Читать книгу Dodo Trilogy - Complete Edition: Dodo, Dodo's Daughter & Dodo Wonders - E F Benson - Страница 13

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Dodo was sitting in a remarkably easy-chair in her own particular room at the house in Eaton Square. As might have been expected, her room was somewhat unlike other rooms. It had a pale orange-coloured paper, with a dado of rather more intense shade of the same colour, an orange-coloured carpet and orange-coloured curtains. Dodo had no reason to be afraid of orange colour just yet. It was a room well calculated to make complete idleness most easy. The tables were covered with a mass of albums, vases of flowers, and a quantity of entirely useless knick-knacks. The walls were hung with several rather clever sketches, French prints and caricatures of Dodo's friends. A small bookcase displayed a quantity of flaring novels and a large tune hymn-book, and in a conspicuous corner was Dodo's praying-table, on which the skull regarded its surroundings with a mirthless and possibly contemptuous grin. The mantelpiece was entirely covered with photographs, all signed by their prototypes. These had found their quarters gradually becoming too small for them, and had climbed half way up the two-sides of a Louis Quinze mirror, that formed a sort of overmantel. The photographs were an interesting study, and included representatives from a very wide range of classes. No one ever accused Dodo of being exclusive. In the corner of the room were a heap of old cotillion toys, several hunting-whips, and a small black image of the Virgin, which Dodo had picked up abroad. Above her head a fox's mask grinned defiantly at another fox's brush opposite. On the writing table there was an inkstand made of the hoof of Dodo's favourite hunter, which had joined the majority shortly after Christmas, and the "Dodo" symphony, which had just come out with great éclat at the Albert Hall, leant against the wall. A banjo case and a pair of castanets, with a dainty silver monogram on them, perhaps inspired Dodo when she sat down to her writing-table.

Dodo's hands were folded on her lap, and she was lazily regarding a photograph of herself which stood oh the mantelpiece. Though the afternoon was of a warm day in the end of May, there was a small fire on the hearth which crackled pleasantly. Dodo got up and looked at the photograph more closely. "I certainly look older," she thought to herself, "and yet that was only taken a year ago. I don't feel a bit older, at least I sha'n't when I get quite strong again. I wish Jack could have been able to come this afternoon. I am rather tired of seeing nobody except Chesterford and the baby. However, Mrs. Vivian will be here soon."

Dodo had made great friends with Mrs. Vivian during the last months. Her sister and brother-in-law had been obliged to leave England for a month at Easter, and Dodo had insisted that Mrs. Vivian should spend it with them, and to-day was the first day that the doctor had let her come down, and she had written to Jack and Mrs. Vivian to come and have tea with her.

A tap was heard at the door, and the nurse entered, bearing the three weeks' old baby. Dodo was a little disappointed; she had seen a good deal of the baby, and she particularly wanted Mrs. Vivian. She stood with her hands behind her back, without offering to take it. The baby regarded her with large wide eyes, and crowed at the sight of the fire. Really it was rather attractive, after all.

"Well, Lord Harchester," remarked Dodo, "how is your lordship to-day? Did it ever enter your very pink head that you were a most important personage? Really you have very little sense of your dignity. Oh, you are rather, nice. Come here, baby."

She held out her arms to take it, but his lordship apparently did not approve of this change. He opened his mouth in preparation for a decent protest.

"Ah, do you know, I don't like you when you howl," said Dodo; "you might be an Irish member instead of a piece of landed interest. Oh, do stop. Take him please, nurse; I've got a headache, and I don't like that noise. There, you unfilial scoundrel, you're quiet enough now."

Dodo nodded at the baby with the air of a slight acquaintance.

"I wonder if you'll be like your father," she said; "you've got his big blue eyes. I rather wish your eyes were dark. Do a baby's eyes change when he gets older? Ah, here's your godmother. I am so glad to see you," she went on to Mrs. Vivian. "You see his lordship has come down to say how do you do."

"Dear Dodo," said Mrs. Vivian, "you are looking wonderfully better. Why don't they let you go out this lovely day?"

"Oh, I've got a cold," said Dodo, "at least I'm told so. There—good-bye, my lord. You'd better take him upstairs again, nurse. I am so delighted to see you," she continued; pouring out tea. "I've been rather dull all day. Don't you know how, when you particularly want to see people; they never come. Edith looked in this morning, but she did nothing but whistle and drop things. I asked Jack to come, but he couldn't."

"Ah," said Mrs. Vivian softly, "he has come back, has he?"

