Works of E F Benson Read online

  He raised his eyes as he muttered these desolated syllables and there was Olga just letting herself out of the front garden of the Old Place. Georgie’s first impulse was to affect not to see her, and turn into his bachelor house, but she had certainly seen him, and made so shrill and piercing a whistle on her fingers that, pretend as he would not to have seen her, it was ludicrous to appear not to have heard her. She beckoned to him.

  “Georgie, the most awful thing has happened,” she said, as they came within speaking distance. “Oh, I called you Georgie by mistake then. When one once does that, one must go on doing it on purpose. Guess!” she said in the best Riseholme manner.

  “You can come to Lucia’s party after all,” said he.

  “No, I can’t. Well, you’ll never guess because you move in such high circles, so I’ll tell you. Mrs Weston’s Elizabeth is going to be married to Colonel Boucher’s Atkinson. I don’t know his Christian name, nor her surname, but they’re the ones!”

  “You don’t say so!” said Georgie, stung for a moment out of his own troubles. “But will they both leave? What will either of the others do? Mrs Weston can’t have a manservant, and how on earth is she to get on without Elizabeth? Besides — —”

  A faint flush mounted to his cheek.

  “I know. You mean babies,” said Olga ruthlessly. “Didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Georgie.

  “Then why not say so? You and I were babies once, though no one is old enough to remember that, and we shouldn’t have liked our parents and friends to have blushed when they mentioned us. Georgie, you are a prude.”

  “No, I’m not,” said Georgie, remembering he was probably in love with a married woman.

  “It doesn’t matter whether you are or not. Now there’s only one thing that can happen to Mrs Weston and the Colonel. They must marry each other too. Then Atkinson can continue to be Colonel Boucher’s man and Elizabeth the parlour-maid, unless she is busy with what made you blush. Then they can get help in; you will lend them Foljambe, for instance. It’s time you began to be of some good in your wicked selfish life. So that’s settled. It only remains for us to make them marry each other.”

  “Aren’t you getting on rather fast?” asked Georgie.

  “I’m not getting on at all at present I’m only talking. Come into my house instantly, and we’ll drink vermouth. Vermouth always makes me brilliant unless it makes me idiotic, but we’ll hope for the best.”

  Presently they were seated in Olga’s music-room, with a bottle of vermouth between them.

  “Now drink fair, Georgie,” she said, “and as you drink tell me all about the young people’s emotional history.”

  “Atkinson and Elizabeth?” asked Georgie.

  “No, my dear; Colonel Boucher and Mrs Weston. They have an emotional history. I am sure you all thought they were going to marry each other once. And they constantly dine together tete-a-tete. Now that’s a very good start. Are you quite sure he hasn’t got a wife and family in Egypt, or she a husband and family somewhere else? I don’t want to rake up family skeletons.”

  “I’ve never heard of them,” said Georgie.

  “Then we’ll take them as non-existent. You certainly would have heard of them if there were any, and very likely if there weren’t. And they both like eating, drinking and the latest intelligence. Don’t they?”

  “Yes. But — —”

  “But what? What more do you or they want? Isn’t that a better start for married life than many people get?”

  “But aren’t they rather old?” asked Georgie.

  “Not much older than you and me, and if it wasn’t that I’ve got my own Georgie, I would soon have somebody else’s. Do you know who I mean?”

  “No!” said Georgie firmly. Though all this came at the end of a most harrowing day, it or the vermouth exhilarated him.

  “Then I’ll tell you just what Mrs Weston told me. ‘He’s always been devoted to Lucia,’ said Mrs Weston, ‘and he has never looked at anybody else. There was Piggy Antrobus — —’ Now do you know who I mean?”

  Georgie suddenly giggled.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Then don’t talk about yourself so much, my dear, and let us get to the point. Now this afternoon I dropped in to see Mrs Weston and as she was telling me about the tragedy, she said by accident (just as I called you Georgie just now by accident) ‘And I don’t know what Jacob will do without Atkinson.’ Now is or is not Colonel Boucher’s name Jacob? There you are then! That’s one side of the question. She called him Jacob by accident and so she’ll call him Jacob on purpose before very long.”

