THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
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it is absurd that you and I should quarrel. You've got such a low opinion of me; though I suppose that's as much my fault as yours. Your opinion is fiction, but I am the fact on which it is founded, and what do you take me for? The Prince telegraphed from Dover to ask if I would see him, and I deliberately sent no answer. How he found out where I was I don't know. I suppose he got hold of the telegram I sent here to say my address was uncertain. Does that look as if I wanted to see him so dreadfully?"
"I never said you did want to see him," said Jack. "I said he very much wanted to see you, and what you say proves it."
"Well, what then?" said Dodo. "You wanted to see me very much when I was married. Would you have thought it reasonable if Chesterford had entreated me never to see you—to keep away for God's sake, as you said just now?"
"I am not the Prince," said Jack, "neither am I going to be treated as you treated your husband. Do not let us refer to him again; it is a desecration."
"You mean that in the light of subsequent events it would have been reasonable in him to ask me to keep away from you?"
"Yes," said he.
Jack looked Dodo full in the face, in the noble shame of a confessed sin: In that moment he was greater, perhaps, and had risen higher above his vague self-satisfied indifference than ever before. Dodo felt it, and it irritated her, it seemed positively unpardonable.
"Perhaps you do not see that you involve me in your confession," she said with cold scorn. "I decline to be judged by your standards, thanks."
Jack felt a sudden immense pity and anger for her. She would not, or could not, accept the existence of other points of view than her own.
"Apparently you decline to consider the fact of other standards at all."
"I don't accept views which seem to me unreasonable," she said.
"I only ask you to consider this particular view. The story you have just told me shows that he is anxious to see you, which was my point. That he is dangerous and strong I ask you to accept."
"What if I don't?" she asked.
"This," said he. "When a man of that sort desires anything, as he evidently desires you, there is danger. If you are alive to it, and as strong as he is, you are safe. That you are not alive to it you show by your present position; that you are as strong as he, I doubt."
"You assume far too much," said Dodo. "What you mean by my present position I don't care to know. But I am perfectly alive to the whole state of the case. Wait. I will speak. I entirely decline to be dictated to. I shall do as I choose in this matter."
"Do you quite realise what that means?" said Jack, rising.
Dodo had risen too; she was standing before him with a great anger burning in her eyes. Her face was very pale, and she moved towards the bell.
When a boat is in the rapids the cataract is inevitable.
"It means this," she said. "He will be here in a minute or two; I told him I should be in at twelve. I am going to ring the bell and tell the man to show him up. You will stay here, and treat him as one man should treat another. If you are insolent to him, understand that you include me. You will imply that you distrust me. Perhaps you would ring the bell for me, as you are closer to it."
She sat down by her writing-table and waited.
Jack paused with his hand on the bell.
"I will be perfectly explicit with you," he said. "If you see him, you see him alone. I do not wish to hear what he has to say to you. As he enters the door I leave it. That is all. You may choose."
He rang the bell.
"There is no reason for you to wait till then," said Dodo. "I am going to see him as soon as he comes. Tell Prince Waldenech that I am in," she said to the footman. "Show him up as soon as he comes."
Jack leant against the chimney-piece.
"Well?" said Dodo.
"I am making up my mind."
There was a dead silence. "What on earth are we quarrelling about?" thought Jack to himself. "Is it simply whether I stop here and talk to that cad? I wonder if all women are as obstinate as this."
It did seem a little ridiculous, but he felt that his dignity forbade him to yield. He had told her he did not distrust her; that was enough. No, he would go away, and when he came back to-morrow Dodo would be more reasonable.
"I think I am going," remarked he. "I sha'n't see you again till to-morrow afternoon. I am away to-night."
Dodo was turning over the pages of a magazine and did not answer. Jack became a little impatient.
"Really, this is extraordinarily childish," he said. "I sha'n't stop to see the Prince because he is a detestable cad. Think it over, Dodo."
At the mention of the Prince, if Jack had been watching Dodo more closely, he might have seen a sudden colour rush to her face, faint but perceptible. But he was devoting his attention to keeping his temper, and stifling a vague dread and distrust, which he was too loyal to admit.
At the door he paused a moment.
"Ah, Dodo," he said, with entreaty in his voice.
Dodo did not move nor look at him.
He left the room without more words, and on the stair he met the Prince. He bowed silently to his greeting, and stood aside for him to pass.
The Prince glanced back at him with amusement.
"His lordship does me the honour to be jealous of me," he said to himself.
Next day Jack called at Dodo's house. The door was opened by a servant, whose face he thought he ought to know; that he was not one of Dodo's men he felt certain. In another moment it had flashed across him that the man had been with the Prince at Zermatt.
"Is Lady Chesterford in?" he asked.
The man looked at him a moment, and then, like all well-bred servants, dropped his eyes before he answered,—
"Her Serene Highness left for Paris this morning."
Dodo's Daughter
or
Dodo the Second