Читать книгу Dodo Trilogy - Complete Edition: Dodo, Dodo's Daughter & Dodo Wonders - E F Benson - Страница 12

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The same afternoon Chesterford took Mrs. Vivian off to see "almshouses and drunkards," as Dodo expressed it to Jack. She also told him that Edith and her Herr were playing a sort of chopsticks together in the drawing-room. Maud had, as usual, effaced herself, and Bertie was consuming an alarming number of cigarettes in the smoking-room, and pretending to write letters.

It was natural, therefore, that when Jack strolled into the hall, to see what was going on, he should find Dodo there with her toes on the fender of the great fireplace, having banished the collie to find other quarters for himself. Dodo was making an effort to read, but she was not being very successful, and hailed Jack's entrance with evident pleasure.

"Come along," she said; "I sent the dog off, but I can find room for you. Sit here, Jack."

She moved her chair a little aside, and let him pass.

"I can't think why a merciful providence sends us a day like this," she said. "I want to know whom it benefits to have a thick snowfall. Listen at that, too," she added, as a great gust of wind swept round the corner of the house, and made a deep, roaring sound up in the heart of the chimney.

"It makes it all the more creditable in Chesterford and Mrs. Vivian to go to see the drunkards," remarked Jack.

"Oh, but that's no credit," said Dodo. "They like doing it, it gives them real pleasure. I don't see why that should be any better, morally speaking, than sitting here and talking. They are made that way, you and I are made this. We weren't consulted, and we both follow our inclinations. Besides, they will have their reward, for they will have immense appetites at tea."

"And will give us something to talk about now," remarked Jack lazily.

"Don't you like Grantie, Jack?" asked Dodo presently. "She and Ledgers are talking about life and being in my room. I went to get a book from here, and the fire was so nice that I stopped."

"I wish Ledgers wouldn't treat her like a menagerie, and put her through her tricks," said Jack. "I think she is very attractive, but she belongs too much to a class."

"What class?" demanded Dodo.

"Oh, the class that prides itself on not being of any class—the all things to all men class."

"Oh, I belong to that," said Dodo.

"No, you don't," said he. "You are all things to some men, I grant, but not to all."

"Oh, Jack, that's a bad joke," said Dodo, reprovingly.

"It's quite serious all the same," said he.

"I'm all things to the only man to whom it matters that I should be," said Dodo complacently.

Jack felt rather disgusted.

"I wish you would not state things in that cold-blooded way," he said. "Your very frankness to me about it shows you know that it is an effort."

"Yes," she said, "it is an effort sometimes, but I don't think I want to talk about it. You take things too ponderously. Don't be ponderous; it doesn't suit you in the least. Besides, there is nothing to be ponderous about."

Dodo turned in her chair and looked Jack full in the face. Her face had a kind of triumph about it.

"I want to say something more," said Jack.

"Well, I'm magnanimous to-day," said Dodo. "Go on."

"All you are doing," said he gravely, "is to keep up the original illusion he had about you. It is not any good keeping up an illusion, and thinking you're doing your whole duty."

"Jack, that's enough," said Dodo, with a certain finality in her tone. "If you go on, you may make me distrust myself. I do not mean that as a compliment to your powers, but as a confession to a stupid superstitious weakness in myself. I am afraid of omens."

They sat silent a minute or two, until a door at the far end of the hall opened and Miss Grantham came through, with her showman in tow.

"Lord Ledgers and I were boring each other so," said Miss Grantham, "that we came to bore someone else. When you are boring people you may as well do it wholesale. What a pity it is that one hasn't got a tail like a dog, that cannot help wagging if the owner is pleased, and which stops wagging when he isn't."

"I shall certainly buy a tail," said Dodo, with grave consideration. "One or two, in case the first gets out of order. Must you wag it whenever you are pleased, Grantie? Is it to be an honest tail? Suppose you only think you are pleased, when you are not really, what does the tail do then? Oh, it's very complicated."

"The tail shares the same illusions as the dog," said Miss Grantham.

"Jack and I were talking about illusions," said Dodo.

"I'm going to get a quantity of illusions," said Miss Grantham. "In any case, what did you find to say about them?"

