THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
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and slap the children. It would have been the making of her."
"It would have been a different sort of making," remarked the Prince.
"I believe you can even get blasé of being bored," said Miss Grantham, "and then, of course, you don't get bored any longer, because you are bored with it."
This remarkable statement was instantly contradicted by Edith.
"Being bored is a bottomless pit," she remarked. "You never get to the end, and the deeper you go the longer it takes to get out. I was never bored in my life. I like listening to what the dullest people say."
"Oh, but it's when they don't say anything that they're so trying," said Miss Grantham.
"I don't mind that a bit," remarked Dodo. "I simply think aloud to them. The less a person says the more I talk, and then suddenly I see that they're shocked at me, or that they don't understand. The Prince is often shocked at me, only he's too polite to say so. I don't mean that you're a dull person, you know, but he always understands. You know he's quite intelligent," Dodo went on, introducing him with a wave of her hand, like a showman with a performing animal. "He knows several languages. He will talk on almost any subject you wish. He was thirty-five years of age last May, and will be thirty-six next May."
"He has an admirable temper," said the Prince, "and is devoted to his keeper."
"Oh, I'm not your keeper," said Dodo. "I wouldn't accept the responsibility. I'm only reading extracts from the advertisement about you."
"I was only reading extracts as well," observed the Prince. "Surely the intelligent animal, who knows several languages, may read its own advertisement?"
"I'm not so sure about your temper," said Dodo, reflectively: "I shall alter it to 'is believed to have an admirable temper.'"
"Never shows fight," said the Prince.
"But is willing to fight if told to," said she. "He said so himself."
"Oh, but I only bark when I bite," said the Prince, alluding to his modern system of duelling.
"Then your bite is as bad as your bark," remarked Dodo, "which is a sign of bad temper. And now, my dear Prince, if we talk any more about you, you will get intolerably conceited, and that won't do at all. I can't bear conceited men. They always seem to me to be like people on stilts. They are probably not taller than oneself really, and they're out of all proportion, all legs, and no body or head. I don't want anyone to bring themselves down to my level when they talk to me. Conceited people always do that. They get off their stilts. If there's one thing that amuses me more than another, it is getting hold of their stilts and sawing them half through. Then, when they get up again they come down 'Bang,' and you say: 'Oh, I hope you haven't hurt yourself. I didn't know you went about on stilts. They are very unsafe, aren't they?'"
Dodo was conscious of talking rather wildly and incoherently. She felt like a swimmer being dragged down by a deep undercurrent. All she could do was to make a splash on the surface. She could not swim quietly or strongly out of its reach. She stood by the window playing with the blind cord, wishing that the Prince would not look at her. He had a sort of deep, lazy strength about him that made Dodo distrust herself—the indolent consciousness of power that a tiger has when he plays contemptuously with his prey before hitting it with one deadly blow of that soft cushioned paw.
"Why can't I treat him like anyone else?" she said to herself impatiently. "Surely I am not afraid of him. I am only afraid of being afraid. He is handsome, and clever, and charming, and amiable, and here am I watching every movement and listening to every word he says. It's all nonsense. Here goes."
Dodo plunged back into the room, and sat down in the chair next him.
"What a charming time we had at Zermatt," she said. "That sort of place is so nice if you simply go there in order to amuse yourself without the bore of entertaining people. Half the people who go there treat it as their great social effort of the year. As if one didn't make enough social efforts at home!"
"Ah, Zermatt," said the Prince, meditatively. "It was the most delightful month I ever spent."
"Did you like it?" said Dodo negligently. "I should have thought that sort of place would have bored you. There was nothing to do. I expected you would rush off as soon as you got there, and go to shoot or something."
"Like Lord Chesterford and the partridges," suggested Edith.
"Oh, that's different," said Dodo. "Jack thinks it's the duty of every English landlord to shoot partridges. He's got great ideas of his duty."
"Even when it interferes with what must have been his pleasure, apparently," said the Prince.
"Oh; Jack and I will see plenty of each other in course of time. I'm not afraid he will go and play about without me."
"You are too merciful," said the Prince.
"Oh, I sha'n't be hard on Jack. I shall make every allowance for his shortcomings, and I shall expect that he will make allowance for mine."
"He will have the best of the bargain;" said the Prince.
"You mean that he won't have to make much allowance for me?" asked Dodo. "My dear Prince, that shows how little you really know about me. I can be abominable. Ask Miss Staines if I can't. I can make a man angry quicker than any woman I know. I could make you angry in a minute and a quarter, but I am amiable this morning, and I will spare you."
"Please make me angry," said the Prince.
Dodo laughed, and held out her hand to him.
"Then you will excuse my leaving you?" she said. "I've got a letter to write before the midday post. That ought to make you angry. Are you stopping to lunch? No? Au revoir, then. We shall meet again sometime soon, I suppose. One is always running up against people."
"Dodo shook hands with elaborate carelessness and went towards the door, which the Prince opened for her.
"You have made me angry," he murmured, as she passed out, "but you will pacify me again, I know."
Dodo went upstairs into her bedroom. She was half frightened at her own resolution, and the effort of appearing quite unconcerned had given her a queer, tired feeling. She heard a door shut in the drawing-room below, and steps in the hall. A faint flush came over her face, and she got up quickly from her chair and rah downstairs. The Prince was in the hall, and he did not look the least surprised to see Dodo again.
"Ah, you are just off?" she asked.
Then she stopped dead, and he waited as if expecting more. Dodo's eyes wandered round the walls and came back to his face again.
"Come and see me in London any time," she said in a low voice. "I shall go back at the end of the week."
The Prince bowed.
"I knew you would pacify me again," he said.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dodo was up again in London at the end of the week, as she had told the Prince. Jack was also staying in town, and they often spent most of the day together; riding occasionally in the deserted Row, or sitting, as they were now, in Dodo's room in the Eaton Square house. They were both leaving for the country in a few days' time, where they had arranged to come across one another at various houses, and Dodo, at least, was finding these few days rather trying. She and Jack had arranged to have them together, quite alone, while they were in Switzerland, and Dodo had overlooked the fact that they might be rather hard to fill up. Not that she was disappointed in Jack. He was exactly what she had always supposed him to be. She never thought that he was very stimulating, though never dull, and she was quite conscious of enough stimulus in herself for that. For the rest he was quite satisfactory. But she was distinctly disappointed in herself. She felt as if her taste had been vitiated by drinking brandy. Mild flavours and very good bouquets of vintages