Читать книгу The Essential E. F. Benson: 53+ Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition) - E F Benson - Страница 55

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It was just three weeks after the baby's death, and Dodo was sitting in her room about eleven o'clock in the morning, yawning dismally over a novel, but she was conscious of a certain relief, a sense of effort suspended. Late the evening before, Lord Chesterford had consulted her about some business down at Harchester, and Dodo, in a moment of inspiration, had said that it must be done by someone on the spot, that an agent was not to be trusted, and that if Chesterford liked she would go. This, of course, led to his offering to go himself, and would Dodo come with him? Dodo had replied that she was quite willing to go, but that there was no need of both of them making a tiresome journey on an infernally hot day. Chesterford had felt, rather wistfully, that he would not mind the journey if Dodo was with him, but he had learned lately not to say such things. Dodo was apt to treat them as nonsense. "My coming with you wouldn't make it any cooler, or less insufferably dusty," she would have said. The result was that Chesterford went, and Dodo was left alone' in London, with a distinct sense of relief and relaxation.

Dodo's next move was to send a note to Jack, saying that he was going to come and lunch with her. She was not conscious of any sense of deception in this, but she had seen that Chesterford had not cared to see anybody since the baby's death, except Mrs. Vivian, whereas she longed to be in the midst of people again. So, whenever opportunities occurred, she had been in the habit of seeing what she could of her friends, but was very careful not to bore her husband with them. She was quite alive to the truth of Mrs. Vivian's remarks.

But though Dodo felt a great relief in her husband's absence, she was more than ever conscious of the unutterable stupidity of spending, day after day doing nothing. It was something even to keep it up with Chesterford, but now there was nothing to do—nothing. Still, Jack, was coming to lunch, and perhaps she might get through a few hours that way. Chesterford had said Be would be back that night late or next morning.

The footman came in bearing a card. "Jack already," thought Dodo, with wonder. But it was not Jack. Dodo looked at it and pondered a moment. "Tell Lady Bretton I will see her," she said.

A few moments afterwards Lady Bretton rustled into the room. Dodo had always thought her rather like a barmaid, and she was sure that she would attract many customers at any public-house. She was charmingly pretty, and always said the right thing. Dodo felt she ought to know why she had come, but couldn't quite remember. But she was not left in doubt long.

"Dearest Dodo," said Lady Bretton, "I have wanted to come and see you dreadfully, only I haven't been able. You know Lucas has been at home all this week."

Then it flashed upon Dodo.

"He comes of age to-day, you know, and we are giving a ball. I was so dreadfully shocked to hear your bad news, and am delighted to see you looking so well considering. Is Lord Chesterford at home?"

"No," said Dodo, as if weighing something in her mind. "He may come to-night, but I don't really expect him till to-morrow morning."

"Has he gone on some visit?" asked she. "I didn't suppose—"

"No, he's only gone on business to Harchester. He hasn't, of course, been out at all. But—"

Dodo paused.

Then she got quickly up from her chair, and clapped her hands.

"Yes, I will come. I am dying to go out again. Who leads the cotillion with me? Tommy Ledgers, isn't it? Oh, I shall enjoy it. I'm nearly dead for want of something to do. And he can dance, too. Yes, I'll come, but I must be back by half-past two. Chesterford will perhaps come by the night train getting here at two. I daresay it will be late. Are you going to have the mirror figure? Do have it. There's no one like Ledgers for leading that. He led it here with me. It will be like escaping from penal servitude for life. Talk of treadmills! I'm at the point of death for want of a dance. Let it begin punctually. I'll be there by ten sharp if you like. Tell Prince Waldenech I'm coming. He wrote to say he wouldn't go unless I did. He's badly in love with me. That doesn't matter, but he can dance. All those Austrians can. I'm going to have a regular debauch."

"I'm delighted," said Lady Bretton. "I came here to ask you whether you couldn't possibly come, but I hardly dated. Dear Dodo, it's charming of you. It will make all the difference. I was in despair this morning. I had asked Milly Cornish to lead with Ledgers, but she refused, unless I asked you again first. We'll have a triumphant arch, if you like, with 'Welcome to Dodo' on it."

