THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
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shooting-parties—"
"Oh, a story!" said Nadine.
"Well, my dear, you always do your best to spoil them by making a large quantity of young gentlemen, who have been asked to shoot, sit round you and talk to you instead."
"Papa Jack, if you want to call me a flirt, pray do so. I will forgive you instantly. And to save you trouble, I will tell you what you are driving to—"
"At," said Jack.
"Driving to," repeated Nadine with considerable asperity, for she was aware she was wrong. "You want me to be at Meering, and Mama to be at Winston. So why not say so without calling me a flirt?"
"This daughter of Eve—" began Jack.
"My name is Dorothea," interrupted Dodo, "but they call me Dodo for short. I was never called Eve either before, during, or after baptism."
"All I mean," said Jack, "is that Dorothea is not going to divide the week into week-ends, and be twenty-four hours at Meering and then twenty-four at Winston. The master of the house has spoken."
"What a bully!" said Nadine.
"Then I shan't give you a wedding-present," said Jack.
"Darling Papa Jack, you are not a bully. Let's all go down to Meering in a few days, and stop there over Christmas. Then you and Dorothea shall go to Winston, and I shall be left all alone at Meering, and you shall have your horrid shooting-parties and she shall do the flirting instead of me."
"Strictly speaking, will you be all alone at Meering?"
"Not absolutely. I have asked a few friends."
"Who is going to chaperone you all, darling?" said Dodo.
"We shall chaperone each other, as usual."
"That you and Dodo can settle," said Jack. "Good-by: don't quarrel."
"Indeed, that will be all right, Mama," said Nadine, "or I daresay Edith would come. Anyhow, we were often all together before like that in the summer."
"Yes, my dear, but it's a little different now," said Dodo. "You are engaged to Seymour, and Hugh is going to be there, too."
"Yes, but that makes it all the simpler."
Dodo got up.
"I wonder if you realize that Seymour is in love with you," she said. "In love with you like Hugh is, I mean."
"Perfectly, and he is charming about it," said Nadine. "And I practise every morning being in love with him like that. I think I am getting on very well. I dreamed about him last night. I thought he gave me a great box of jade and when I opened it, there was a rabbit inside—"
"That shows great progress," said Dodo.
"Mama, I think you are laughing at me. But what would you have? I am very fond of him, he is handsome and clever and charming. I expected to find it tiresome when he told me he was in love like that, but it is not the least so."
Memories of the man she had married when she was even younger than Nadine, came unbidden into Dodo's mind: she remembered her first husband's blind, dog-like devotion and her own ennui when he strove to express it, to communicate it to her.
"Nadine," she said, "treat it reverently, my dear. There is nothing in the world that a man can give a woman that is to be compared to that. It is better than a rabbit in a jade-box. When I was even younger than you, Papa Jack's cousin gave it me, and—and I didn't reverence it. Don't repeat my irreparable error."
"Weren't you nice to him?" asked Nadine.
"I was a brute beast to him, my darling."
"Oh, I shan't be a brute beast to Seymour," said Nadine. "Besides, I don't suppose you were. You didn't know: wasn't that all?"
Dodo wiped the mist from her eyes.
"No, that wasn't nearly all. But be tender with it, and pray, oh, my dear, pray, that you may catch that—that 'noble fever.' Who calls it that? It is so true. And Hughie? I never saw him last night."
Nadine made a little gesture of despair.
"Ah, dear Hughie," she said. "That is not very happy. That is so largely why I wanted to marry Seymour quickly, in January instead of later, so that it may be done, and Hughie will not fret any more. I hate seeing him suffer, and I can't marry him. It would not be fair: it would be cheating him, as I told him before."
"But you are not cheating Seymour?" asked Dodo.
"Not in the same way. He is not simple, like Hugh. Hugh has only one thought: Seymour has plenty of others. He has such a mind: it is subtle and swift like a woman's. Hughie has the mind of a great retriever dog, and the eyes of one. There is all the difference in the world between them. Seymour knows what he is in for, and still wants it. Hugh thinks he knows, but he doesn't. I understand Hugh so well: I know I am right. And I would have given anything to be able to be in love with him. It was a pity!"
There was something here that Dodo had not known and there was a dangerous sound about it.
"Do you mean you wish you were in love with him?" she asked.
"Oh, yes, Mama, but I'm not. I used to practice trying to be for months and months, just as I am practising for Seymour now. La, la, what a world!"
Nadine paused a moment.
"Of course I've quite stopped practising being in love with Hugh since I was engaged to Seymour," she said with an air of the most candid virtue. "That would be cheating."
Nadine got up looking like a tall white lily.
"Seymour is so good for me," she said. "He doesn't think much of my brain, you know, and I used to think a good deal of it. He doesn't say I'm stupid, but he hasn't got the smallest respect for my mind. I am not sure whether he is right, but I expect seeing so much of Hugh made me think I was clever. I wonder if being in love makes people stupid. He himself seems to me to be not quite so subtle as he was, and perhaps it's my fault. What do you think, Mama?"
Chapter IX
It was the morning after Christmas Day, and Dodo and Jack had just driven off from Meering on their way to Winston, where a shooting-party was to assemble that day, leaving behind them a party that regretted their departure, but did not mean to repine. Edith Arbuthnot had promised to arrive two days before, to take over from Dodo the duty of chaperone, but she had not yet come, nor had anything whatever been heard of her.
"Which shows," said Berts lucidly, "that nothing unpleasant can have happened to mother, or we should have heard."
Until she came Nadine had very kindly consented to act as regent, and in that capacity she appeared in the hall a little while after Dodo had gone, with a large red contadina umbrella, a book or two, and an expressed determination to sit out on the hillside till lunch-time.
"It is boxing-day, I know," she said, "but it is too warm to box, even if I knew how. The English climate has gone quite mad, and I have told my maid to put my fur coat in a box with those little white balls until May. Now I suppose you are all going to play the foolish game with those other little white balls till lunch."
Seymour was seated in the window-sill, stitching busily at a piece of embroidery which Antoinette had started for him.
"I am going to do nothing of the sort," he said. "It is much too fine a day to do anything so limited as to play golf. Besides there is no one here fit to play with. Nadine, will you be very kind and ring for my maid? I am getting in a muddle."
Berts, who was sitting near him, got up, looking rather ill. Also he resented being told he was not fit to play with.
"May I have my perambulator, please, Nadine?" he asked.
Seymour grinned.
"Berts,