THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
part of a larger question, which is: 'Do you like things better than people?' Personally I like people so far more than anything else in the world, but I don't like any particular person nearly as much. I like them in groups I suppose. If I married at all, I should probably be a polyandrist. Certainly if I could marry four or five people at once, I should marry them all. But I don't want to marry any one of them."
Seymour put the priceless biscuit back into its cabinet.
"Who," he asked, "are this quartette of fortunate swains?"
"Well, Hugh of course would be one," said she, "and I think Berts would be another. And if it won't be a shock to you, you would be the third, and Jack the R. would be the fourth. I should then have a variety of interests: this would be the world and the flesh and the devil, and a saint."
"St. Seymour," said he, as if trying how it sounded, like a Liberal peer selecting his title.
"I am afraid you are cast for the devil," said Nadine candidly. "Berts is the world because he thinks he is cynical. And Jack is the flesh—"
"Because he is so thin?"
"Partly. But also because he is so rich."
Seymour turned the key on his jade. This interested him much more. But he had to make further inquiries.
"If every girl wanted four husbands," he said, "there wouldn't be enough men to go round."
"Round what?" asked Nadine, still entirely absorbed in what she was thinking.
"Round the marriageable females. Or does your plan include poly-womany, whatever the word is, for men?"
"But of course. There are such lots of bachelors who would marry if they could have two or three wives, just as there are such lots of girls who would marry if they could have two or three husbands. All those laws about 'one man, one wife' were made by ordinary people for ordinary people. And ordinary people are in the majority. There ought to be a small county set apart for ridiculous people, with a rabbit fence all round it, and any one who could be certified to be ridiculous in his tastes should be allowed to go and live there unmolested. That would be much better than your plan of going to the Sahara with Antoinette. You would have to get five householders to certify you as ridiculous, in order to obtain admission. Then you would do what you chose within the rabbit fence, but when you wanted to be what they call sensible again you would come out, and be bound to behave like anybody else, as long as you were out, under penalty of not being admitted again."
Seymour considered this.
"There's a lot in it," he said, "and there would be a lot of people in the rabbit fence. I should go there to-morrow and never come out at all. But a smaller county would be no use. I should start with Kent, not Rutlandshire, and be prepared to migrate to Yorkshire. I accept the position of one of your husbands."
"That is sweet of you. I think—"
He interrupted.
"I shall have some more wives," he said. "I should like a lunch wife and a dinner wife. I want to see a certain kind of person from about mid-day till tea-time."
"Is that a hint that it is time for me to go?" asked Nadine.
"Nearly. Don't interrupt. But then, if one is not in love with anybody at all, as you are not, and as I am not, you want a perfectly different kind of person in the evening. To be allowed only one wife, has evolved a very tiresome type of woman; a woman who is like a general servant, and can, so to speak, wait at table, cook a little, and make beds. You look for somebody who, on the whole, suits you. It is like buying a reach-me-down suit, which I have never done. It probably fits pretty well. But if it is to be worn every day until you die, it must fit absolutely. If it doesn't, there are fifty other suits that would do as well."
"Translate," said Nadine.
"Surely there is no need. What I mean is that occasionally two people are ideally fitted. But the fit only occurs intermittently: it is not common. Short of that, as long as people don't blow their noses wrong, or walk badly, or admire Carlo Dolci, or fail to admire Bach, so long, in fact, as they do not have impossible tastes, any phalanx of a thousand men can marry a similar phalanx of a thousand women, and be as happy, the one with the other, as with any other permutation or combination of the thousand. There is a high, big, tremulous, romantic attachment possible, and it occasionally occurs. Short of that, with the limitation about Carlo Dolci and Bach, anybody would be as happy with anybody else, as anybody would be with anybody. We are all on a level, except the highest of all, and the lowest of all. Life, not death, is the leveler!"
"Still life is as bad as still death," said she.
Seymour groaned and waved his hands.
"You deserve a good scolding, Nadine, for saying a foolish thing like that," he said. "You are not with your Philistines now. There is not Esther here to tell you how marvelous you are, nor Berts to wave his great legs and say you are like the moon coming out of the clouds over the sea. I am not in the least impressed by a little juggling with words such as they think clever. It isn't clever: it is a sort of parrot-talk. You open your mouth and say something that sounds paradoxical and they all hunt about to find some sense in it, and think they do."
Seymour got up and began walking up and down the room with his little short-stepped, waggling walk. "It is the most amazing thing to me," he said, "that you, who have got brains, should be content to score absurd little successes with your dreadful clan, who have the most ordinary intelligences. I love your Philistines, but I cannot bear that they should think they are clever. They are stupid, and though stupid people are excellent in their way, they become trying when they think they are wise. You are not made wise by bathing all day in the silly salt sea, and reading a book—"
"How did you know?" asked Nadine.
"I didn't: it is merely the sort of thing I imagine you do at Meering. Aunt Dodo is different: there is no rot about Aunt Dodo, nor is there about Hugh. But Esther, my poor sister, and the beautiful Berts!"
Nadine took up the cudgels for the clan.
"Ah, you are quite wrong," she said. "You do us no justice at all. We are eager, we are, really: we want to learn, we think it waste of time to spend all day and night at parties and balls. We are critical, and want to know how and why. Seymour, I wish we saw more of you. Whenever I am with you, I feel like a pencil being sharpened. I can make fine marks afterwards."
"Keep them for the clan," he said. "No, I can't stand the clan, nor could they possibly stand me. When Esther squirms and says, 'O Nadine, how wonderful you are,' I want to be sick, and when I wave my hands and talk in a high voice as I frequently do, I can see Berts turning pale with the desire to kill me. Poor Berts! Once I took his arm and he shuddered at my baleful touch. I must remember to do it again. Really, I don't think I can be one of your husbands if Berts is to be another."
"Very well: I'll leave out Berts," said she.
"This is almost equivalent to a proposal," said Seymour in some alarm.
She laughed.
"I won't press it," she said. "And now I must go. Thanks for sharpening me, my dear, though you have done it rather roughly. I am going down to Meering again to-morrow: London is a mere rabble of colonels and colonials. Come down if you feel inclined."
"God forbid!" said Seymour piously.
Nadine had spent some time with him, but long after she had gone something of her seemed to linger in his room. Some subtle aroma of her, too fine to be purely physical, still haunted the room, and the sound of her detached crisp speech echoed in the chambers of his brain. He had never known a girl so variable in her moods: on one day she would talk nothing but the most arrant nonsense; on another, as to-day, there mingled with it something extraordinarily tender and wistful; on a third day she would be an impetuous scholar; on the fourth she threw herself heart and soul (if she had a heart) into the gay froth of this London life. Indeed "moods" seemed to be too superficial a word to describe her aspects: it was as if three or four different personalities were lodged in that slim body or directed affairs from the cool brain in that small poised head. It would be scarcely necessary to marry