THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
is ready. Also the smell of incense reminds one of stepping out of the blazing sunlight into St. Mark's at Venice. Nadine, you look too exquisite, but depressed. Has not the effect of Mama worn off yet?"
"Oh, it's not your mother, it's me," said she.
"You think about yourself too much," observed Seymour. "I know the temptation so well, and generally yield to it. It is a great mistake: one occasionally has doubts whether one is the nicest person in the world and whether it is worth while doing anything, even collecting jade. But such doubts never last long with me."
"Don't you ever wish you had a heart, Seymour?" she asked. "You and I have neither of us got hearts."
"I know, and I am so exceedingly comfortable without one, that I should be sorry to get one. If you have a heart, sooner or later you get into a state of drivel about somebody, who probably doesn't drivel about you. That must be so mortifying. Even if two people drivel mutually they are deplorable objects, but a solitary driveler is like a lonely cat on the tiles, and is a positive nuisance. Poor Hugh! Nadine, you suit my wall-paper quite exquisitely. Also it suits you. Don't let any of us go to bed to-night, but see the morning come. The early morning is the color of a wood-pigeon's breast, and looks frightfully tired, as if it had sat up all night too. Most people look perfectly hideous at that moment, but I really don't believe you would. Do sit up and let me see.
"I look the color of an oyster at dawn," said Esther, "it is just as if I had gone bad."
Her brother looked at her thoughtfully.
"Yes, my dear, I can imagine your looking quite ghastly," he said. "You had better go away before dawn. It might make me seriously unwell."
"I shall. I shall go to the dance at the Embassy, I think. Madame Tavita is so hideous that she makes me feel good-looking for a week."
"You always behave as if you were pretty, which matters far more than being pretty," said Seymour. "It matters very little what people look like, if they only behave as if they were Venuses, just as it does not matter how tall you are if you consistently look at a point rather above the head of the person you are talking to."
Nadine was recovering a little under the influence of food.
"That is quite true," she said. "And if you want to look really rich, you must be shabby, or not wash your face. Seymour, let us try and write a little book together, 'Fifty ways of appearing enviable.' You should eat a great deal in order to make it appear you have a good digestion, although you may be quite sick afterwards, and refuse a great many invitations to show what a wild social success you are, even though you dine all by yourself at home. My dear, what delicious food; did you cook it, or Antoinette?"
"Both. We each threw in what we thought would be good, and stirred it together. I am sorry for people who are not greedy. I am told that when you are old, food and saving money are the only pursuits that don't pall. At present food and spending money are particularly attractive, and a piquancy is added if you haven't got any money. And now we all feel better."
Seymour had a piece of needlework which he often produced when he was staying with friends, in order to irritate them. He seldom worked at it when at home, but to-night he got it out, in order to irritate his sister into going to the ball without delay, for Esther was always exasperated to a point almost beyond her control by the sight of her brother with his thimble and needle. So before long she took her departure, leaving Nadine to follow (which was Seymour's design), and he put the needlework back into its embroidered bag again.
"I am afraid my methods are a little obvious," he said, "but poor Esther sees nothing but the most obvious hints. You have to say things very loud and clear to her, like the man in 'Alice in Wonderland.'"
"Who was that?" asked Nadine absently. "And what did you want Esther to do?"
"To go away, of course. I wanted to talk to you, Nadine. I have never known you look so beautiful as to-night. You look troubled too. Troubles make people feel plain but look beautiful."
Nadine shifted her position, so that she faced him.
"Yes, do talk to me," she said. "See if you can distract me a little from myself. My mind hurts me, Seymour. I wish I had a hard bright mind as some people have. Their minds are like ... I don't know what they are like: I can't trouble to think to-night. How stupid are all the jinkings and monkey-tricks we go through! I have worn an inane smile all day, and when I tried to read my Plato, it merely bored me. Nothing seems worth while. And don't be commonplace, and say that it is liver. It is nothing of the sort. Would you be surprised if I burst into tears?"
"You have been thinking of the old 'un," remarked Seymour.
"Whom do you mean?"
"Hugh, of course. Do you know you are rather like a boy watching the struggle of a butterfly he has impaled? You are sorry for it, but you don't let it go.
"He impaled himself," said Nadine.
"Well, you gave him the pin. But as you don't mean to marry him, make that quite clear to him."
"But how?"
"Marry me," said Seymour.
Chapter VI
Edith Arbuthnot had conceived the idea, an unhappy one as regards her family and neighbors, that every one who aspired to the name of Musician (it is not too much to assert that she did) should be able to play every instrument in the band. Just now she was learning the French horn and double-bass simultaneously. She kept her mind undistracted by the hideous noises she produced, and expected others to do so. Thus unless she was practising some instrument that required the exclusive use of the mouth, she would talk (and did so) while she learned.
Just now she was seated on the terrace wall at Winston, which was of a convenient height for playing the double-bass, which rested on the terrace below, and conversing at the top of her voice to Dodo who sat a yard or two away. These stentorian tones of course were necessary in order that she should be heard above the vibrating roar of the ill-played strings. She could not at present get much tone out of them; but for volume, it was as if all the bumblebees in the world were swarming in all the threshing-machines in the world, which were threshing everything else in the world.
"I used to think you were heartless, Dodo," she shouted; "but compared to Nadine you are a sickly sentimentalist."
When Dodo did not feel equal to shouting back, she spoke in dumb show. Now she concisely indicated "Rot" on her fingers.
"It isn't Rot," shouted Edith; "ah, what a wonderful thing a double-bass is: I shall write a Suite for the double-bass unaccompanied—I really mean it. If you seemed to me without a heart, Nadine would seem to have an organ which is all that a heart is not, very highly developed. Probably she inherited a tendency from you, and has developed and cultivated it. What do you say?"
"I said, do stop that appalling noise, darling," screamed Dodo. "I shall burst a blood-vessel if I try to talk against it."
"Very well: I must just play two or three scales," said Edith.
The hoarse clamor grew more and more vibrant and Dodo stopped her ears. Eventually the bow, as Edith brought it down upon the first note of a new scale, flew from her hands, and describing a parabola in the air fell into a clump of sweet-peas in the flower-bed below the terrace.
"I must learn not to do that," she said. "It happened yesterday and I shan't consider myself proficient until I am safe not to hit the conductor in the face. About Nadine: She is going to perpetrate the most horrible cruelty, marrying that dreadful young man, while Hugh is just dying for her. Hugh reminds me of what Jack was like, Dodo."
"Oh, do you think so?" said Dodo. "Except that Jack was once twenty-five, which is what Hugh is now, I don't see the smallest resemblance. Jack was so good-looking, and Hugh only looks good, and though Hugh is a darling, he is just a little slow and heavy, which Jack never was. You will be able