THE COLLECTED WORKS OF E. F. BENSON (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
help it, and it—that we weren't to be married, I mean—was in the Morning Post to-day, and it looked so horrible and cold. But whatever he wants to say to me, I think half-an-hour is sufficient. I wonder—I wonder if you know why I behaved like such a pig."
"I think I might guess," said Jack.
"Then you needn't, because there's only one possible guess. So we'll assume that you know. What a nuisance women are to your poor, long-suffering sex. Especially girls."
Jack laughed.
"They are just as much a nuisance afterwards," said he. "Look at your mother, how she is making life one perpetual martyrdom to me."
"But she used to be a nuisance to you, Papa Jack," said Nadine.
"There again you are wrong," he said. "I always loved her."
"And does that prevent one's being a nuisance?" asked Nadine. "Are you sure? Because if you are, you needn't interrupt Seymour quite so soon. I said half-an-hour, because I thought that would be time enough for him to tell me what a nuisance I was—"
"You're a heartless little baggage," observed Jack.
"Not quite," said Nadine.
"Well, you're an April day," said he, seeing the smile break through.
"And that is a doubtful compliment," said she. "But you are wrong if you think I am not sorry for Seymour. Yet what was I to do, Papa Jack, when I made The Discovery?"
"Well, you're not a heartless little baggage," conceded Jack, "but you have taken your heart out of one piece of the baggage, and packed it in another."
"Oh, la, la," said Nadine. "We mix our metaphors."
Nadine left with Jack in the motor soon after breakfast next morning. It had been settled that she should not tell Hugh she was going, until she said good-by to him, and when she went to his room next morning to do so, she found him still asleep, and the tall nurse entirely refused to have him awakened.
"Much better for him to sleep than to say good-by," said this adamantine woman. "When he wakes, he shall be told you have gone, if he asks."
"Of course he'll ask," said Nadine.
She paused a moment.
"Will you let me know if he doesn't?" she added.
Nurse Bryerley's grim capable face relaxed into a smile. She did not quite understand the situation, but she was quite content to do her best for her patient according to her lights.
"And shall I say that you'll be back soon?" she asked.
Nadine had no direct reply to this.
"Ah, do make him get well," she said.
"That's what I'm here for. And I will say that you'll be back soon, shall I, if he wants you?"
"Soon?" said Nadine. "That minute."
Hugh slept long that morning, and Dodo was not told he was awake and ready to receive a morning call till the travelers had been gone a couple of hours. She had spent them in a pleasant atmosphere of conscious virtue, engendered by the feeling that she had sent Jack away when she would much have preferred his stopping here. But as Dodo explained to Edith it took quite a little thing to make her feel good, whereas it took a lot to make her feel wicked.
"A nice morning, for instance," she said, "or sending my darling Jack away because it's good for Nadine, or getting a postal-order. Quite little things like that make me feel a perfect saint. Whereas the powers of hell have to do their worst, as the hymn says, to make me feel wicked."
Edith gave a rather elaborate sigh. She had to sigh carefully because she had a cigarette and a pen in her mouth, while she was scratching out a blot she had made on the score she was revising. So care was needed; otherwise cigarette and pen might have been shot from her mouth. When she spoke her utterance was indistinct and mumbling.
"I suppose you infer that you are more at home in heaven than hell," she said, "since just a touch makes you feel a saint. I should say it was the other way about. You are so at home in the other place that the most abysmal depths of infamy have to be presented to you before you know they are wicked at all, whereas you hail as divine the most infinitesimal distraction that breaks the monotonous round of vice. Perhaps I am expressing myself too strongly, but I feel strongly. The world is more high-colored to me than to other people."
"Darling, I never heard such a moderate and well-balanced statement," said Dodo. "Do go on."
"I don't want to. But I thought your optimism about yourself was sickly, and wanted a—a dash of discouragement. But you and Nadine are both the same: if you behave charmingly, you tell us to give the praise to you; if you behave abominably you say, 'I can't help it: it was Nature's fault for making me like that.' Now I am not like that: whatever I do, I take the responsibility, and say, 'I am I. Take me or leave me.' But I have no doubt that Nadine believes it has been too wonderful of her to fall in love with Hugh. And when she jilts Seymour, she says 'Enquire at Nature's Workshop; this firm is entirely independent.' Bah!"
Dodo laughed, but her laugh died rather quickly.
"Ah, don't be hard, Edith," she said. "We most of us want encouragement at times, and we have to encourage ourselves by making ourselves out as nice as we can. Otherwise we should look on the mess we make of things as a hopeless job. Perhaps it is hopeless but that is the one thing we mustn't allow. We are like"—Dodo paused for a simile—"we are like children to whom is given a quantity of lovely little squares of mosaic, and we know, our souls know, that they can be put together into the most beautiful patterns. And we begin fairly well, but then the devil comes along, and jogs our elbow, and smashes it all up. Probably it is our own stupidity, but it is more encouraging to say it is the devil or nature, something not ourselves. Good heavens, my elbow has jogged often enough! And when the pattern gets on well, we encourage ourselves by saying, 'This is clever and good and wise Me doing it now!' And then perhaps something very big and solemn comes our way, and we bow our heads, and know it isn't ourselves at all."
Edith had finished erasing her blot, and was gathering her sheets together. She tapped them dramatically with an inky forefinger.
"This is big and solemn," she said. "But it's Me. The artist's inspiration never comes from outside: it is always from within. I'm going to send it to have the band parts copied to-day."
At the moment the message came that Hugh received, and Dodo got up. He had received Edith one morning, but the effect was that he had eaten no lunch and had dozed uneasily all afternoon. Edith had been content with the explanation that her vitality was too strong for him, and, while ready to give him another dose of it, did not press the matter; anyhow, she had other business on hand.
He lay propped up in bed, with a wad of pillows at his back. He looked far more alert and present than he had yet done. Hitherto, he had been slow to grasp the meaning of what was said to him, and he hardly ever volunteered a statement or question, but this morning he smiled and spoke with quite unusual quickness.
"Morning, Aunt Dodo," he said. "I'm awfully brisk to-day."
Nurse Bryerley put in a warning word.
"Don't be too brisk," she said. "Please don't let him be too brisk," she added, looking at Dodo.
"Hughie, dear, you do look better," she said; "but we'll all be quite calm, and self-contained like flats."
Hugh frowned for a moment; then his face cleared again.
"I see," he said. "Bright, aren't I? Aunt Dodo, I have certainly woke up this morning. You look real, do you know; before I was never quite certain about you. You looked as if you might be a good forgery, but spurious. Have a cigarette, and why shouldn't I?"
"Wiser not," said Nurse Bryerley laconically.
Hugh's briskness did not seem to be entirely good-natured.
"How on earth could a cigarette hurt me?" he said. "Perhaps it would be wiser for Lady Chesterford not to smoke either. Aunt Dodo, you mustn't smoke. Wiser