E. F. Benson

“ Dinner was over, and they sat on the south of the terrace-fronted house; a full moon moved like a queen bee among the swarming stars, and the world was refashioned out of soft darkness and ivory and pearl. Pearl-coloured was Jeannie’s dress, and she the pearl of pearls.
“How strange one’s life goes in acts,” she said. “The act at Wroxton is over now, but what a pleasant one it was. Oh, Jack, I hope this act will be a long one. Do you remember the plank bridge by the mill, and Toby shaking himself?” ”

“ To the right rose the gray piled mass of the Cathedral in all the dignity and sobriety of Norman work, set there, it might seem, like the rainbow, a pledge to the benignity of the circling seasons, serene and steadfast with centuries of service. From here, too, for the drawing-room was on the second floor, it was possible to see over the bounding garden-wall, and westward the river lay in sheets and pools of cloud-reflected crimson. Patches of light mist lay like clothes to dry over the water-meadows through which it ran, but beyond the great chalk down lay clear and naked. ”

“ What else was Jeannie’s goal but the mill with the red-walled garden? The mill was working, and good was the omen, and the thicker growing weeds below the weir were still as Jack Collingwood had seen them. A soda-water of bubbles foamed from the prison of the darkness, and the stream shook off the remembrance of its more utilitarian moments in a froth of eddying waters. The plank bridge spanned the now sober-going river, and Toby followed her sedately, yet quivering for his bath. ”

“ Jeannie drew the nurse’s rocking-chair close to the fender and adjusted the bottle. The baby was warm and hungry, and her thoughts turned inward, soothed and driven there by the dear, helpless presence, and she meditated nonsensically, so she told herself, as if she had been talking alone to the baby.
“What do you know,” she thought, “of to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow? Boys’ class to-morrow, and girls’ class the day after. Somebody will play the violin a little less villainously, and some one will perhaps not cut his finger at all. Oh, baby, it is a world where things go slow. ”

“ There was a bitter tension about the corners of poor Miss Clara’s mouth, and twice she tried to speak, but was unable.
“Phœbe,” she began at length, “Phœbe has been very unkind to me, Miss Avesham. And I felt—I felt I could not rest without telling you about it. It was my fault, she said, that—Oh, dear me, dear me!”
And Miss Clifford gasped once or twice, like a person coming up after a long dive, and burst into tears.
In a moment Jeannie was by her. [139]
“Oh, my poor, dear thing!” she said; “please don’t cry. You are upset about something, and speaking makes it worse. ”

“ Three minutes before there had been only a leaden sky, the withered, drought-yellowed grass round her, but the grass was become the paved sapphire of the courts of heaven, and the sky was the sky. Each of them was so utterly in tune with the other that Jack felt no desire to speak directly, nor did Jeannie wish it. The pause out of which music should issue was theirs. ”

“ After he had gone Jeannie went to the window and looked out. The full abundance of spring was in the air; the false death of winter was over, and all living things rejoiced in this renewal of the world. The grass of the lawn was starred with young crocuses, gnarled trees put out their sheaves [307] of tender living leaves; all was as it had been twelve months ago. But in the lives of men no such renewal and repetition is admitted. The year passes, and they are a year nearer to the grim apparition of decay and death. ”

“ One learns what a little thing is life, and how great. Also it seems as if I was learning to be egoistic.”
She got up out of her chair.
“Oh, you have done me good!” she cried. “Look, what was that?”
Jack had seen it, too; it was as if the sky had winked. They waited in silence, and in a few minutes came the growl of answering thunder. Jeannie stretched out her arms with a great sigh.
“Thunder!” she cried. “Perhaps there will be rain. How I have prayed for that. You don’t know what it may mean to us. ”