"Anything you like," said Dodo; "the madder the merrier. Let's see, how does the hoop figure go?"

Dodo snatched up an old cotillion hoop from where it stood in the corner with fifty other relics, and began practising it.

"We must have this right," she said; "it's quite new to most people. You must tell Tommy to come here for an hour this afternoon, and we'll rehearse. You start with it in the left hand, don't you? and then cross it over, and hold your partner's hoop in the right. Damn—I beg your pardon—but it doesn't go right. No, you must send Ledgers. Shall I want castanets? I think I'd better. We must have the new Spanish figure. Ah, that is right."

Dodo went through a series of mysterious revolutions with the hoop.

"I feel like a vampire who's got hold of blood again," said Dodo, pausing to get her breath. "I feel like a fish put back into the water, like a convict back in his own warm nest. No charge for mixed metaphors. Supplied free, gratis, and for nothing," she said, with emphasis.

Lady Bretton put her head a little on one side, and gushed at her. Her manners were always perfect.

"Now, I'm going to send you off," said Dodo. "Jack's coming to lunch, and I've got a lot to do. Jack who?' Jack Broxton, of course. Will he be with, you to-night? No?—I shall tell him I'm coming. You see if he doesn't come too. You sent him a card, of course. After lunch I shall want Tommy. Mind he comes. Good-bye."

Dodo felt herself again. There was the double relief of Chesterford's absence, and there was something to do. She hummed a little French song, snapped her castanets, and pitched her novel into the grate.

"Oh, this great big world," she said, "you've been dead, and I've been dead for a month. Won't we have a resurrection this evening! Come in, Jack," she went on, as the door opened. "Here's your hoop. Catch it! Do you know the hoop figure? That's right; no, in your left hand. That's all with the hoop. Now we waltz."

Jack had a very vague idea as to why he happened to be waltzing with Dodo. It seemed to him rather like "Alice in Wonderland." However, he supposed it was all right, and on they went. A collision with the table, and a slow Stygian stream of ink dropping in a fatal, relentless manner on to the carpet, caused a stoppage, and Dodo condescended to explain, which she did all in one sentence.

"Chesterford's gone to Harchester after some stuffy business, and I'm going to the Brettons' ball, you must come, Jack, I'm going to lead the cotillion with Tommy, I simply must go, I'm dying to go out again; and, oh, Jack, I'm awfully glad to see you, and why haven't you been here for the last twenty years, and I'm out of breath, never mind the ink."

Dodo stopped from sheer exhaustion, and dropped a blotting-pad on to the pool of ink, which had now assumed the importance of an inland lake.

"Blanche has been here this morning," she continued, "and I told her I'd come, and would bring you. You must come, Jack. You're an awfully early bird, and I haven't got any worms for you, because they've all turned, owing to the hot weather, I suppose, and I feel so happy I can't talk sense. Tommy's coming this afternoon to practise. What time is it? Let's go and have lunch. That will do instead of worms. If Chesterford goes to attend to bailiff's business, why shouldn't I go and dance? It really is a kindness to Blanche. Nothing ought to stand in the way of a kindness. She was in despair; she told me so: herself. She might have committed suicide. It would have been pleasant to have a countess's corpse's blood on your head, wouldn't it?"

"I thought Chesterford was here," said Jack.

"Oh, I'm not good enough for you," remarked Dodo. "That's very kind of you. I suppose you, wouldn't have come, if you had known I should have had no one to meet you. Well, there isn't a soul, so you can go away if you like, or join the footmen in the servants' hall. Oh, I am so glad to be doing something again."

"I'm awfully glad you're coming to-night," said Jack; "it'll do you good."