"Jack said it was a bad thing to keep an illusion up," said Dodo, broadly.

Miss Grantham was staring pensively at the fire.

"I saw two boys sitting on a gate yesterday," she said, "and they pushed each other off, and each time they both roared with laughter. I'm sure it was an illusion that they were amused. I would go and sit on a gate with pleasure and get my maid to push me off, if I thought it would amuse either of us. Mr. Broxton, would you like me to push you off a gate?"

"Oh, I'm certain that the people with many illusions are the happiest," said Dodo. "Consequently, I wouldn't willingly destroy any illusion anyone held about anything."

"What a lot of anys," said Miss Grantham.

Lord Ledgers was leaning back in his chair with a sense of pleased proprietorship. It really was a very intelligent animal. Jack almost expected him to take a small whip from his pocket and crack it at her. But his next remark, Jack felt, was a good substitute; at any rate, he demanded another performance.

"What about delusions, Miss Grantham?" he said.

"Oh, delusions are chiefly unpleasant illusions," she said. "Madmen have delusions that somebody wants to kill them, or they want to kill somebody, or that King Charles's head isn't really cut off, which would be very unsettling now."

"Grantie, I believe you're talking sheer, arrant nonsense," said Dodo. "It's all your fault, Tommy. When one is asked a question, one has to answer it somehow or other in self-defence. If you asked me about the habits of giraffes I should say something. Edith is the only really honest person I know. She would tell you she hadn't any idea what a giraffe was, so would Chesterford, and you would find him looking up giraffes in the Encyclopædia afterwards."

Lord Ledgers laughed a low, unpleasant laugh.

"A very palpable hit," he murmured.

The remark was inaudible to all but Jack. He felt quite unreasonably angry with him, and got up from his chair.

Dodo saw something had happened, and looked at him inquiringly. Jack did not meet her eye, but whistled to the collie, who flopped down at his feet.

"I really don't know where I should begin if I was going to turn honest," said Miss Grantham. "I don't think I like honest people. They are like little cottages, which children draw, with a door in the middle, and a window at each side, and a chimney in the roof with smoke coming out. Long before you know them well, you are perfectly certain of all that you will find inside them. They haven't got any little surprises, or dark passages, or queer little cupboards under the stairs."

"Do you know the plant called honesty, Grantie?" asked Dodo. "It's a very bright purple, and you can see it a long way off, and it isn't at all nicer when you get close than it looks from a distance."

"Oh, if you speak of someone as an honest man," said Miss Grantham, "it implies that he's nothing particular besides. I don't mind a little mild honesty, but it should be kept in the background."

"I've got a large piece of honesty somewhere about me," said Jack. "I can't always lay my hand on it, but every now and then I feel it like a great lump inside me."

"Yes," said Dodo, "I believe you are fundamentally honest, Jack. I've always thought that."

"Does that mean that he is not honest in ordinary matters?" asked Miss Grantham. "I've noticed that people who are fundamentally truthful, seldom tell the truth."

"In a way it does," said Dodo. "But I'm sure Jack would be honest in any case where it really mattered."

"Oh, I sha'n't steal your spoons, you know," said Miss Grantham.

"That's only because you don't really want them," remarked Dodo. "I can conceive you stealing anything you wanted."

"Trample on me," said Miss Grantham serenely. "Tell us what I should steal."

"Oh, you'd steal lots of things," said Dodo. "You'd steal anyone's self-respect if you could manage to, and you couldn't get what you wanted any other way. Oh, yes, you'd steal anything important. Jack wouldn't. He'd stop just short of that; he would never be really disloyal. He'd finger things to any extent, but I am pretty sure that he would drop them at the last minute."

"How dreadfully unpleasant I am really," said Miss Grantham meditatively. "A kind of Eugene Aram."

Jack was acutely uncomfortable, but he had the satisfaction of believing that what Dodo said about him was true. He had come to the same conclusion himself two nights ago. He believed that he would stop short of any act of disloyalty, but he did not care about hearing Dodo give him so gratuitous a testimonial before Miss Grantham and the gentleman whom he mentally referred to as "that ass of a showman."