  Olga nodded her head up and down in precise reproduction of Mrs Weston.

  “I’d hardly got out of the house,” she said in exact imitation of Mrs Weston’s voice, “before I met Colonel Boucher. It would have been about three o’clock — no it couldn’t have been three, because I had got back home and was standing in the hall when it struck three, and my clock’s a shade fast if anything. Well; Colonel Boucher said to me, ‘Haw, hum, quite a domestic crisis, by Jove.’ And so I pretended I didn’t know, and he told me all about it. So I said ‘Well, it is a domestic crisis, and you’ll lose Atkinson.’ ‘Haw, hum,’ said he, ‘and poor Jane, I should say, Mrs Weston, will lose Elizabeth.’ There!”

  She got up and lit a cigarette.

  “Oh, Georgie, do you grasp the inwardness of that?” she said. “Their dear old hearts were laid bare by the trouble that had come upon them, and each of them spoke of the other, as each felt for the other. Probably neither of them had said Jacob or Jane in the whole course of their lives. But the Angel of the Lord descended and troubled the waters. If you think that’s profane, have some more vermouth. It’s making me brilliant, though you wouldn’t have thought it. Now listen!”

  She sat down again close to him, her face brimming with a humorous enthusiasm. Humour in Riseholme was apt to be a little unkind; if you mentioned the absurdities of your friends, there was just a speck of malice in your wit. But with her there was none of that, she gave an imitation of Mrs Weston with the most ruthless fidelity, and yet it was kindly to the bottom. She liked her for talking in that emphatic voice and being so particular as to what time it was. “Now first of all you are coming to dine with me tonight,” said Olga.

  “Oh, I’m afraid that tonight — —” began Georgie, shrinking from any further complications. He really must have a quiet evening, and go to bed very early.

  “What are you afraid of tonight?” she asked. “You’re only going to wash your hair. You can do that tomorrow. So you and I, that’s two, and Mrs Weston and Colonel Jacob, that’s four, which is enough, and I don’t believe there’s anything to eat in the house. But there’s something to drink, which is my point. Not for you and me, mind; we’ve got to keep our heads and be clever. Don’t have any more vermouth. But Jane and Jacob are going to have quantities of champagne. Not tipsy, you understand, but at their best, and unguardedly appreciative of each other and us. And when they go away, they will exchange a chaste kiss at Mrs Weston’s door, and she will ask him in. No! I think she’ll ask him in first. And when they wake up tomorrow morning, they will both wonder how they could possibly, and jointly ask themselves what everybody else will say. And then they’ll thank God and Olga and Georgie that they did, and live happily for an extraordinary number of years. My dear, how infinitely happier they will be together than they are being now. Funny old dears! Each at its own fireside, saying that it’s too old, bless them! And you and I will sing ‘Voice that breathed o’er Eden’ and in the middle our angel-voices will crack, and we will sob into our handkerchief, and Eden will be left breathing deeply all by itself like the Guru. Why did you never tell me about the Guru? Mrs Weston’s a better friend to me than you are, and I must ring for my cook — no I’ll telephone first to Jacob and Jane — and see what there is to eat afterwards. You will sit here quietly, and when I have finished I will tell you what your part is.”

  During dinner, according
to Olga’s plan of campaign, the conversation was to be general, because she hated to have two conversations going on when only four people were present, since she found that she always wanted to join in the other one. This was the main principle she inculcated on Georgie, stamping it on his memory by a simile of peculiar vividness. “Imagine there is an Elizabethan spittoon in the middle of the table,” she said, “and keep on firmly spitting into it. I want you when there’s any pause to spit about two things, one, how dreadfully unhappy both Jacob and Jane will be without their paragons, the other, how pleasant is conversation and companionship. I shall be chaffing you, mind, all the time and saying you must get married. After dinner I shall probably stroll in the garden with Jacob. Don’t come. Keep him after dinner for some little time, for then’s my opportunity of talking to Jane, and give him at least three glasses of port. Gracious it’s time to dress, and the Lord prosper us.”

