THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
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consulted either Berts or me."
Nadine looked pained.
"Did you really think I was admitting poor John without consulting you?" she said. "Though he complies with the regulations."
Hugh, streaming with the response that a healthy skin gives to heat, threw himself down on the grass.
"I vote against John!" he said. "I would sooner vote for Seymour. And I won't vote for him. Also, it is surely time to go and bathe."
"I don't know what you are all talking about," said John. "I daresay it doesn't matter. But what is the clan?"
Hugh sat up.
"The clan is nearly prigs," he said, "but not quite. But you are, quite. We are saved because we do laugh at ourselves—"
"And you are not saved because you don't," added Nadine.
"And is the whole object of the clan to think?" asked John.
"No, that is the subject. Also you speak as if we all had said, 'Let there be a clan, and it was so,'" said Nadine. "You mustn't think that. There was a clan, and we discovered it, like Newton and the orange."
"Apple, surely," said John.
Nadine looked brilliantly round.
"I knew he would say that," she said. "You see you correct what I say, whereas a clansman would be content to understand what I mean."
"Bishop Algie is clan, by the way," said Hugh. "I went down to bathe before breakfast, and found him kneeling down on the beach saying his prayers. That is tremendously clannish."
"I don't see why," said John.
Esther sighed.
"No, of course you wouldn't see," she said.
"Try him with another," said Nadine.
Esther considered.
"Attend, John," she said. "When the last Stevenson letters came out, Berts bought them and looked at one page. Then he took a taxi to Paddington and took a return ticket to Bristol."
"Swindon," said Berts.
"The station is immaterial, so long as it was far away. I daresay Swindon is quite as far as Bristol."
John smiled.
"There you are quite wrong," he said. "Swindon comes before Bath, and Bristol after Bath. No doubt it does not matter, though it is as well to be accurate."
Esther looked at him with painful anxiety.
"But don't you see why Berts went to Swindon or Bristol?" she said. "Poor dear, you do see now. That is hopeless. You ought to have felt. To reason out what should have been a flash, is worse than not to have understood at all."
John, again like all other prigs, was patient with those not so gifted as himself.
"I daresay you will explain to me what it all amounts to," he said. "All I am certain of is that Berts wanted to read Stevenson's letters and so got into a train, where he would be undisturbed. Wouldn't it have answered the same purpose if he had taken a room at the Paddington hotel?"
Nadine turned to Berts.
"Oh, Berts, that would have been rather lovely," she said.
"Not at all," said he. "I wanted the sense of travel."
John got up.
"Then I should have recommended the Underground," he said. "You could have gone round and round until you had finished. It would have been much cheaper."
Nadine waved impotent arms of despair.
"Now you have spoiled it," she said. "There was a possibility in the Paddington hotel, which sounds so remote. But the Underground! You might as well say, why do I bathe, I who cannot swim? I can get clean in a bath, though I only get dirty in the sea, and if I want the salt I can put Tiddle-de-wink salt or whatever the name is in my bath—"
"Tidman," said John.
"I am sure you are right, though who cares? I am knocked down by cold waves, I am cut by stones on my soles. I am pinched by crabs and homards, at least I think I am; the wind gnaws at my bones, and my hair is as salt as almonds. Between my toes is sand, and bits of seaweed make me a plaster, and my stockings fall into rock-pools, but do I go with rapture to have a bath in the bathroom? I hate washing. There is nothing so sordid as to wash my face, except to brush my teeth. But to bathe in the sea makes me think: it gives me romance. Poor John, you never get romance. You amass information, and make a Blue Book. But we all, we make blue mountains, which we never reach. If we reached them they would probably turn out to be green. As it is, they are always blue, because they are beyond. It is suggestion that we seek, not attainment. To attain is dull, to aspire is the sugar and salt of life. Don't you see? To realize an ideal is to lose the ideal. It is like a man growing rich: he never sees his sovereigns: when he has gained them he flings them forth again into something further. If he left them in a box, the real sovereigns, under his bed, what chance would there be for him to grow rich? But out they go, he never uses them, except that he makes them breed. It is the same with the riches of the mind. An idea, an ideal is yours. Do you keep it? Personally you do. But we, no. We invest it again. It is to our credit, at this bank of the mind. We do not hoard it, and spend it piecemeal. We put it into something else. What I have perceived in music, I put into plays: what I have perceived in plays I put into pictures. I never let it remain at home. But when I shall be a millionaire of the mind, what, what then? Yes, that makes me pause. Perhaps it will all be converted, as they convert bonds, is it not, and I shall put it all into love. Who knows, La-la."
Nadine paused a moment, but nobody spoke. Hugh was watching her with the absorption that was always his when she was there. But after a moment she spoke again.
"We talk what you call rot," she said. "But it is not rot. The people who always talk sense arrive at less. There are sparks that fly, as when you strike one flint with another. Your English philosophers—who are they?—Mr. Chesterton I suppose, is he not a philosopher?—or some Machiavelli or other, they sit down soberly to think, and when they have thought they wrap up their thought in paradox, as you wrap up a pill for your dog, so that he swallows it, and his inside becomes bitter. That is not the way. You must start with pure enjoyment, and when a thought comes, you must fling it into the air. They hit a bird, or turn into a rainbow, or fall on your head—but what matter? You others sit and think, and when you have thought of something you put it in a beastly book, and have finished with it. You prigs turn the world topsy-turvy that way. You do not start with joy, and you go forth in a slough of despondent information. Ah, yes: the child who picks up a match and rubs it against something and finds it catches fire removes the romance of the match, more than Mr. Bryant and May and Boots is it? who made the match. Matches are made on earth, but the child who knows nothing about them and strikes one is the person who is in heaven. You are not content with the wonder and romance of the world, you prefer to explain the rainbow away instead of looking at it. It is a sort of murder to explain things away: you kill their souls, and demonstrate that it is only hydrogen."
She looked up at Hugh.
"We talked about it last night," she said. "We settled that it was a great misfortune to understand too well—"
A footman arrived at this moment with a telegram which he handed to Berts, who opened it. He gave a shout of laughter and passed it to Nadine.
"What shall I say?" he asked.
"But of course 'yes,'" she said. "It is quite unnecessary to ask Mama."
Berts scribbled a couple of words on the reply-paid form.
"It's only my mother," he said in general explanation. "She wants to come over for a day or two, and see Aunt Dodo again, but she doesn't feel sure if Aunt Dodo wants to see her. Are you sure there's a room, Nadine?"
"There always is some kind of room," said Nadine. "She can sleep in three-quarters of my bed, if not."
"I'm so glad she is tired of being a silly ass, as we settled she was last night," said