"Ain't it a lark?" remarked Dodo, in pure Lancashire dialect, helping herself largely to beefsteak. "Jack, what'll you drink? Do you want beer? I'll treat you to what you like. You may dissolve my pearls in vinegar, if it will give you any satisfaction. Fetch Mr. Broxton my pearls, I mean some beer," said Dodo, upsetting the salt. "Really, Jack, I believe I've gone clean cracked. I've upset a lot of salt over your coat. Pour some claret upon it. Oh, no, that's the other way round, but I don't see why it shouldn't do. Have some more steak, Jack. Where's the gravy spoon? Jack, have you been trying to steal the silver? Oh, there it is. Have some chopped carrots with it. Who's that ringing at our door-bell? I'm a little—Who is it, Walter? Just go out and see. Miss Staines? Tell her there's lunch going on and Jack's here. There's an inducement. Jack, do you like Edith? She's rather loud. Yes, I agree, but we all make a noise at times. Can't she stop? Oh, very well, she may go away again. I believe she wouldn't come because you were here, Jack. I don't think she likes you, but you're a very good sort in your way. Jack, will you say grace? Chesterford always says grace. Well, for a Christian gentleman not to know a grace! Bring some cigarettes, Walter, or would you rather have a cigar, Jack? And some black coffee. Well, I'm very grateful for my good dinner, and I don't mind saying so."

Dodo went on talking at the top of her voice, quite continuously. She asked Jack a dozen questions without waiting for the answer.

"Where shall we go now, Jack?" she continued, when they had finished coffee—Dodo took three cups and a cigarette with each. "We must go somewhere. I can leave word for Ledgers to wait. Let's go to the Zoo and see all the animals in cages. Ah, I sympathise with them. I have only just got out of my cage myself."

Dodo dragged Jack off to the Zoo, on the top of a bus, and bought buns for the animals and fruit for the birds, and poked a fierce lion with the end of her parasol, which the brute bit off, and nearly fell over into the polar bear's tank, and had all her money stolen by a pickpocket.

Then she went back home, and found Lord Ledgers, whom she put through his paces, and then she had tea, and dressed for the ball. She had ordered a very remarkable ball-dress from Worth's, just before the baby's death, which had never yet seen the light. It was a soft grey texture, which Dodo said looked like a sunlit mist, and it was strictly half mourning. She felt it was a badge of her freedom, and put it on with a fresh burst of exultation. She had a large bouquet of orchids, which Lord Bretton had caused to be sent her, and a fan painted by Watteau, and a French hair-dresser came and "did" her hair. By this time dinner was ready; and after dinner she sat in her room smoking and singing French songs to Lord Ledgers, who had come to fetch her, and at half-past nine the carriage was announced. About the same moment another carriage drove up to the door, and as Dodo ran downstairs she found her husband in the hall.

She looked at him a moment with undisguised astonishment, and a frown gathered on her forehead.

"You here?" she said. "I thought you weren't coming till late."

"I caught the earlier train," he said; "and where are you off to?"

"I'm going to the Brettons' ball," said Dodo frankly; "I can't wait."

He turned round and faced her.

"Oh, Dodo, so soon?" he said.

"Yes, yes, I must," said Dodo. "You know this kills me, this, sticking here with nothing to do from day to day, and nothing to see, and nobody to talk to. It's death; I can't bear it."

"Very well," he said gently, "you are quite right to go if you want to. But I am not coming, Dodo."

Dodo's face brightened.

"No, dear, they don't expect you. I thought you wouldn't be back."

"I shouldn't go in any case," said he.

Lord Ledgers was here heard to remark "By Gad!"

Dodo laid her hand on his shoulder, conscious of restraining her impatience.

"No, that's just the difference between us," she said. "Go on, Tommy, get into the carriage. You don't want me not to go, dear, do you?"

"No, you are right to go, if you wish to," he said again.

Dodo grew impatient.

"Really, you might be more cordial about it," she said. "I needn't have consulted you at all."

Lord Chesterford was not as meek as Moses. He was capable of a sense of injustice.

"I don't know that you did consult me much," he said, "you mean to go in any case."

"Very well," said Dodo, "I do mean to go. Good-night, old boy. I sha'n't be very late. But I don't mean to quarrel with you."

Lord Chesterford turned into his room. But he would not keep Dodo, as she wished to go, even if he could have done so.

Ledgers was waiting in the carriage.

"Oh, the devil," said Dodo, as she stepped in.