"Yes," said Dodo, "and I wanted to see him. Did you ever hear of anything so ridiculous as his going off in that way. You know he left England directly after his visit to us in January, and he's only just back. It's too absurd for Jack to pretend he was ill. He swore his doctor had told him to leave England for three months. Of course that's nonsense. It was very stupid of him."

Mrs. Vivian sipped her tea reflectively without answering.

"Chesterford is perfectly silly about the baby," Dodo went on. "He's always afraid it's going to be ill, and he goes up on tiptoe to the nursery, to see if it's all right. Last night he woke me up about half-past ten, to say that he heard it cough several times, and did I think it was the whooping cough."

Mrs. Vivian did not seem to be listening.

"I heard from Mr. Broxton once," she said; "he wrote from Moscow, and asked how you were, and three weeks ago he telegraphed, when he heard of the birth of the baby."

"I don't know what's the matter with Jack," said Dodo, rather petulantly. "He wrote to me once, the silliest letter you ever saw, describing the Kremlin, and Trèves Cathedral, and the falls of the Rhine. The sort of letter one writes to one's great-aunt. Now I'm not Jack's great-aunt at all."

There was another tap at the door.

"That's Chesterford," remarked Dodo, "he always raps now, and if I don't answer he thinks I'm asleep, and then he goes away. You just see."

The tap came again, and after a moment's interval the door opened.

"Jack!" exclaimed Dodo.

She got up from her chair and went quickly towards him. Jack was pale, and his breath came rather short, as if he had been running.

"Why, Dodo," he cried, "I thought I couldn't come, and then I thought I could, so I did."

He broke off rather lamely, and greeted Mrs. Vivian.

"Dear old Jack," said Dodo, "it does me good to see you. Your face is so nice and familiar, and I've wanted you awfully. Jack, what do you mean by writing me such a stupid letter? especially when I'd written to you so nicely. Really, I'm not your grand-mother yet, though I am a mother. Have you seen the baby? It isn't particularly interesting at present, though of course it's rather nice to think that that wretched little morsel of flesh and bones is going to be one of our landed proprietors. He'll be much more important than you will ever be, Jack. Aren't you jealous?"

Dodo was conscious of quite a fresh tide of interest in her life. Her intellectual faculties, she felt, had been neglected. She could not conceive why, because she had a husband and baby, she should be supposed not to care for other interests as well. Chesterford was an excellent husband, with a magnificent heart; but Dodo had told herself so often that he was not very clever, that she had ceased trying to take an intellectual pleasure in his society, and the baby could not be called intellectual by the fondest parent at present. There were a quantity of women who were content to pore on their baby's face for hour after hour, with no further occupation than saying "Didums" occasionally. Dodo had given what she considered a fair trial to this treatment, and she found it bored her to say "Didums" for an indefinite period, and she did not believe it amused the baby. She had a certain pride in having given birth to the son and heir of one of the largest English properties, and she was extremely glad to have done so, and felt a certain pleased sort of proprietorship in the little pink morsel, but she certainly had experienced none of the absorbing pleasures of maternity. She had got used to not being in love with her husband, and she accepted as part of this same deficiency the absence of absorbing pleasure in the baby. Not that she considered it a deficiency, it was merely another type turned out of Nature's workshop. Dodo laid all the blame on Nature. She shrugged her shoulders and said: "You made me so without consulting me. It isn't my fault!" But Dodo was aware that Nature had given her a brain, and she found a very decided pleasure in the company of clever people. Perhaps it was the greatest pleasure of her life to be admired and amused by clever people. Of course Chesterford always admired her, but he was in love with her, and he was not clever. Dodo had felt some difficulty before her marriage in dealing with this perplexing unknown quantity, and she had to confess it puzzled her still. The result was, that when it occurred, she had to admit her inability to tackle it, and as soon as possible to turn to another page in this algebra of life.

But she still felt that her marriage had been a great success. Chesterford had entirely fulfilled what she expected of him: he was immensely rich, he let her do as she liked, he adored her. Dodo quite felt that it was better that he should adore her. As long as that lasted, he would be blind to any fault of hers, and she acknowledged that, to a man of Chesterford's character, she must seem far from faultless, if he contemplated her calmly. But he was quite unable to contemplate her calmly. For him she walked in a golden cloud that dazzled and entranced him. Dodo was duly grateful to the golden cloud.

But she felt that the element which Jack, and Mrs. Vivian, and other friends of hers brought, had been conspicuously absent, and she welcomed its return with eagerness.

