The Essential E. F. Benson: 53+ Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson
once came, because it was drying up. For a million years there will be girls like me, poor wretches, and at the end there will be another type of woman, a third sex, perhaps, who from not caring about these things which Nature evidently meant them to care about have become different. And all the boys like Seymour will be approximating to the same type from the other side, so that eventually we shall be like the angels—"
"My dear, why angels?" asked Edith.
"Neither marrying nor giving in marriage. La, la! And I was saying only the other day to him that I wished to marry half-a-dozen men! What a good thing that one does not feel the same every day. It would be atrociously dull. But in the interval, it is lonely now and then for those of us who are not exactly and precisely of the normal type of girl. But if you have no heart, you have to follow your intelligence, to go where your intelligence leads you, and then wave a flag. Perhaps nobody sees it, or only the wrong sort of person, who says, 'What is that idiot-girl waving that rag for?' But she only waves it because she is lost, and hopes that somebody will see it."
Nadine laughed with her habitual gurgle.
"We are all lost," she said. "But we want to be found. It is only the stupidest who do not know they are lost. Well, I have—what is Hugh's word? ah, yes,—I have gassed enough for one morning. Ah, and there is the motor coming back from the station. I am glad that Hugh has not thrown Seymour out, and driven forwards and backwards over him."
The motor at this moment was passing not more than a couple of hundred yards off through the park which lay at the foot of the steep garden terraces below them. From there the road wound round in a long loop towards the house.
"I shall go to meet Hugh at once, and get it over," said Nadine; and thereupon she whistled so shrilly and surprisingly on her fingers, that Hugh, who was driving, looked up and saw her over the terrace. She made staccato wavings to him, and he got out.
"You whistled the octave of B. in alt," remarked Edith appreciatively.
"And my courage is somewhere about the octave of B. in profundis," said Nadine. "I dread what Hugh may say to me."
"I will go and talk to him," said Edith. "I understand you now, Nadine. I will tell him."
Nadine smiled very faintly.
"That is sweet of you," she said, "but I am afraid it wouldn't be quite the same thing."
Nadine walked down the steep flight of steps in the middle of the terrace, and out through the Venetian gate into the park. Hugh had just arrived at it from the other side, and they met there. No word of greeting passed between them; they but stood looking at each other. He saw the girl he loved, neither more nor less than that, and did not know if she looked well or ill, or if her gown was blue or pink or rainbowed. To him it was Nadine who stood there. But she saw details, not being blinded: he was big and square, he looked a picture of health, brown-eyed, clear of skin, large-mouthed, with a habit of smiling written strongly there. He had taken off his hat, as was usual with him, and as usual his hair looked a little disordered, as if he had been out on a windy morning. There was that slight thrusting outwards of his chin which suggested that he would meet argument with obstinacy, but that kind and level look from his eyes that suggested an honesty and kindliness hardly met with outside the charming group of living beings known as dogs. He was like a big, kind dog, polite to strangers, kind to friends, hopelessly devoted to the owner of his soul. But to-day his mouth did not indulge its habit: he was quite grave.
"Why did you kiss me the other night?" he said.
Nadine had already repented of that rash act. Being conscious of her own repentance, it seemed to her rather nagging of him to allude to it.
"I meant nothing," she said. "Hughie, are we going to stand like posts here? Shan't we stroll—"
"I don't see why: let us stand like posts. You did kiss me. Or do you kiss everybody?"
Nadine considered this for a moment.
"No, I don't kiss everybody," she said. "I never kissed a man before. It was stupid of me. The moment after I had done it I wanted to kiss anybody to show you it didn't mean anything. You are like the Inquisition. My next answer is that I have kissed Seymour since. I—I don't particularly like kissing him. But it is usual."
"And you are going to marry him?"
Nadine's courage which she had confessed was a B. in profundis, sank into profundissima.
"Yes, I am going to marry him," she said.
"Why? You don't love him. And he doesn't love you."
"I don't love anybody," said Nadine quickly. "I have said that so often that I am tired of saying it. Girls often marry without being in love. It just happens. What do you want? Would you like me to go on spinstering just because I won't marry you? That I will not do. You know why. You love me. I can't marry you unless I love you. Ah, mon Dieu, it sounds like Ollendorf. But I should be cheating you if I married you, and I will not cheat you. You would expect from me what you bring to me, and it would be right that I should bring it you, and I cannot. If you didn't love me like that, I would marry you to-morrow, and the trousseau might go and hang itself. Mama would give me some blouses and stockings, and you would buy me a tooth-brush. Yes, this is very flippant, but when serious people are goaded they become flippant. Oh, Hughie, I wish I was different. But I am not different. And what is it you came down here about? Is it to ask me again to marry you, and to ask me not to marry my dear little Seymour?"
"Little?" he asked.
"It was a term of endearment. Besides, it is not his fault that he does not weigh fourteen stones—"
"Stone," said he with the tremor of a smile.
"No, stones," said Nadine. "I choose that it should be stones: fourteen great square lumps. Hughie, don't catch my words up and correct me. I am serious and all you can answer is 'stone' instead of 'stones.'"
"I did it without thinking," he said. "I only fell back into the sort of speech there used to be between us. It was like that, serious one moment and silly the next. I spoke without thinking, as we used to speak. I won't do it again."
"And why not?" demanded Nadine.
"Because now that you tell me you really are going to marry Seymour, everything is changed between us. This is what I came to tell you. I am not going to hang about, a mixture between a valet and an ami de la maison. You have chosen now. When you refused me before, there was always in my mind the hope that some day you would give me a different answer. I waited long and patiently and willingly for that chance. Now the chance no longer exists. You have scratched me—"
Nadine drew her eyebrows together.
"Scratched you?" she said. "Oh, I see, a race: not nails."
"And I am definitely and finally out of it."
"You mean you are no longer among my friends?" asked Nadine.
"I shall not be with you so much or so intimately. We must talk over it just this once. We will stroll if you like. It is too hot for you standing in the sun without a hat."
"No, we will settle it here and now," said she quickly. "You don't understand. My marriage with Seymour will make no difference in the quality of affection I have always had for you. Why should I give up my best friend? Why should you?"
"Because you are much more than my best friend, and I am obliged to give up, at last, that idea of you. You have forced me to see that it is not to be realized. And I won't sit about your house, to have people pointing at me, and saying to each other, 'That's the one who is so frightfully in love with her.' It may sound priggish, but I don't choose to be quite so unmanly as that. Nor would you much respect me if I did so choose."
"But I never did respect you," said Nadine quickly. "I never thought of you as respectable or otherwise. It doesn't come in. You may steal and cheat at cards, and I shall not care. I like whom I like: I like you tremendously. What do you mean you are going to do? Go to Burmah or Bengal? I don't want to lose you, Hughie. It is unkind of you. Besides, we shall not marry for a long time yet, and