Dodo: A Detail of the Day. Volumes 1 and 2. Benson Edward Frederic
she took the opportunity to cultivate his acquaintance.
They were sitting on the bank of the river below the Clivedon woods, a little apart from the others, and she felt that as he had behaved so well, she owed him some apology.
"It was very nice of you, Mr. Broxton," she said, "to be so polite to me last night. To tell you the truth, I did know you, though you didn't know me. I was an old friend of your mother's, but I hadn't time to explain that, and you were good enough to take me without explanations. I always wonder what our attitude towards old friends of our mothers ought to be. I really don't see why they should have any claim upon one."
Jack laughed.
"The fact was that I knew you were right as soon as you spoke to me, though I wanted to resent it. I had been putting it differently to myself; that was why I spoke to Dodo."
"Tell me more," she said. "From the momentary glance I had of you and her, I thought you had been remonstrating with her, and she had been objecting. I don't blame you for remonstrating in the general way. Dodo's conduct used not to be always blameless. But it looked private, and that was what I did object to. I daresay you think me a tiresome, impertinent, old woman."
Jack felt more strongly than ever that this woman could not help being well-bred in whatever she did.
"It sounds disloyal to one's friends, I know," he said, "but it was because I really did care for both of them that I acted as I did. What will happen will be that he will continue to adore her, and by degrees she will begin to hate him. He will not commit suicide, and I don't think Dodo will make a scandal. Her regard for appearances alone would prevent that. It would be a confession of failure."
Mrs. Vivian looked grave.
"Did you tell Dodo this?"
"More or less," he replied. "Except about the scandal and the suicide."
Mrs. Vivian's large, grey, serious eyes twinkled with some slight amusement.
"I think while I was about it I should have told her that too," she said; "that's the sort of argument that appeals to Dodo. You have to scream if you want her to listen to what she doesn't want to hear. But I don't think it was quite well judged of you, you know."
"I think she ought to know it," said Jack, "though I realise I ought to have been the last person to tell her, for several reasons."
Mrs. Vivian looked at him inquiringly.
"You mean for fear of her putting a wrong construction on it? I see," she said.
Jack felt that it could not have been more delicately done.
"How did you know?"
"Oh," she said, "that is the kind of intuition which is the only consolation we women have for getting old. We are put on the shelf, no doubt, after a certain age, but we get a habit of squinting down into the room below. That is the second time I have shown myself a meddling old woman, and you have treated me very nicely both times. Let us join the others. I see tea is ready."
Dodo meanwhile had walked Chesterford off among the green cool woods that bordered the river. She had given Jack's remarks a good deal of consideration, and, whether or no she felt that he was justified in them on present data, she determined that she would make the event falsify his predictions. Dodo had an unlimited capacity for interfering in the course of destiny. She devoted herself to her aims, whatever they might be, with a wonderful singleness of purpose, and since it is a fact that one usually gets what one wants in this world, if one tries hard enough, it followed that up to this time she had, on the whole, usually got her way. But she was now dealing with an unknown quantity, which she could not gauge. She had confessed to Jack her inability to understand what love meant, and it was with a certain sense of misgiving that she felt that her answers for the future would be expressed in terms of that unknown quantity "x." To Dodo's concrete mind this was somewhat discouraging, but she determined to do her best to reduce things to an equation in which the value of "x" could be found in terms of some of those many symbols which she did know.
Dodo had an inexhaustible fund of vivacity, which was a very useful instrument to her; like a watch-key that fits all watches, she was able to apply it as required to very different pieces of mechanism. When she wished to do honour to a melancholy occasion, for instance, her vivacity turned any slight feeling of sorrow she had into hysterical weeping; when the occasion was joyful, it became a torrent of delightful nonsense. To-day the occasion was distinctly joyful. She had a large sense of success. Chesterford was really a very desirable lover; his immense wealth answered exactly the requirements of Dodo's wishes. Furthermore, he was safe and easily satisfied; the day was charming; Jack was there; she had had a very good lunch, and was shortly going to have a very good tea; and Chesterford had given orders for his yacht to be in readiness to take them off for a delightful honeymoon, directly after their marriage – in short, all her circumstances were wholly satisfactory. She had said to him after lunch, as they were sitting on the grass, "Come away into those delicious woods, and leave these stupid people here," and he was radiant in consequence, for, to tell the truth, she had been rather indulgent of his company than eager for it the last day or two. She was in the highest spirits as they strolled away.
"Oh do give me a cigarette," she said, as soon as they had got out of sight. "I didn't dare smoke with that Vivian woman there. Chesterford, I am frightened of her. She is as bad as the Inquisition, or that odious man in Browning who used to walk about, and tell the king if anything happened. I am sure she puts it down in a book whenever I say anything I shouldn't. You know that's so tantalising. It is a sort of challenge to be improper. Chesterford, if you put down in a book anything I do wrong, I swear I shall go to the bad altogether."
To Chesterford this seemed the most attractive nonsense that ever flowed from female lips.
"Why, you can't do anything wrong, Dodo," he said simply; "at least not what I think wrong. And what does it matter what other people think?"
Dodo patted his hand, and blew him a kiss approvingly.
"That's quite right," she said; "bear that in mind and we shall never have a quarrel. Chesterford, we won't quarrel at all, will we? Everybody else does, I suppose, now and then, and that proves it's vulgar. Mrs. Vivian used to quarrel with her husband, so she's vulgar. Oh, I'm so glad she's vulgar. I sha'n't care how much she looks at me now. Bother! I believe it was only her husband that used to swear at her. Never mind, he must have been vulgar to do that, and she must have vulgar tastes to have married a vulgar person. I don't think I'm vulgar, do you? Really it's a tremendous relief to have found out that she's vulgar. But I am afraid I shall forget it when I see her again. You must remind me. You must point at her and say V, if you can manage it. Or are you afraid of her too?"
"Oh, never mind Mrs. Vivian," said he, "she can wait."
"That's what she's always doing," said Dodo. "Waiting and watching with large serious eyes. I can't think why she does it, for she doesn't make use of it afterwards. Now when I know something discreditable of a person, if I dislike him, I tell everybody else, and if I like him, I tell him that I know all about it, and I am so sorry for him. Then he thinks you are charming and sympathetic, and you have a devoted admirer for life."
Chesterford laughed. He had no desire to interrupt this rapid monologue of Dodo's. He was quite content to play the part of the Greek chorus.
"I'm going to sit down here," continued Dodo. "Do you mind my smoking cigarettes? I'm not sure that it is in good form, but I mean to make it so. I want to be the fashion. Would you like your wife to be the fashion?"
He bent over her as she sat with her head back, smiling up at him.
"My darling," he said, "do you know, I really don't care a straw whether you are the fashion or not, as long as you are satisfied. You might stand on your head in Piccadilly if you liked, and I would come and stand too. All I care about is that you are you, and that you have made me the happiest man on God's earth."
Dodo was conscious again of the presence of this unknown quantity. She would much prefer striking it out altogether; it seemed to have quite an unreasonable preponderance.
Chesterford did not usually make jokes, in fact she had never heard him make one before, and his remark about standing on his head seemed to be