The front door opened, and a blast of cold wind came blustering round into the inner hall where they were sitting, making the thick tapestry portière belly and fill like a ship's sail, when the wind first catches it. The collie pricked his ears, and thumped his tail on the floor with vague welcome.

Mrs. Vivian entered, followed by Lord Chesterford. He looked absurdly healthy and happy.

"It's a perfectly beastly day," he said cheerfully, advancing to the fireplace. "Mrs. Vivian, let Dodo send you some tea up to your room. You must be wet through. Surely it is tea-time, Dodo."

"I told you so," said Dodo to Jack.

"Has Jack been saying it isn't tea-time?" asked Chesterford.

"No," said Dodo. "I only said that your virtue in going to see almshouses would find its immediate reward in an appetite for tea."

Mrs. Vivian laughed.

"You mustn't reduce our virtues to the lowest terms, as if we were two vulgar fractions."

"Do you suppose a vulgar fraction knows how vulgar it is?" asked Miss Grantham.

"Vulgar without being funny," said. Jack, with the air of helping her out of a difficulty.

"I never saw anything funny in vulgar fractions," remarked Lord Ledgers. "Chesterford and I used to look up the answers at the end of the book, and try to make them correspond with the questions."

Dodo groaned.

"Oh, Chesterford, don't tell me you're not honest either."

"What do you think about honesty, Mrs. Vivian?" asked Miss Grantham.

Mrs. Vivian considered.

"Honesty is much maligned by being called the best policy," she said; "it' isn't purely commercial. Honesty is rather fine sometimes."

"Oh, I'm sure Mrs. Vivian's honest," murmured Miss Grantham. "She thinks before, she tells you her opinion. I always give my opinion first, and think about it afterwards."

"I've been wanting to stick up for honesty all the afternoon," said Dodo to Mrs. Vivian, "only I haven't dared. Everyone has been saying that it is dull and obtrusive, and like labourers' cottages. I believe we are all a little honest, really. No one has got any right to call it the best policy. It makes you feel as if you were either a kind of life assurance, or else a thief."

Chesterford looked a trifle puzzled.

Dodo turned to him.

"Poor old man," she said, "did they call him names? Never mind. We'll go and be labelled 'Best policy. No others need apply.'"

She got up from her chair, and pulled Chesterford's moustache.

"You look so abominably healthy, Chesterford," she said. "How's Charlie getting on? Tell him if he beats his wife anymore, I shall; beat you. You wouldn't like that, you know. Will you ring for tea, dear? Mrs. Vivian, I command you to go to your room. I had your fire lit, and I'll send tea up. You're a dripping sop."

Mrs. Vivian pleaded guilty, and vanished. Sounds of music still came from the drawing-room. "It's no use telling Edith to come to tea," remarked Dodo. "She said the other day that if anyone ever proposed to her, whom she cared to marry, she will feel it only fair to tell him that the utmost she can offer him, is to play second fiddle to her music."

Edith's music was strongly exciting, and in the pause that followed, Dodo went to the door and opened it softly, and a great tangle of melody poured out and filled the hall. She was playing the last few pages of the overture to an opera that she had nearly completed. The music was gathering itself up for the finale. Note after note was caught up, as it were, to join an army of triumphant melody overhead, which grew fuller and more complete every moment, and seemed to hover, waiting for some fulfilment. Ah, that was it. Suddenly from below crashed out a great kingly motif, strong with the strength of a man who is pure and true, rising higher and higher, till it joined the triumph overhead, and moved away, strong to the end.

There was a dead silence; Dodo was standing by the door, with her lips slightly parted, feeling that there was something in this world better and bigger, perhaps, than her own little hair-splittings and small emotions. With this in her mind, she looked across to where Chesterford was standing. The movement was purely instinctive, and she could neither have accounted for it, nor was she conscious of it, but in her eyes there was the suggestion of unshed tears, and a look of questioning shame. Though a few bars of music cannot change the nature of the weakest of us, and Dodo was far from weak, she was intensely impressionable, and that moment had for her the germ of a possibility which might—who could say it could not?—have taken root in her and borne fruit. The parable of the mustard seed is as-old and as true as time. But Chesterford was not musical; he had taken a magazine from the table, and was reading about grouse disease.