"You know we haven't been leading a very intellectual life lately," Dodo continued. "Chesterford is divinely kind to me, but he is careful not to excite me. So he talks chiefly about the baby, and how he lost his umbrella at the club; it is very soothing, but I have got past that now. I want stimulating. Sometimes I go to sleep, and then he sits as still as a mouse till I wake again. Pity me, Jack, I have had a dull fortnight; and that is worse than anything else. I really never remember being bored before!"

Dodo let her arms drop beside her with a little hopeless gesture.

"I know one's got no business to be bored, and it's one's own fault as a rule if one is," she went on. "For instance, that woman in the moated Grange ought to have swept away the blue fly that buzzed in the pane, and set a mouse-trap for the mouse that shrieked, and got the carpenter to repair the mouldering wainscot, and written to the Psychical Research, how she had heard her own sad name in corners cried, and it couldn't have been the cat, or she would have caught the shrieking mouse. Oh, there were a hundred things she might have done, before she sat down and said, 'He cometh not,' But I have had a period of enforced idleness. If I had set a trap for the mouse, the doctor would have told me not to exert myself so much.' I used to play Halma with Chesterford, only I always beat him; and then nobody ever cried my name in sad corners, that I remember; it would have been quite interesting."

Jack laughed.

"What a miserable story, Dodo," he said. "I always said—you had none of the domestic virtues, and I am right, it seems."

"Oh, it isn't that," said Dodo, "but I happen to have a brain as well, and if I don't use it, it decays, and when it decays, it breeds maggots. I've got a big maggot in my head now, and that is, that the ineffable joys of maternity are much exaggerated. Don't look shocked, Geraldine. I know it's a maggot, and simply means that I haven't personally experienced them, but the maggot says, 'You are a woman, and if you don't experience them, either they don't exist, or you are abnormal.' Well, the maggot lies, I know it, I believe they do exist, and I am sure I am not abnormal. Ah, this is unprofitable, isn't it. You two have come to drive the maggot out."

Mrs. Vivian felt a sudden impulse of anger, which melted into pity.

"Poor Dodo," she said, "leave the maggot alone, and he will die of inanition. At present give me some more tea. This really is very good tea, and you drink it the proper way, without milk or sugar, and with a little slice of lemon."

"Tea is such a middle-aged thing any other way," said Dodo, pouring out another cup. "I feel like an old woman in a workhouse if I put milk and sugar in it. Besides, you should only drink tea at tea. It produces the same effect as tobacco, a slight soothing of the nerves. One doesn't want to be soothed at breakfast, otherwise the tedious things we all have to do in the morning are impossible. Chesterford has a passion for the morning. He quoted something the other day about the divine morning. It isn't divine, it is necessary; at least you can't get to the evening without a morning, in this imperfect world. Now if it had only been 'the evening and the evening were the first day,' what a difference it would have made."

Mrs. Vivian laughed.

"You always bring up the heavy artillery to defend a small position, Dodo," she said. "Keep your great guns for great occasions."

"Oh, I always use big guns," said Jack. "They do the work quicker. Besides, you never can tell that the small position is not the key to the large. The baby, for instance, that Dodo thinks very extremely insignificant now, may be horribly important in twenty years."

"Yes, I daresay Chesterford and I will quarrel about him," said Dodo. "Supposing he falls in love with a curate's daughter, Chesterford will say something about love in a cottage, and I shall want him to marry a duke's daughter, and I shall get my way, and everybody concerned will be extremely glad afterwards."

"Poor baby," said Mrs. Vivian, "you little think what a worldly mother you have."

"Oh, I know I am worldly," said Dodo. "I don't deny it for a moment. Jack and I had it out before my marriage. But I believe I am capable of an unworldly action now and then. Why, I should wish Maud to marry a curate very much. She would do her part admirably, and no one could say it was a worldly fate. But I like giving everybody their chance. That is why I have Maud to stay with me, and let her get a good look at idle worldly people like Jack. After a girl has seen every sort, I wish her to choose, and I am unworldly enough to applaud her choice, if it is unworldly; only I shouldn't do it myself. I have no ideal; it was left out."

Jack was conscious of a keen resentment at Dodo's words. He had accepted her decision, but he didn't like to have it flaunted before him in Dodo's light voice and careless words. He made an uneasy movement in his chair. Dodo saw it.

"Ah, Jack, I have offended you," she said; "it was stupid of me. But I have been so silent and lonely all these days, that it is such a relief to let my tongue wag at all, whatever it says. Ah, here's Chesterford. What an age you have been! Here am I consoling myself as best I can. Isn't it nice to have Jack again?"