  Georgie found himself the last to arrive, when he got back to Olga’s and all three of them shook hands rather as people shake hands before a funeral. They went into dinner at once and Olga instantly began, “How many years did you say your admirable Atkinson had been with you?” she asked Colonel Boucher.

  “Twenty; getting on for twenty-one,” said he. “Great nuisance; ‘pon my word it’s worse than a nuisance.”

  Georgie had a bright idea.

  “But what’s a nuisance, Colonel?” he asked.

  “Eh, haven’t you heard? I thought it would have been all over the place by now. Atkinson’s going to be married.”

  “No!” said Georgie. “Whom to?”

  Mrs Weston could not bear not to announce this herself. “To my Elizabeth,” she said. “Elizabeth came to me this morning. ‘May I speak to you a minute, ma’am?’ she asked, and I thought nothing more than that perhaps she had broken a tea-cup. ‘Yes,’ said I quite cheerfully, ‘and what have you come to tell me?’”

  It was getting almost too tragic and Olga broke in.

  “Let’s try to forget all about it, for an hour or two,” she said. “It was nice of you all to take pity on me and come and have dinner, otherwise I should have been quite alone. If there’s one thing I cannot bear it’s being alone in the evening. And to think that anybody chooses to be alone when he needn’t! Look at that wretch there,” and she pointed to Georgie, “who lives all by himself instead of marrying. Liking to be alone is the worst habit I know; much worse than drink.”

  “Now do leave me alone,” said Georgie.

  “I won’t, my dear, and when dinner is over Mrs Weston and I are going to put our heads together, and when you come out we shall announce to you the name of your bride. I should put a tax of twenty shillings on the pound on all bachelors; they should all marry or starve.”

  Suddenly she turned to Colonel Boucher.

  “Oh, Colonel,” she said. “What have I been saying? How dreadfully stupid of me not to remember that you were a bachelor too. But I wouldn’t have you starve for anything. Have some more fish instantly to shew you forgive me. Georgie change the subject you’re always talking about yourself.”

  Georgie turned with admirable docility to Mrs Weston.

  “It’s too miserable for you,” he said. “How will you get on without Elizabeth? How long has she been with you?”

  Mrs Weston went straight back to where she had left off.

  “So I said, ‘What have you come to tell me?’ quite cheerfully, thinking it was a tea-cup. And she said, ‘I’m going to be married, ma’am,’ and she blushed so prettily that you’d have thought she was a girl of twenty, though she was seventeen when she came to me, — no, she was just eighteen, and that’s fifteen years ago, and that makes her thirty-three. ‘Well, Elizabeth,’ I said, ‘you haven’t told me yet who it is, but whether it’s the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Prince of Wales — for I felt I had to make a little joke like that — I hope you’ll make him as happy as you’ve made me all these years.’”

  “You old darling,” said Olga. “I should have gone into hysterics, and forbade the banns.”

  “No, Miss Bracely, you wouldn’t,” said Mrs Weston, “you’d have been just as thankful as me, that she’d got a good husband to take care of and to be taken care of by, because then she said, ‘Lor ma’am, it’s none of they — not them great folks. It’s the Colonel’s Atkinson.’ You ask the Colonel for Atkinson’s character, Miss Bracely, and then you’d be just as thankful as I was.”

  “The Colonel’s Atkinson is a slow coach, just like Georgie,” said Olga. “He and Elizabeth have been living side by side all these years, and why couldn’t the man make up his mind before? The only redeeming circumstance is that he has done it now. Our poor Georgie now—”

  “Now you’re going to be rude to Colonel Boucher again,” said Georgie. “Colonel, we’ve been asked here to be insulted.”

  Colonel Boucher had nothing stronger than a mild tolerance for Georgie and rather enjoyed snubbing him.

  “Well, if you call a glass of wine and a dinner like this an insult,” he said, “‘pon my word I don’t know what you’d call a compliment.”