Lady Bretton's ball is still talked about, I believe, in certain circles, though it ought to have been consigned, with all other events of last year, to oblivion. It was very brilliant, and several princes shed the light of their presence on it. But, as Lord Ledgers was heard to remark afterwards, "There are many princes, but there is only one Dodo." He felt as if he was adapting a quotation from the Koran, which was somehow suitable to the positive solemnity of the occasion. Dodo can only be described as having been indescribable. Lucas, Lady Bretton's eldest son, in honour of whose coming of age the ball was given, can hardly allude to it even now. His emotions expressed themselves feebly in his dressing with even more care than usual, in hanging round Eaton Square, and in leaving cards on the Chesterfords as often as was decent.

Dodo was conscious of a frenzied desire to make the most of it, and to drown remembrance, for in the background of her mind was another picture, that she did not care to look at. There was a man she knew, leaning over a small dead child. The door of the room was half open, and a woman, brilliantly dressed, was turning to go out, looking back over her shoulder with a smile, half of impatience, half of pity, at the kneeling figure in the room. Through the half-open door came sounds of music and rhythmical steps, and a blaze of light. This picture had started unbidden into Dodo's mind, as she and Ledgers drove up to Lady Bretton's door, with such sudden clearness that she half wondered whether she had ever actually seen it. It reminded her of one of Orchardson's silent, well-appointed tragedies. In any case it gave her a rather unpleasant twinge, and she determined to shut it out for the rest of the evening, and, to do her justice, no one would have guessed that Dodo's brilliance was due to anything but pure spontaneity, or that, even in the deepest shades of her inmost mind, there was any remembrance that it needed an effort to stifle.

Many women, though few men, were surprised to see her there, and there was no one who was not glad; but the question arose more than once in the minds of two or three people, "Would society stand it if she didn't happen to be herself?" Dodo had treated a select party of her friends to a private exhibition of skirt-dancing during supper-time. The music from the band was quite loud enough to be heard distinctly in a small, rather unfrequented sitting-out room, and there Dodo had displayed her incomparable grace of movement and limb to the highest advantage. Dodo danced that night with unusual perfection, and who has not felt the exquisite beauty of such motion? Her figure, clad in its long, clinging folds of diaphanous, almost luminous texture, stood out like a radiant statue of dawn against the dark panelling of the room; her graceful figure bending this way and that, her wonderful white arms now holding aside her long skirt, or clasped above her head; above all, the supreme distinction and conscious modesty of every posture seemed, to the little circle who saw her, to be almost a new revelation of the perfection of form, colour and grace.

Jack knew Dodo pretty well, but he stood and wondered. Was she a devil? was she a tiger? or was she, after all, a woman? Dodo had told him what had happened that evening, and yet he did not condemn her utterly. He knew how prison-like her life must have been to her during the last month. It was a thousand pities that Dodo's meat was Chesterford's poison, but he no more blamed Dodo for eating her meat than he blamed Chesterford for avoiding his poison; and to advance the conventional argument against Dodo, that her behaviour was not usual, was, equivalent to saying, "Why do you behave like yourself?" rather than, "Why don't you behave like other people?" Dodo's estimate of herself, as purely normal, was only another instance of her very abnormalness. No, on the whole, she was not a devil. The other question was harder to settle. Jack remembered a tigress he had seen that day with her at the Zoo. The brute had a small and perfectly fascinating tiger cub, in which she took a certain maternal pride; but when feeding-time came near, and the cub continued to be importunate, she gave it a cuff with her big velvety paw, and sent it staggering to the corner. Dodo's tiger cub was a mixture between Chesterford and the dead child, and Dodo's feeding-time had come round. Here she was feeding with an enviable appetite, and where was the cub? The tigress element was not wholly absent.

And yet, withal, she was a woman. Is it that certain attributes of pure womanliness run through the female of animals, or that every woman has a touch of the tigress about her? Jack felt incompetent to decide.