Chesterford saw the fresh light in her eyes, and the fresh vivaciousness in her speech, and he was so unfeignedly glad to see her more herself again, that no thought of jealousy entered his heart. He thought without bitterness, "How glad she must be to have her friends about her again! She looks better already. Decidedly I am a stupid old fellow, but I think Dodo loves me a little."

He shook hands with Jack, and beamed delightedly on Dodo.

"Jack, it is good of you to come so soon," he said; "Dodo has missed you dreadfully. Have you seen the boy? Dodo, may I have him down?"

"Oh, he's been down," said she, "and has only just gone up again. He's rather fractious to-day. I daresay it's teeth. It's nothing to bother about; he's as well as possible."

Lord Chesterford looked disappointed, but ac-quiesced.

"I should like Jack to see him all the same," he remarked. "May he come up to the nursery?"

"Oh, Jack doesn't care about babies," said Dodo, "even when they belong to you and me. Do you, Jack? I assure you it won't amuse you a bit."

"I can't go away without seeing the baby," said Jack, "so I think I'll go with Chesterford, and then I must be off. Good-bye, Dodo. Get well quickly. May I come and see you to-morrow?"

"I wish Chesterford wouldn't take Jack off in that way," said Dodo rather querulously, as they left the room. "Jack came to see me, and I wanted to talk more to him—I'm very fond of Jack. If he wasn't so fearfully lazy, he'd make no end of a splash. But he prefers talking to his friends to talking to a lot of Irish members. I wonder why he came after he said he wouldn't. Jack usually has good reasons."

Dodo lay back in her chair and reflected.

"You really are the most unnatural mother," said Mrs. Vivian, with a laugh. "I am glad Mr. Broxton went with your husband, or he would have been disappointed, I think."

Dodo looked a little anxious.

"He wasn't vexed, was he?" she asked. "I hate vexing people, especially Chesterford. But he really is ridiculous about the baby. It is absurd to suppose it is interesting yet."

"I don't suppose he would call it interesting," said Mrs. Vivian. "But you know there are other things beside that."

Dodo grew a trifle impatient.

"Ah, that's a twice-told tale," she said. "I consider I have done my duty admirably, but just now I confess I am pining for a little amusement. I have been awfully dull. You know one can't exist on pure love."

Mrs. Vivian rose to go.

"Well, I must be off," she said. "Good-night, Dodo; and remember this, if ever anything occurs on which you want advice or counsel, come to me for it. You know I have been through all this; and—and remember Lord Chesterford loves you very deeply."

Dodo looked up inquiringly.

"Yes, of course, I know that," she said, "and we get on magnificently together. In any case I should always ask you for advice. You know I used to be rather afraid of you."

Mrs. Vivian stood looking out of the window. Her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

"Ah, my dear, don't be afraid of me," she said.

Dodo wondered, when she had gone, what made her so suddenly grave. Her own horizon was singularly free from clouds. She had been through an experience which she had looked forward to with something like dread. But that was over; she and the baby were both alive and well. Chesterford was more devoted than ever, and she?—well, she was thoroughly satisfied. And Jack had come back, and all was going delightfully.

"They all talk about love as if it were something very dreadful," she thought. "I'm sure it isn't dreadful at all. It is rather a bore sometimes; at least one can have enough of it, but that is a fault on the right side."

The door opened softly, and Chesterford came in.

"I am glad to find you alone, darling," he said, "I haven't seen you all day. You are looking much better. Get Jack to come and see you again as soon as he can."

Dodo smiled benignantly on him.

"The baby really is wonderful," he continued. "It was sitting up with its bottle just now, and I really believe it winked at me when it saw me. Do you think it knows me?"

"Oh, I daresay it does," said Dodo; "it sees enough of you anyhow."

"Isn't it all wonderful," he went on, not noticing her tone. "Just fancy. Sometimes I wonder whether it's all real."

"It's real enough when it cries," said Dodo. "But it is rather charming, I do think."

"It's got such queer little fists," said he, "with nice pink nails."

Dodo laughed rather wearily.

"Are you a little tired, darling?" he said. "Won't you go to bed? You know you've been up quite a long time. Perhaps you'd like to see the baby before you go."

"Oh, I said good-night to the baby," said Dodo. "I think I will go to bed. I wish you'd send Wilkins here."

He bent over her and kissed her forehead softly.

"Ah, my darling, my darling," he whispered.

Dodo lay with half-shut eyes.

"Good-night, dear," she said languidly.