THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
him before, the sun shone on those days, and not until she had engaged herself to Seymour did the gold fade. Not until to-day when he had definite confirmation of that from her own lips, had he really believed in her rejection of him. He well knew her affection for him; he believed, and rightly, that if she had been asked to name her best friend, she would have named none other than himself. It had been impossible for him not to be sanguine over the eventual outcome, and he had never really doubted that some day her affection would be kindled into flame. He had often told himself that it was through him that she would discover her heart. As she had suggested, he would some day crack the nut for her, and show her her own kernel, and she would find it was his.
And now all those optimisms were snuffed out. He had completely to alter and adjust his focus, but that could not be done at once. To-night he peered out, as it were upon familiar scenes, and found that his sight of them was misty and blurred. The whole world had vanished in cold gray mists. He was lost, quite lost, and ... and there was a letter for him on the table which he had not noticed. The envelope was obviously of cheap quality, and was of those proportions which suggest a bill. A bill it was from a bookseller, of four shillings and sixpence, incurred over a book Nadine had said she wanted to read. He had passed the bookseller's on his way home immediately afterwards and of course he had ordered it for her. She had not cared for it; she had found it unreal. "The man is meant to arouse my sympathy," she had said, "and only arouses my intense indifference. I am acutely uninterested in what happens to him." Hugh felt as if she had been speaking of himself, but the moment after knew that he did her an injustice. Even now he could not doubt the sincerity of her affection for him. But there was something frozen about it. It was like sleet, and he, like a parched land, longed for the pity of the soft rain.
Hugh had a wholesome contempt for people who pity themselves, and it struck him at this point that he was in considerable danger of becoming despicable in his own eyes. He had been capable of sufficient manliness to remove himself from Nadine that afternoon, but his solitary evening was not up to that standard; he might as well have remained at Winston, if he was to endorse his refusal to dangle after her with nothing more virile than those drawling sentimentalities. She was not for him: he had made this expedition to-day in order to convince himself on that point, and already his determination was showing itself unstable, if it suffered him to dangle in mind though not in body. And yet how was it possible not to? Nadine, physically and tangibly, was certainly going to pass out of his life, but to eradicate her from his soul would be an act of spiritual suicide. Physically there was no doubt that he would continue to exist without her, spiritually he did not see how existence was possible on the same terms. But he need not drivel about her. There were always two ways of behaving after receiving a blow which knocked you down, and the one that commended itself most to Hugh was to get up again.
Lady Ayr at the end of the London season had for years been accustomed to carry out some innocent plan for the improvement and discomfort of her family. One year she dragged them along the castles by the Loire, another she forced them, as if by pumping, through the picture galleries of Holland, and this summer she proposed to show them a quantity of the English cathedrals. These abominable pilgrimages were made pompously and economically: they stayed at odious inns, where she haggled and bargained with the proprietors, but on the other hand she informed the petrified vergers and custodians whom she conducted (rather than was conducted by) round the cathedrals or castles in their charge, that she was the Marchioness of Ayr, was directly descended from the occupants of the finest and most antique tombs, that the castle in question had once belonged to her family, or that the gem of the Holbeins represented some aunt of hers in bygone generations. Here pomp held sway, but economy came into its own again over the small silver coin with which she rewarded her conductor. On English lines she had a third class carriage reserved for her and beguiled the tedium of journeys by reading aloud out of guide-books an account of what they had seen or what they were going to visit. Generally they put up at "temperance" hotels, and she made a point of afternoon tea being included in the exiguous terms at which she insisted on being entertained. John aided and abetted her in those tours, exhibiting an ogreish appetite for all things Gothic and mental improvement; and her husband followed her with a white umbrella and sat down as much as possible. Esther's part in them was that of a resigned and inattentive martyr, and she fired off picture postcards of the places they visited to Nadine and others with "This is a foul hole," or "The beastliest inn we have struck yet" written on them, while Seymour revenged himself on the discomforts inflicted on him, by examining his mother as to where they had seen a particular rose-window or portrait by Rembrandt, and then by the aid of a guide-book proving she was wrong. Why none of them revolted and refused to go on these annual journeys, now that they had arrived at adult years, they none of them exactly knew, any more than they knew why they went, when summoned, to their mother's dreadful dinner-parties, and it must be supposed that there was a touch of the inevitable about such diversions: you might grumble and complain, but you went.
This year the tour was to start with the interesting city of Lincoln and the party assembled on the platform at King's Cross at an early hour. The plan was to lunch in the train, so as to start sight-seeing immediately on arrival, and continue (with a short excursion to the hotel in order to have the tea which had been included in the terms) until the fading light made it impossible to distinguish ancestral tombs or Norman arches. Lady Ayr had not seen Seymour since his engagement, and, as she ate rather grisly beef sandwiches, she gave him her views on the step. Though they were all together in one compartment the conversation might be considered a private one, for Lord Ayr was sleeping gently in one corner, John was absorbed in the account of the Roman remains at Lincoln (Lindum Colonia, as he had already announced), and Esther with a slightly leaky stylograph was writing a description of their depressing journey to Nadine.
"What you are marrying on, Seymour, I don't know," she said. "Neither your father nor I will be able to increase your allowance, and Nadine Waldenech has the appearance of being an expensive young woman. I hope she realizes she is marrying the son of a poor man, and that we go third class."
"She is aware of all that," said Seymour, wiping his long white finger-tips on an exceedingly fine cambric handkerchief, after swallowing a sandwich or two, "and we are marrying really on her money."
"I am not sure that I approve of that," said his mother.
"The remedy is obvious," remarked Seymour. "You can increase my allowance. I have no objection. Mother, would you kindly let me throw the rest of that sandwich out of the window? It makes me ill to look at it."
"We are not talking about sandwiches. Why do you not earn some money like other younger sons?"
"I do. I earned four pounds last week, with describing your party and other things, and there is my embroidery as well, which I shall work at more industriously. I shall do embroidery in the evening after dinner while Nadine smokes."
Lady Ayr looked out of the window and pointed magisterially to the towers of some great church in the town through which the train was passing.
"Peterborough," she said. "We shall see Peterborough on our way back. Peterborough, John. Ayr and Esther, we are passing through Peterborough."
Esther looked out upon the mean backs of houses.
"The sooner we pass through Peterborough the better," she observed.
John turned rapidly over the leaves of his guide-book.
"Peterborough is seventy-eight miles from London, and contains many buildings of interest," he informed them.
Lady Ayr returned to Seymour.
"I hope you will insist on her leaving off smoking when you are married to her," she said. "I cannot say she is the wife I should have chosen for you."
"I chose her myself," observed Seymour.
"Tell me more about her. Certainly the Waldenechs are a very old family, there is that to be said. Is she serious? Does she feel her responsibilities? Or is she like her mother?"
Seymour brushed a few remaining sandwich-crumbs off his trousers.
"I think Aunt Dodo is one of the most serious people I know," he said. "She is serious about everything. She does everything with all her might. Nadine is not quite so serious as