Dodo's dance came to an end. She accepted Prince Waldenech's arm, and went down to supper. As he advanced to her, Dodo dropped a curtsey, and he stooped and kissed her hand. "The brute," thought Jack, as he strolled out into the ballroom, where people were beginning to collect again. Many turned and looked at Dodo as, she passed out with her handsome partner. The glow of exercise and excitement and success burned brightly in her cheeks, and no one accused Dodo of using rouge. The supper was spread on a number of small tables, laid for four or six each. The Prince led her to an empty one, and sat down by her side.

"I have seen many beautiful things," he said, in French, which permits a man to say more than he may I in English, "but none so beautiful as what I have seen to-night."

Dodo was far too accomplished a coquette to pretend not to know what he meant. She made him a charming little obeisance.

"Politeness required that of your Highness," she said. "That is only my due, you know."

"I can never give you your due," said he.

"My due in this case is the knowledge I have pleased you."

Dodo felt suddenly a little uncomfortable. The forgotten picture flashed for a moment across her inward eye. She spoke of other things: praised the prettiness of the ballroom, the excellence of the band.

"Lady Bretton has given a fine setting to the diamond," said the Prince, "but the diamond is not hers."

Dodo laughed. He was a little ponderous, and he deserved to be told so.

"You Austrians have beautiful manners," she said, "but you are too serious. English are always accused of sharing that fault, but anyhow, when they pay compliments, they have at least the air of not meaning what they say."

"That is the fault of the English, or of the compliment."

"No one means what they say when they pay compliments," said Dodo. "They are only a kind of formula to avoid the unpleasantness of saying nothing."

"Austrians seldom pay compliments," said he; "but when they do, they mean them."

"Ouf," said Dodo; "that sounds homelike to you, doesn't it? All Austrians say 'ouf' in books—do they really say 'ouf,' by the way?—What a bald way of saying that I needn't expect any more to-night. Really, Prince, that's rather unflattering to you. No, don't excuse yourself; I understand perfectly. I'm not fishing for any more. Come, there's the pas de quatre beginning. That's the 'Old Kent Road' tune. It's much the best. What do you suppose 'Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road' means? No foreigner has ever been able to translate it to me yet. This is your dance, isn't it? O dear me, half the night's gone, and I feel as if I hadn't begun yet. Some people are in bed now; what a waste of time, you know."

The ball went on and on, and Dodo seemed to gather fresh strength and brilliance with each hour. Extra dances were added and still added, and many who were tired with dancing stayed and watched her. The princes went away, and nobody noticed their departure. If Cleopatra herself had suddenly entered the ballroom, she would have found herself at a discount. It was the culmination of Dodo's successes. She seemed different in kind, as well as in degree, from the crowd around her. Pretty women seemed suddenly plain and middle-aged; well-dressed women looked dowdy beside her, and when at length, as the electric light began to pale perceptibly before the breaking day, Dodo asked her partner to take her to Lady Bretton, the dancers stopped, and followed Dodo and Prince Waldenech, for she was dancing with him, to where Lady Bretton was standing.

"It has been heavenly," said Dodo. "It's a dreadful bore to have people come and say how much they have enjoyed themselves, but I've done it now. Tell Lucas I wish he would come of age every year; he really is a public benefactor."

She took Prince Waldenech's arm, and stood waiting with him, while her carriage detached itself from the others which lined the square, and drove up to the door. And, as they stood there, the crowd followed her slowly out of the ballroom, still silent, and still watching her, and lined the stairs, as she passed down to the front door.

Then, when she had got into her carriage, and had driven off, they looked at each other as if they had all been walking in their sleep, and no one knew exactly why they were there. And a quarter of an hour later the rooms were completely empty.

Meanwhile, as Dodo drove back through the still, cool, morning air, she threw down the windows of her carriage, and drew in deep satisfied breaths of its freshness. She thought of the crowds who had followed her down to the door, and laughed for pleasure. "It's life, it's life," she thought. "They followed me like sheep. Ah, how I love it!"

It was nearly six when she reached home; "Decidedly it would be too absurd to go to bed," she thought. "I shall go for a glorious gallop, and come back to breakfast with Chesterford. Tell them to saddle Starlight at once," she said to the footman: "I sha'n't want a groom. And tell Lord Chesterford, when he wakes, that I shall be back to breakfast."