants me?” she asked.
That was easy to answer. If Hugh really wanted her, the difficult situation solved itself. But there was one thing more.
“I don’t suppose I need ask it,” said Nadine, “but if Hughie gets worse, much worse, then I may come? I — I couldn’t be there, then.”
Jack kissed her.
“My dear girl,” he said, “what do you take me for? An ogre? But we won’t think about that at all. Please God, you will not come back for that reason.”
Nadine very rudely dried her eyes on his rough homespun sleeve.
“You are such a comfort, Papa,” she said. “You’re quite firm and strong, like — like a big wisdom-tooth. And when we are at Winston, will you let Seymour come down and see me if he wants to? And — and if he comes will you come and interrupt us in half-an-hour? I’ve behaved horribly to him, but I can’t help it, and it — that we weren’t to be married, I mean — was in the Morning Post to-day, and it looked so horrible and cold. But whatever he wants to say to me, I think half-an-hour is sufficient. I wonder — I wonder if you know why I behaved like such a pig.”
“I think I might guess,” said Jack.
“Then you needn’t, because there’s only one possible guess. So we’ll assume that you know. What a nuisance women are to your poor, long-suffering sex. Especially girls.”
Jack laughed.
“They are just as much a nuisance afterwards,” said he. “Look at your mother, how she is making life one perpetual martyrdom to me.”
“But she used to be a nuisance to you, Papa Jack,” said Nadine.
“There again you are wrong,” he said. “I always loved her.”
“And does that prevent one’s being a nuisance?” asked Nadine. “Are you sure? Because if you are, you needn’t interrupt Seymour quite so soon. I said half-an-hour, because I thought that would be time enough for him to tell me what a nuisance I was—”
“You’re a heartless little baggage,” observed Jack.
“Not quite,” said Nadine.
“Well, you’re an April day,” said he, seeing the smile break through.
“And that is a doubtful compliment,” said she. “But you are wrong if you think I am not sorry for Seymour. Yet what was I to do, Papa Jack, when I made The Discovery?”
“Well, you’re not a heartless little baggage,” conceded Jack, “but you have taken your heart out of one piece of the baggage, and packed it in another.”
“Oh, la, la,” said Nadine. “We mix our metaphors.”
Nadine left with Jack in the motor soon after breakfast next morning. It had been settled that she should not tell Hugh she was going, until she said good-by to him, and when she went to his room next morning to do so, she found him still asleep, and the tall nurse entirely refused to have him awakened.
“Much better for him to sleep than to say good-by,” said this adamantine woman. “When he wakes, he shall be told you have gone, if he asks.”
“Of course he’ll ask,” said Nadine.
She paused a moment.
“Will you let me know if he doesn’t?” she added.
Nurse Bryerley’s grim capable face relaxed into a smile. She did not quite understand the situation, but she was quite content to do her best for her patient according to her lights.
“And shall I say that you’ll be back soon?” she asked.
Nadine had no direct reply to this.
“Ah, do make him get well,” she said.
“That’s what I’m here for. And I will say that you’ll be back soon, shall I, if he wants you?”
“Soon?” said Nadine. “That minute.”
Hugh slept long that morning, and Dodo was not told he was awake and ready to receive a morning call till the travelers had been gone a couple of hours. She had spent them in a pleasant atmosphere of conscious virtue, engendered by the feeling that she had sent Jack away when she would much have preferred his stopping here. But as Dodo explained to Edith it took quite a little thing to make her feel good, whereas it took a lot to make her feel wicked.
“A nice morning, for instance,” she said, “or sending my darling Jack away because it’s good for Nadine, or getting a postal-order. Quite little things like that make me feel a perfect saint. Whereas the powers of hell have to do their worst, as the hymn says, to make me feel wicked.”
Edith gave a rather elaborate sigh. She had to sigh carefully because she had a cigarette and a pen in her mouth, while she was scratching out a blot she had made on the score she was revising. So care was needed; otherwise cigarette and pen might have been shot from her mouth. When she spoke her utterance was indistinct and mumbling.
