THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
I thought you were Miss Staines.' I saw I was not wanted, and retreated. That is not all. Bob told me that I had to take a curate in to dinner last night, and asked me not to frighten him. I suppose he thought I wanted to say 'Bo,' or howl at him. The curate tried me. I sat down when we got to the table, and he turned to me and said, 'I beg your pardon'—they all beg my pardon—'but I'm going to say grace.' Then I prepared myself to talk night schools and district visiting; but he turned on me, and asked what I thought of Orme's chances for the St. Leger."
"Oh, dear! oh, dear!" cried Edith; "he told me afterwards that you seemed a very serious lady."
"I didn't intend to encourage that," continued Lady Grantham; "so I held on to district visiting. We shook our heads together over dissent in Wales. We split over Calvinism—who was Calvin? We renounced society; and I was going to work him a pair of slippers. We were very edifying. Then he sang comic songs in the drawing-room, and discussed the methods of cheating at baccarat. I was a dead failure."
"Anyhow, you're a serious lady," said Edith.
"That young man will come to a bad end," said Lady Grantham; "so will your German conductor. He ordered beer in the middle of the morning, to-day—the second footman will certainly give notice—and he smoked a little clay pipe after dinner in the dining-room. Then this afternoon comes this other friend of yours. He says, 'Arfly rippin' what.'"
"He said you were arfly fascinatin' what," interpolated Miss Grantham, "when you went away to read your book. You were very rude to him."
Sir Robert Grantham had joined the party. He was a great hand at adapting his conversation to his audience, and making everyone conscious that they ought to feel quite at home. He recounted at some length a series of tennis matches which he had taken part in a few years ago. A strained elbow had spoiled his chances of winning, but the games were most exciting, and it was generally agreed at the time that the form of the players was quite first-class. He talked about Wagner and counterpoint to Edith. He asked his vicar abstruse questions on the evidence of the immortality of the soul after death; he discussed agriculture and farming with tenants, to whom he always said "thank ye," instead of "thank you," in order that they might feel quite at their ease; he lamented the want of physique in the English army to Mr. Featherstone, who was very short, and declared that the average height of Englishmen was only five feet four. As he said this he drew himself up, and made it quite obvious that he himself was six feet high, and broad in proportion.
A few more cups of tea were drunk, and a few more sets played, and the party dispersed. Edith was the only guest in the house, and she and Frank, the Oxford son, stopped behind to play a game or two more before dinner. Lady Grantham and Nora strolled up through the garden towards the house, while Sir Robert remained on the ground, and mingled advice, criticism, and approbation to the tennis players; Frank's back-handed stroke, he thought, was not as good as it might be, and Edith could, certainly put half fifteen on to her game if judiciously coached. Neither of the players volleyed as well as himself, but volleying was his strong point, and they must not be discouraged. Frank's attitude to his father was that of undisguised amusement; but he found him very entertaining.
They were all rather late for dinner, and Lady Grantham was waiting for them in the drawing-room. Frank and his father were down before Edith, and Lady Grantham was making remarks on their personal appearance.
"You look very, hot and red," she was saying to her son, "and I really wish you would brush your hair better. I don't know what young men are coming to, they seem to think that everything is to be kept waiting for them."
Frank's attitude was one of serene indifference.
"Go on, go on," he said; "I don't mind."
Edith was five minutes later. Lady Grantham remarked on the importance of being in time for dinner, and hoped they wouldn't all die from going to bed too soon afterwards. Frank apologised for his mother.
"Don't mind her, Miss Staines," he said, "they're only her foreign manners. She doesn't know how to behave. It's all right. I'm going to take you in, mother. Are we going to have grouse?"
That evening Miss Grantham and Edith "talked Dodo," as the latter called it, till the small hours.
She produced Dodo's letter, and read extracts.
"Of course, we sha'n't be married till after next November," wrote Dodo. "Jack wouldn't hear of it, and it would seem very unfeeling. Don't you think so? It will be odd going back to Winston again. Mind you come and stay with us at Easter."
"I wonder if Dodo ever thinks with regret of anything or anybody," said Edith. "Imagine writing like that—asking me if I shouldn't think it unfeeling."
"Oh, but she says she would think it unfeeling," said Miss Grantham. "That's so sweet and remembering of her."
"But don't you see," said Edith, "she evidently thinks it is so good of her to have feelings about it at all. She might as well call attention to the fact that she always puts her shoes and stockings on to go to church."
"There's a lot of women who would marry again before a year was out if it wasn't for convention," said Miss Grantham.
"That's probably the case with Dodo," remarked Edith. "Dodo doesn't care one pin for the memory of that man. She knows it, and she knows I know it. Why does she say that sort of thing to me? He was a good man, too, and I'm not sure that he wasn't great. Chesterford detested me, but I recognised him."
"Oh, I don't think he was great," said Miss Grantham. "Didn't he always strike you as a little stupid?"
"I prefer stupid people," declared Edith roundly. "They are so restful. They're like nice; sweet, white bread; they quench your hunger as well as pâté de foie gras, and they are much better for you."
"I think they make you just a little thirsty," remarked Miss Grantham. "I should have said they were more like cracknels. Besides, do you think that it's an advantage to associate with people who are good for you? It produces a sort of rabies in me. I want to bite them."
"You like making yourself out worse than you are, Grantie," said Edith.
"I think you like making Dodo out worse than she is," returned Nora. "I always used to think you were very fond of her."
"I am fond of her," said Edith; "that's why I'm dissatisfied with her."
"What a curious way of showing your affection," said Miss Grantham. "I love Dodo, and if I was a man I should like to many her."
"Dodo is too dramatic," said Edith. "She never gets off the stage; and sometimes she plays to the gallery, and then the stalls say, 'How cheap she's making herself.' She has the elements of a low comedian about her."
"And the airs of a tragedy queen, I suppose," added Miss Grantham.
"Exactly," said Edith; "and the consequence is that she as a burlesque sometimes: She is her own parody."
"Darling Dodo," said Grantie with feeling. "I do want to see her again."
"All her conduct after his death," continued Edith, "that was the tragedy queen; she shut herself up in that great house, quite alone, for two months, and went to church with a large prayer-book every morning, at eight. But it was burlesque all the same. Dodo isn't sorry like that. The gallery yelled with applause."
"I thought it was so sweet of her," murmured Grantie. "I suppose I'm gallery too."
"Then she went abroad," continued Edith, "and sat down and wept by the waters of Aix. But she soon took down her harp. She gave banjo parties on the lake, and sang coster songs."
"Mrs. Vane told me she recovered her spirits wonderfully at Aix," remarked Miss Grantham.
"And played baccarat, and recovered other people's money," pursued Edith. "If she'd taken the first train for Aix after the funeral, I should have respected her."
"Oh, that would have been horrid," said Miss Grantham; "besides, it wouldn't have been the season."
"That's true," said Edith. "Dodo probably remembered that."
"Oh, you sha'n't