“ Jack stood by the fire watching Jeannie tuck the baby into its cot with deft fingers. All her movements were sharp and decided; her fingers seemed to have an intelligence of their own.
“I must sit here till nurse comes up from her supper,” she said. “Look at that seraph!”
“I think he has his share of luck, after all,” said Jack.
Jeannie sat down again in the rocking-chair.
“Oh, but the responsibility!” she sighed. “We all share it. I believe so much of the happiness of one’s life depends on the happiness of one’s babyhood. The first glimpses of consciousness are what make the temperament.” ”

“ A brilliant June sun lay sparkling on tree and tower and over the roofs of Wroxton and the downs which rise above the city. The morning might have been ordered, like the wedding-cake, with carte-blanche, and no expense to be spared. The promise of that first day of spring when Jeannie had played golf with her fiancé was royally fulfilled, the vigour and glory of the year was at its midmost. A light wind tempered the heat of the morning, and set all the leaves of the trees chattering to each other, and woke innumerable songs in the throats of the lawn-haunting birds. ”

“ My dear Miss Clara, it is not that I do not realize it that I recommend you this, but just because I do. All we can do is to help her in little ways. It is just that we can do.”
Poor Miss Clara looked bewildered and puzzled.
“But these things matter so little now,” she said. “I cannot understand Phœbe caring for her songs and her mandolin now. To be sure, she was never very fond of going to church, and she always says there are a great many black sheep who are clergymen. But now, Miss Avesham. Oh, to think of her playing Funiculi!” ”

“ Already, so it seemed to Jeannie, a flush of green had spread over the grass, [275] and the glistening house-roofs, so long dust-ridden, looked clean again. Above all, the intolerable oppression of the air was no more than a sick dream of night, and to be abroad in this exquisite dawn was like coming out of an ill-ventilated tunnel into the coolness of Alpine pastures. Even as she looked a beam of the risen day shot its level arrow and struck the elm-trees in the close, and with the aptest punctuality a thrush scudded out of the bushes below her and poured out a throatful of repeated song. ”

“ Jack, inclined as an artist is to be very indolent except when he is very industrious, was under the spell of the evening, under the spell, too, of the sympathy which had floated to him across the airy bridge by which soul spans the otherwise inaccessible gulf which divides it from any other soul. He was a man, lovable; she was a lovable woman; heaven is there, and all is said.
Toby staggered round them, occasionally dashing away after interesting smells, and barking hoarsely and rudely at passers-by in a state of self-importance not unmixed with nervousness. ”

“ Overhead skylarks carolled unseen in the blue, or dropped, when their song was done, among the grass, breathless and drunken with music; the earth had renewed its lease of life, and the everlasting fountains of youth were unsealed again. Never since the seasons had [295] begun their courses was winter farther away, and never since Adam had walked with Eve in the garden had love touched two lives more closely than it touched Jeannie and Jack as they went over the breezy downs, club in hand. ”

“ The forked flashes of lightning, the dry growl of the [259] thunder had approached nearer and nearer, and all the earth seemed to pause, finger on lip, for the catastrophe. Now and then a few rain-drops as big as pennies fell down upon the pavements, and vanished again like a breath on a frosty morning on the hot, thirsty stones. Then suddenly the heavens burst, a ribbon of blue fire leaped downward from the zenith, and the noise of the thunder was as if the sky had cracked. One woman half raised herself in bed and cried, “Lord, have mercy!” ”

“ The effect, if not the object, of his life had been uneventfulness, and twenty years of looking over pieces of Latin verse and prose had been succeeded by twenty years of busy indolence as Canon of Wroxton. To keep one’s hands and heart moderately clean in this random business of life is a sufficient task for the most of mankind, and if Canon Collingwood had not experienced the braver joys of adventure, or even the rapture of mere living, it is not to be assumed that his life was useless. ”

“ Oh, Jack, may I take off my hat?”
All mankind may be divided into those who like hats and those who do not. Some people habitually wear a hat unless there is a real reason, like a church or royalty, for taking it off, but to others a hat is to be always discarded if possible. Both Jeannie and the other were habitually hatless folk, a characteristic which goes hand-in-hand with a love for wind and large open places, and is borne out, to endless issues, in the normal attitude of the mind toward problems of life. ”

