THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
girls whom you never by any chance meet outside the covers of six-shilling novels. They are quite human, only no human girl was ever like them. They like music and food and sentiment and sea-bathing and playing foolish games, just as we all do. But there is nobody behind them: they are tastes without character. If only one's character was nothing more than the sum total of one's tastes, how extraordinarily simple it would all be. We should spend our lives in making ourselves pleasant and enjoying ourselves. But there is something that sits behind all our tastes, and though those tastes express it, they do not express it all, nor do they express its essence. I am something beyond and back of the things I like, and the people I like. Something inside me says 'I want: I want.' I daresay it wants the moon, and has as much chance of getting it as I have of reaching up into the sky and pulling it down. Oh, Hugh, I want the moon, and what will the moon be like? Will it be hard and cold or soft and warm? I don't care. I shall slip it between my breasts and hold it close."
She paused a moment opposite him.
"Am I talking damned rot?" she asked. "I daresay I am. I am a rotter then, because all I say is me. Another thing, too: morally, I am not in the least worthy of you. I don't know any one who is. I don't really, and I'm not flattering you, because I don't rate the moral qualities very high. They are compatible with such low organizations. Earwigs, I read the other day, are excellent mothers. How that seems to alter one's conception of the beauty of the maternal instinct! It does not alter my conception of earwigs in the least, and I shall continue to kill any excellent mothers that I find in my room."
Hugh laughed suddenly and uproariously and then became perfectly grave again.
"Your moral organization is probably extremely low," he said. "But I settled long ago to overlook that."
"Ah, there we are again," said Nadine. "You deliberately propose to misconceive me, with the kindest intentions I know, but with how wrong a principle. You shut your eyes to me, as if—as if I was a smut! You settle to overlook the fact that I have no real moral perception. Could you settle to overlook the fact if I had no nose and only one tooth? I assure you the lack of a moral nature is a more serious defect. But, poor devil that I am, how was I to get one? We were talking about heredity before you came in—"
Nadine paused a moment.
"As a matter of fact," she said, "I was telling them that there was no truth in heredity. We will now take the other side of the question. How was I, considering my family, to have moral perceptions?"
"Are you being quite consistent?" asked Hugh.
"Why should I be consistent? Who is consistent except those simple people whom you buy so many of for six shillings, and they are consistently tiresome. How, I said, was I to have got moral perception? There is Daddy! If I was a doctor I would certify any one to be insane who said Daddy was a moral organism. There is darling Mama! I would horse-whip any one who said the same of her, for his gross stupidity and insolence. The result is me; I am more pagan than Heliogabalus. I do not think that anything is right or that anything is wrong. I want the moon, but I am afraid you are not the man in it."
"And now you are flippant."
"Flippant, serious, moral, immoral," cried Nadine, "do not label me like luggage. You will tell me my destination next, shall we call it Abraham's bosom? Dear Hugh, you enrage me sometimes. Chiefly you enrage me because you have such an angelic temper yourself. I am not sure that an angelic temper is an advantage: it is always set fair, and there are no surprises. Ah, how it all leads round to that: there are no surprises: I understand you too well. I am very sorry. Do me the justice to believe that. Really I believe that I am as sorry that I can't marry you as you are."
Hugh got up.
"I don't think I do quite believe that," he said. "And now as regards the immediate future. I think I shall go away to-morrow."
This time he succeeded in surprising her.
"Himmel, but why?" she said.
"If you understood me as well as you say, you would know," he said. "I don't find my own heart a satisfactory diet. Of course, if I thought you would miss me—"
Nadine was quite silent for a moment.
"You shall go if you like, of course," she said. "But you do me the most frightful injustice: you understand nothing about me if you think I should not miss you. You cannot be so dull as not to know that I should miss you more than if everybody else went, literally everybody, leaving me alone. But go if you wish."
She walked across to the window, which Hugh had thrown open, and leaned out. A moon rode high in mid-sky, and to the West a quarter of a mile away and far below the sea glimmered like a shield of dim silver. Below the window the ground sloped sharply away down to the gray tumbled sand dunes that fringed the coast, and all lay blurred and melted under the uncertain light. And when she turned round again Hugh saw that her eyes were blurred and melted also.
"Do exactly as you please, Hughie," she said.
He laughed.
"Would you be surprised if I did not go?" he asked.
She came towards him with both hands out.
"Ah, that is dear of you," she said. "Look out of the window with me a moment: how dim and mysterious. There is my moon which I want so much, too. I will build altars and burn incense to any god who will give it me. If only I knew what it was. My moon, I mean! Now perhaps as it is nearly two o'clock, we had better go to bed, Hughie. And I am so sorry that things are as they are."
Chapter II
It had been said, by Edith Arbuthnot, perhaps unkindly, but with sufficient humor to neutralize the acidity, that there was always somebody awake day and night in Dodo's house tending the flame of egoistic introspection. Edith did not generally use long words, but chose them carefully when she indulged in polysyllables. She had not been so careful in the choice of her confidant, for she had fired this withering criticism at her son Berts, who in the true spirit of an affectionate nephew instantly repeated it to Dodo, who had roared with laughter and sent Edith an enormous telegram (costing nine shillings and a halfpenny, including sixpence for a paid reply in case Edith wanted to continue the discussion) describing a terrible accident that had just happened to herself.
"A most extraordinary and tragic affair" (this was all written out in full) "has just occurred at Meering at the house of Princess Waldenech. The unfortunate lady has just died of a sudden though not unexpected attack of spontaneous egoism. Loud screams were heard from her room, and Mr. Bertie Arbuthnot, son of the celebrated Edith Arbuthnot, the musical composer, rushed in to find the princess enveloped in sheets of blue flame. The efforts made to quench her were of no avail and in a few moments all that was left of her was a small handful of ashes, which curiously enough, as they cooled, assumed the shape of a capital 'I.' Fear is felt that this outbreak may prove to be contagious, and all those who have been in contact with the combusted princess are busy disinfecting themselves by talking about each other. It is believed that Mrs. Arbuthnot has begun to write a funeral march for her friend, for whom she felt an adoring affection amounting almost to worship, in the unusual key of ten sharps and eleven flats. It is in brisk waltz time and all the performers will blow their own trumpets. She is sending copies to nearly all the crowned heads of Europe."
Edith's reply was equally characteristic.
"Dodo, I love you."
The truth in Edith's criticism was certainly exemplified in the night of which we are speaking, for Hugh did not leave Nadine's room, where she had been engaged on the self-analysis given in the last chapter till two o'clock, and at that precise moment Dodo, who had gone to bed more than an hour before, woke up and began thinking about herself with uncommon intensity. And indeed there was sufficient to think about in the circumstances with which she had at this moment allowed herself to be surrounded. For the last two days, the husband whom she had divorced with such extreme facility had been staying with her, and to-morrow, directly on his departure,