THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
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a terrible event, but you see all sorts of glories in it. I don't thing it is very polite. It is like laughing at a ghost story instead of being terrified."
Dodo's breakfast had been brought in, and she fell to it with an excellent appetite.
"There is nothing like scenes before breakfast to make one hungry," she said. "Think how hungry a murderer would be if he was taken out to be hanged before breakfast, and then given his breakfast afterwards. I had a scene with Seymour, you know. I am very sorry for him, but somehow he doesn't seem to matter. He lost his temper, which I rather respected, and showed me he had an ideal. That I respect too. I remember the struggles I used to go through in order to get one."
"Were they successful?" asked Edith.
"Only by a process of elimination. I did everything that I wanted, and found it was a mistake. So, last of all, I married Jack. What a delightful life I have led, and how good this bacon is. Don't you think David is a very nice name? I am going to call my baby David."
"It may be a girl," said Edith.
"Then I shall call it Bathsheba," said Dodo without pause. "Or do I mean Beersheba? Bath, I think. Edith, why is it that when I am most anxious and full of cares, I feel it imperative to talk tommy-rot? I'm sure there is enough to worry me into a grave if not a vault, between Seymour and Nadine and Hugh. But after all, one needn't worry about Nadine. It is quite certain that she will do as she chooses, and if she wants to marry Hugh with both arms in slings, and two crutches, and a truss and one of those sort of scrapers under one foot she certainly will. I brought her up on those lines, to know her own mind, and then do what she wanted. It has been a failure hitherto, because she has never really wanted anything. But now I think my system of education is going to be justified. I am also suffering from reaction. Last night I thought our dear Hughie was dying, and I am perfectly convinced this morning that he isn't. So, too, I am sure, is Nadine: otherwise she couldn't have fallen asleep like that. And what Hughie did was so splendid. I am glad God made men like that, but it doesn't prevent my eating a huge breakfast and talking rot. I hope you don't mean to go away. It is so dull to be alone in the house with two young lovers, even when one adores them both."
"Aren't you getting on rather quick, Dodo?" asked Edith.
"Probably: but Seymour is congédié—how do you say it—spun, dismissed, and quite certainly Nadine has fallen in love with Hugh. There isn't time to be slow, nowadays. If you are slow you are left gasping on the beach like a fish. I still swim in the great waters, thank God."
Dodo got up, and her mood changed utterly. She was never other than genuine, but it had pleased Nature to give her many facets, all brilliant, but all reflecting different-colored lights.
"Oh, my dear, life is so short," she said, "and every moment should be so precious to everybody. I hate going to sleep, for fear I may miss something. Fancy waking in the morning and finding you had missed something, like an earthquake or suffragette riot! My days are reasonably full, but I want them to be unreasonably full. And just now Jack keeps saying, 'Do rest: do lie down: do have some beef-tea.' Just as if I didn't know what was good for David! Edith, he is going to be such a gay dog! All the girls and all the women are going to fall desperately in love with him. He is going to marry when he is thirty, and not a day before, and he will be absolutely simple and unspoiled and a wicked little devil on his marriage morning. And then all his energies will be concentrated on one point, and that will be his wife. He will utterly adore her, and think of nobody else except me. I shall be seventy-four, you perceive, at that time, and so I shall be easy to please. The older one gets the easier one is to please. Already little things please me quite enormously, and big ones, as you also perceive, make me go off my head. Oh, I am sure heaven will be extremely nice, if I ever die, which God forbid; but however nice it is, it won't be the same as this. You agree there I know; you want to make all the music you can first—"
"As a protest against what seems to be the music of heaven," said Edith firmly, "if we may judge by hymn tunes and chants, and the first act of Parsifal, and I suppose the last of Faust, and Handel's oratorios. It is very degrading stuff; all the changes of key are childishly simple, and the proportion of full closes is nearly indecent. And I want another ink-bottle."
Edith whistled a short phrase on her teeth, as a gentle hint to her hostess.
"It's for the flutes," she said, "and the 'cellos take it up two octaves lower."
She grabbed at her music-paper.
"Then the horns start it again in the subdominant," she said, "and all the silly audience will think they are merely out of tune. That's because they got what they didn't expect. To be any good, you must surprise the ear. I'll surprise them. But I want another ink-bottle. And may I have lunch in my room, Dodo, if necessary? I don't know when I shall be able to get up."
Dodo was not attending in any marked manner.
"We will all do what we choose," she said genially.
"We will be a sort of harmless Medmenham Abbey. You shall spill all the ink you please, and Nadine shall marry Hugh, who will get quite well, and I shall go and order dinner and see if Nadine is awake. I am afraid I am rather fatuously optimistic this morning, like Mr. Chesterton, and that is always so depressing, both to other people at the time, and to oneself subsequently. Dear me, what a charming world if there was no such thing as reaction. As a matter of fact I do not experience much of it."
Edith gave a great sigh of relief as Dodo left the room, and concentrated herself with singular completeness on the horn-tune in the subdominant. She was quite devoted to Dodo, but the horn-tune was in focus just now, and she knew if Dodo had stopped any longer, she would have become barely tolerant of her presence. Shortly afterwards the fresh supply of ink came also, and Edith proceeded straight up into the seventh heaven of her own compositions, which, good or bad, were perfection itself to their author.
Dodo found a packet of letters waiting for her and among them a telegram from Miss Grantham saying, "Deeply grieved. Can I do anything?" This she swiftly answered, replying, "Darling Grantie. Nothing whatever," and went to Nadine's room, where she found Nadine, half-dressed, rosy from her bath, and radiant of spirit.
"Oh, Mama, I never had such a lovely night," she said. "How delicious it must be to be married! I didn't wake till half-an-hour ago, and simultaneously Hughie woke, which looks as if we suited each other, doesn't it? And then the doctor came in, and looked at him, and said he was much stronger, much fuller of vitality for his long sleep, and he congratulated me on having made him sleep. And the nurse told me the first great danger, that he would not rally after the shock of the operation, was over. As far as that goes he will be all right."
Nadine kissed her mother, and clung round her neck, dewy-eyed.
"I'm not going to think about the future," she said. "Sufficient to the day is the good thereof. It is enough this morning that Hughie has got through the night and is stronger. If I had been given any wish to be fulfilled I should have chosen that. And if on the top of that I had been given another, it would have been that I should have helped towards it, which I suppose is the old Eve coming in. I think I had better finish dressing, Mama, instead of babbling. Have you had breakfast?"
"Yes, dear, I had it with Edith. She is in bed making tunes and pouring ink over the counterpane, and not minding."
Nadine's face clouded for a moment, in spite of the accomplishment of her wishes.
"And then I must see Seymour," she said. "It is no use putting that off. But, oh, Mama, to think that till yesterday I was willing to marry him, with Hugh in the world all the time. Whatever happens to Hugh, I can't marry him, Seymour, I mean, if the ridiculous English pronouns admit of any meaning; and I must tell him."
"Seymour left half an hour ago," said Dodo. "But there's no need for you to tell him. I took him into Hugh's room and he saw you asleep. He understands. He couldn't very well help understanding, darling. He told me he understood before, when you called out to Hugh not to attempt the rescue. But he only understood it pretty well, as the ordinary person says he understands French. But when he saw you asleep, not exactly in Hugh's arms, but sufficiently close, he understood it like a real native, poor boy!"
"What