THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
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had pleased her before, sent no message from her palate to her brain. It was like the effect produced by the touch of hot iron on the skin, that forms a hard numb surface, which is curiously insensitive to touch. Dodo felt as if her powers of sensation had been seared in this way. Her perceptions no longer answered quickly to the causes that excited them; a layer of dull, unresponsive material lay between her and her world. She thought that her nerves and tissues were sound enough below. This numbness was only superficial, the burn would heal, and her skin would become pliant and soft again; and if she was conscious of all this and its corresponding causes, it could hardly be expected that Jack would be unconscious of it and its corresponding effects.
On this particular morning Dodo was particularly aware of it. It was raining dismally outside, and the sky was heavy and grey. The road was being repaired, and a traction engine was performing its dismal office in little aimless runs backwards and forwards. The official with a red flag had found there were no vehicles for him to warn and he had sat down on a heap of stones, and was smoking. There was a general air of stagnation, a sense of the futility of doing anything, and no one was more conscious of it than Dodo. She felt that there was only one event that was likely to interest her, and yet, in a way, she shrank from that. It was the searing process over again.
She wondered whether it would do any good to tell Jack of the fact that the Prince was down at Wokingham. She found the burden of an unshared secret exceptionally trying. Dodo had been so accustomed to be before the footlights all her life, that anything of the nature of a secret was oppressive. Her conduct to her first husband she did not regard as such. It was only an admirable piece of by-play, which the audience fully appreciated. Did Dodo then never think of her late husband with tenderness? Well, not often.
A thought seldom remained long in Dodo's mind without finding expression. She turned round suddenly.
"Jack, Prince Waldenech was at Wokingham."
"What was he there for?" asked Jack quickly.
"I think he came to see me," remarked Dodo serenely.
"I hope you didn't see him," he replied.
Dodo felt a slight stimulus in this subject.
"I saw him," she said, "because he came to see me, as they say in the French exercise books. I couldn't hide my head under the hearthrug like an ostrich—hot that they hide their heads under hearth-rugs, but the principle is the same. He walked in as cool as a cucumber, and said, 'Howdy?' So we talked, and he said he'd be glad to call you out, and you'd be glad to call him out, and we generally chattered, and then I made him angry."
"Why did he propose to call me out?" asked Jack coldly.
"Oh, he said he wouldn't call you out," remarked Dodo. "He said nothing would induce him to. I never said he proposed to call you out. You're stupid this morning, Jack."
"That man is an unutterable cad."
Dodo opened her eyes.
"Oh, he's nothing of the kind," she said. "Besides, he's a great friend of mine, so even if he was a cad it wouldn't matter."
"How did you make him angry?" demanded Jack.
"I told him I was going away to write some letters. It was rather damping, wasn't it? I hadn't got any letters to write, and he knew it, and I knew he knew it, and so on."
Jack was silent. He had been puzzled by Dodo's comparative reserve during the last few days. He felt as if he had missed a scene in a play, that there were certain things unexplained. He had even gone so far as to ask Dodo if anything was the matter, an inquiry which she detested profoundly. She laid down a universal rule on this occasion.
"Nothing is ever the matter," she had said, "and if it was, my not telling you would show that I didn't wish for sympathy, or help, or anything else. I tell you all I want you to know."
"You mean something is the matter, and you don't want me to know it," said Jack, rather unwisely.
They had been riding together when this occurred, and at that point Dodo had struck her horse savagely with her whip, and put an end to the conversation by galloping furiously off. When Jack caught her up she was herself again, and described how a selection of Edith's dogs had kept the postman at bay one morning, until the unusual absence of barking and howling had led their mistress to further investigations, which were rewarded by finding the postman sitting in the boat-house, and defending himself with the punt pole.
Jack was singularly easy-going, and very trustful, and he did not bother his head any more about it at the time. But we have to attain an almost unattainable dominion over our minds to prevent thoughts suddenly starting up in front of us. When a thought has occurred to one, it is a matter of training and practice to encourage or dismiss it, but the other is beyond the reach of the general. And as Dodo finished these last words, Jack found himself suddenly face to face with a new thought. It was so new that it startled him, and he looked at it again. At moments like these two people have an almost supernatural power of intuition towards each other. Dodo was standing in the window, and Jack was sitting in a very low chair, looking straight towards her, with the light from the window full on his face, and at that moment she read his thought as clearly as if he had spoken it, for it was familiar already to her.
She felt a sudden impulse of anger.
"How dare you think that?" she said.
Jack needed no explanation, and he behaved well.
"Dodo," he said gently, "you have no right to say that, but you have said it now. If there is not anything I had better know, just tell me so, for your own sake and for mine. I can only plead for your forgiveness. It was by no will of mine that such a thought crossed my mind. You can afford to be generous, Dodo."
Something in his speech made Dodo even angrier.
"You are simply forcing my confidence," she said. "If it was something you had better know, do you suppose that——"
She stopped abruptly.
Jack rose from his chair and stood by her in the window.
"You are not very generous to me," he said. "We are old friends though we are lovers."
"Take care you don't lose my friendship, then," said Dodo fiercely. "It is no use saying 'auld lang syne' when 'auld lang syne' is in danger. It would be like singing 'God save the Queen' when she was dying. You should never recall old memories when they are strained."
Jack was getting a little impatient, though he was not frightened yet.
"Dodo, you really are rather unreasonable," he said. "To begin with, you quarrel with an unspoken thought, and you haven't even given me a definite accusation."
"That is because it is unnecessary, and you know it," said Dodo. "However, as you like. You think you have cause to be jealous or foolish or melodramatic about Prince Waldenech. Dear me, it is quite like old times."
Jack turned on her angrily.
"If you propose to treat me as you treated that poor man, who was the best man I ever knew," he said, "the sooner you learn your mistake the better for us both. It would have been in better taste not to have referred to that."
"At present that is beside the point," said Dodo. "Was that your unspoken thought, or was it not?"
"If I would not insult you by speaking my thought whether you are right or not," said Jack, "I shall not insult you by answering that question. My answer shall take another form. Listen, Dodo. The Prince is in love with you. He proposed to you at Zermatt. That passionless inhuman piece of mechanism, his sister, told me how much he was in love with you. She meant it as a compliment. He is a dangerous, bad man. He forces himself on you. He went down to Wokingham to see you; you told me so yourself. He is dangerous and strong. For God's sake keep away from him. I don't distrust you; but I am afraid you may get to distrust yourself. He will make you afraid of crossing his will. Dodo, will you do this for me? It is quite unreasonable probably, but I am unreasonable when I think of you."
"Oh, my dear Jack," said Dodo impatiently, "you really make me angry. It is dreadfully bad form to be angry,