“I suppose you infer that you are more at home in heaven than hell,” she said, “since just a touch makes you feel a saint. I should say it was the other way about. You are so at home in the other place that the most abysmal depths of infamy have to be presented to you before you know they are wicked at all, whereas you hail as divine the most infinitesimal distraction that breaks the monotonous round of vice. Perhaps I am expressing myself too strongly, but I feel strongly. The world is more high-colored to me than to other people.”
“Darling, I never heard such a moderate and well-balanced statement,” said Dodo. “Do go on.”
“I don’t want to. But I thought your optimism about yourself was sickly, and wanted a — a dash of discouragement. But you and Nadine are both the same: if you behave charmingly, you tell us to give the praise to you; if you behave abominably you say, ‘I can’t help it: it was Nature’s fault for making me like that.’ Now I am not like that: whatever I do, I take the responsibility, and say, ‘I am I. Take me or leave me.’ But I have no doubt that Nadine believes it has been too wonderful of her to fall in love with Hugh. And when she jilts Seymour, she says ‘Enquire at Nature’s Workshop; this firm is entirely independent.’ Bah!”
Dodo laughed, but her laugh died rather quickly.
“Ah, don’t be hard, Edith,” she said. “We most of us want encouragement at times, and we have to encourage ourselves by making ourselves out as nice as we can. Otherwise we should look on the mess we make of things as a hopeless job. Perhaps it is hopeless but that is the one thing we mustn’t allow. We are like” — Dodo paused for a simile— “we are like children to whom is given a quantity of lovely little squares of mosaic, and we know, our souls know, that they can be put together into the most beautiful patterns. And we begin fairly well, but then the devil comes along, and jogs our elbow, and smashes it all up. Probably it is our own stupidity, but it is more encouraging to say it is the devil or nature, something not ourselves. Good heavens, my elbow has jogged often enough! And when the pattern gets on well, we encourage ourselves by saying, ‘This is clever and good and wise Me doing it now!’ And then perhaps something very big and solemn comes our way, and we bow our heads, and know it isn’t ourselves at all.”
Edith had finished erasing her blot, and was gathering her sheets together. She tapped them dramatically with an inky forefinger.
“This is big and solemn,” she said. “But it’s Me. The artist’s inspiration never comes from outside: it is always from within. I’m going to send it to have the band parts copied to-day.”
At the moment the message came that Hugh received, and Dodo got up. He had received Edith one morning, but the effect was that he had eaten no lunch and had dozed uneasily all afternoon. Edith had been content with the explanation that her vitality was too strong for him, and, while ready to give him another dose of it, did not press the matter; anyhow, she had other business on hand.
He lay propped up in bed, with a wad of pillows at his back. He looked far more alert and present than he had yet done. Hitherto, he had been slow to grasp the meaning of what was said to him, and he hardly ever volunteered a statement or question, but this morning he smiled and spoke with quite unusual quickness.
“Morning, Aunt Dodo,” he said. “I’m awfully brisk to-day.”
Nurse Bryerley put in a warning word.
“Don’t be too brisk,” she said. “Please don’t let him be too brisk,” she added, looking at Dodo.
“Hughie, dear, you do look better,” she said; “but we’ll all be quite calm, and self-contained like flats.”
Hugh frowned for a moment; then his face cleared again.
“I see,” he said. “Bright, aren’t I? Aunt Dodo, I have certainly woke up this morning. You look real, do you know; before I was never quite certain about you. You looked as if you might be a good forgery, but spurious. Have a cigarette, and why shouldn’t I?”
“Wiser not,” said Nurse Bryerley laconically.
Hugh’s briskness did not seem to be entirely good-natured.
“How on earth could a cigarette hurt me?” he said. “Perhaps it would be wiser for Lady Chesterford not to smoke either. Aunt Dodo, you mustn’t smoke. Wiser not.”
Nurse Bryerley smiled with secret content.