  “I know what I call a compliment,” said Olga, “and that’s your all coming to dine with me at such short notice. About Georgie’s approaching nuptials now—”

  “You’re too tarsome” said he. “If you go on like that, I shan’t ask you to the wedding. Let’s talk about Elizabeth’s. When are they going to get married, Mrs Weston?”

  “That’s what I said to Elizabeth. ‘Get an almanack, Elizabeth,’ said I, ‘so that you won’t choose a Sunday. Don’t say the 20th of next month without looking it out. But if the 20th isn’t a Sunday or a Friday mind, for though I don’t believe in such things, still you never know—’ There was Mrs Antrobus now,” said Mrs Weston suddenly, putting in a footnote to her speech to Elizabeth, “it was on a Friday she married, and within a year she got as deaf as you see her now. Then Mr Weston’s uncle, his uncle by marriage I should say, he was another Friday marriage and they missed their train when going off on their honeymoon, and had to stay all night where they were without a sponge or a tooth brush between them, for all their luggage was in the train being whirled away to Torquay. ‘So make it the 20th, Elizabeth,’ I said, ‘if it isn’t a Friday or a Sunday, and I shall have time to look round me, and so will the Colonel, though I don’t expect that either of us will find your equals! And don’t cry, Elizabeth,’ I said, for she was getting quite watery, ‘for if you cry about a marriage, what’ll be left for a funeral?’”

  “Ha! Upon my word, I call that splendid of you,” said the Colonel. “I told Atkinson I wished I had never set eyes on him, before I wished him joy.”

  Olga got up.

  “Look after Colonel Boucher, Georgie,” she said, “and ring for anything you want. Look at the moon! Isn’t it heavenly. How Atkinson and Elizabeth must be enjoying it.”

  The two men spent a half-hour of only moderately enjoyable conversation, for Georgie kept the grindstone of the misery of his lot without Atkinson, and the pleasure of companionship firmly to the Colonel’s nose. It was no use for him to attempt to change the subject to the approaching tableaux, to a vague rumour that Piggy had fallen face downwards in the ducking-pond, that Mrs Quantock and her husband had turned a table this afternoon with remarkable results, for it had tapped out that his name was Robert and hers Daisy. Whichever way he turned, Georgie herded him back on to the stony path that he had been bidden to take, with the result that when Georgie finally permitted him to go into the music-room, he was athirst for the more genial companionship of the ladies. Olga got up as they entered.

  “Georgie’s so lazy,” she said, “that it’s no use asking him. But do let you and me have a turn up and down my garden, Colonel. There’s a divine moon and it’s quite warm.”

  They stepped out into the windless night.

  “Fancy it’s being October,” she said. “I don’t believe there is any winter in Riseholme, nor autumn either, for that matter. You are all so young, so deliciousl
y young. Look at Georgie in there: he’s like a boy still, and as for Mrs Weston, she’s twenty-five: not a day older.”

  “Yes, wonderful woman,” said he. “Always agreeable and lively. Handsome, too: I consider Mrs Weston a very handsome woman. Hasn’t altered an atom since I knew her.”

  “That’s the wonderful thing about you all!” said she. “You are all just as brisk and young as you were ten years ago. It’s ridiculous. As for you, I’m not sure that you’re not the most ridiculous of the lot. I feel as if I had been having dinner with three delightful cousins a little younger — not much, but just a little — than myself. Gracious! How you all made me romp the other night here. What a pace you go, Colonel! What’s your walking like if you call this a stroll?”

  Colonel Boucher moderated his pace. He thought Olga had been walking so quickly.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said. “Certainly Riseholme is a healthy bracing place. Perhaps we do keep our youth pretty well. God bless me, but the days go by without one’s noticing them. To think that I came here with Atkinson close on ten years ago.”

  This did very well for Olga: she swiftly switched off onto it.

  “It’s quite horrid for you losing your servant,” she said. “Servants do become friends, don’t they, especially to anyone living alone. Georgie and Foljambe, now! But I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if Foljambe had a mistress before very long.”