“ He was roused from his meditations by a short, staccato bark at his heels, and found the round retriever pup staggering up to him. Toby had an inability to walk straight; he rolled along like a drunken man with a jovial boisterousness. He had a large wire muzzle on, and the tip of his pink tongue hung through it.
“Oh, are you looking at the water?” said Jeannie, sympathetically. “That’s so nice of you. I have to look at running water every day. It clears one’s brain out, I think. Toby is shortly to have his bath.” ”

“ Collingwood beyond the run of worldly matters. Like the rest of Wroxton, every time she had been brought in contact with Jeannie she [299] had been moved to something warmer than mere liking, even when she disagreed with her, at the charm and simplicity of the girl. There were some people, like herself, who did many unselfish things from a sense of duty; Jeannie, on the other hand, seemed to do them from inclination, and her sense of duty was as invisible as the string which binds together a pearl necklace. All that could be seen were the series of beautiful shining acts ”

“ The baby was to Jeannie of absorbing interest. The same instinct which had led her when a child to make dramatic the lives of her dolls, and to watch over them with an anxious benignity of which saw-dust and wax were really not worthy, had here a sort of fruition. A doll had come to life, the inventions of her childhood were being played over again in the theatre of living, her play was become true. ”

“ Miss Fortescue looked at the ceiling in mute appeal, and then marched down the stairs.
“There’s no harm done, Miss Clifford,” said Jeannie; “I assure you I don’t in the least mind. But what did Colonel Raymond say? Oh, take care, the catalogues are slipping.”
It was too late; the pile bulged ominously in the middle, and then fell all ways at once to the ground. Miss Clifford clutched wildly at them as they fell, but the disaster was there.
“We’ll pick them up first,” said Jeannie. “Gracious, what a lot of them! Where do you want them put? Take care, you’re treading on some.” ”

“ Arthur took a telegram out of his pocket.
“He says he will be here before lunch,” he said, “as I want to play golf with him in the afternoon. I hope he won’t get the letter before he starts. Also I should like to see him open it.”
“I don’t suppose he would come if he got it first,” said Miss Fortescue. “It would make matters rather simpler if he didn’t.”
“Why?” asked Jeannie.
“Won’t it be rather awkward when he meets you?” asked Aunt Em.
“Not in the least, unless he makes it so for himself. But men are so stupid. Of course, if he stares like an owl, and then turns red in the face, it will be. ”

“ This being the case, both Jeannie and Miss Fortescue had, in the fourth week since the epidemic began, given up their places at the hospital. Regular trained nurses were there in abundance, and there was no longer need for them. But to both the sacrifice of giving up their work was far greater than the original risk of taking it up. For several weeks certainly their lives had centred on one thing, the victory over the microbe, and to think only of one thing, even for three weeks of a life, wears a rut in it, and a jolt is necessitated by passing out of the rut. ”

“ Jeannie, in her seat where her hat had lain as Miss Fortescue made tea, gave a great [282] sigh, and this filled her lungs with the living air.
“I did not know,” she answered. “How should I have known?”
“The way of a man with a maid,” said the grass. “Oh, I have seen often in summer evenings——”
“Yes, and we have seen,” said a hundred leaves of the brambles. “You have no idea of their folly. They sail little boats of straw or leaves, and wonder which will win. But for me, I always let the maid’s boat win. I do not care so much for the young men.” ”

“ CHAPTER V
“A little military society is so pleasant, is it not?” said Miss Clifford. “That you will find is one of the great advantages of Wroxton, Miss Avesham. We have so many factors in our little world. It is quite a miniature capital. There is the close, there is the town, there is the garrison, and there is the county.”
Miss Clifford spoke in a very quiet voice, and glowed gently as she spoke, turning for approval to her sister Clara, who rode the bicycle a fortnight before up and down Bolton Street. ”