E. F. Benson

“ Apart from me and the children, there is no one in the world that you care for as I care for hundreds of my friends. You don’t love people as I do, Hermann; but I am too affectionate. Of course it is my fault, I ought to be colder and less tender-hearted, but I am made like that. And I love Germany, too, in a way that you have no conception of. You are taken up with your money-getting, and you don’t care where it comes from, so long as you know where it goes to. Sometimes I think we made a mistake: we ought to have gone away when Kuhlmann went. ”

“ But, above everything, it was important to lose no time: even for the young the years sped too fast, while elderly hands clutched impotently at the shower of golden leaves blown past them on the wings of the wind of autumn. Indeed, there was no time to lose for anybody who wanted a run for his or somebody else’s money. Money and time and health—here were the great Trinity of human needs.
Though Aline Gurtner was anxious to “go on” to a dance, the events of the evening had been quite sufficiently gratifying to enable her to wait without impatience till the last of the guests had gone. ”

“ She wanted to imagine nothing, to anticipate nothing, lest by reflecting, she should dull the keenness of her force when it should come into play. She was to be a mouse no longer, a toy no longer, but a queen who dominated, not a slave who served. All day and all the next that storage of force went on, while like a separate entity, she went from house to house, to a luncheon party here, to an hour of an afternoon concert afterwards, coming home, as arranged, to have tea with Robin before he went to Cambridge. ”

“ Robin had rejected the fruits of her efforts for his well-being; another had returned her gift with outrageous contumely.
Here were the rewards of the well-wisher! And more paramount than ever was the necessity of turning the back on all that was painful and distressing. Life did not last long, nor was she desirous that it should, but while the burden of consciousness was there, it was the only sanity to make it as light a weight as possible. It would soon be removed altogether, and for that interval, reason and feeling alike advised the decking of it with ribands and flowers. ”

“ There was another possible reason for Robin’s belated and misdirected signal to Jim. It was possible that he did not want it alluded to. Was it an unpleasant topic for him, as well as her? Was he, perhaps, a little ashamed of her? Once, on the subject of his staff-appointment, they had talked about love implying respect. She could have instanced a sort of love which could despise and yet continue to exist, but that was the sort of love that wanted to take, and not to give. But was that love? Cynical philosophers held that the main ingredient in love was the sense of possession. ”

“ You are completely convinced that nothing in the world matters two straws, and that the sole object of life is to extract from it all the enjoyment you can.”
“And there you are!” remarked Lord Thorley, shielding his eyes against the glare.
“I don’t think I’m there at all. You make me out not only completely selfish, but also utterly shallow.”
“No, not shallow,” said Lady Grote. “No one with convictions is shallow. You don’t drift in the least, you go steaming away in a well-defined line, with a wake of foam and waves behind you. ”

“ Trayle, the whirl of the moment, the striking of the clock were the things to be waited and listened for. The ferment of the world, and in particular, the ferment of the little world which is called the great world, was the intoxication they all demanded. In Lady Grote’s house that ferment invaded hole and corner; whatever was of contemporaneous interest was focussed there, be it painting, or singing, or politics, or love. Nothing was amiss, so long as it was alive, but it had to be alive with the vitality of to-day. ”

“ Wherever you went, war in some form confronted you or pounced out on you screaming: whether in Robin’s khaki, or in Gracie’s knitting establishment, or in the headlines of a paper, or in the innumerable appeals that, still unopened, littered her table.
What sense of patriotism had Gracie until Germany announced her most reasonable intention of invading France by the shortest possible route? That was a mere matter of common sense: the politics of a nation were exactly those of an individual. ”

“ Lady Grote adored talking to Mr. Pantitzi about the wickedness of the world as he, with his sad, cynical face, made the requisite mixture. “And our tears,” as she once expressed it, “mingle with the poisonous dye.”
The passing of the shadow produced a reaction, and, looking at herself in the glass, after Miss Armitage had gone to the telephone, she determined to have a crowded hour of glorious Mr. Pantitzi, and to introduce a rather deeper shade of red into her hair. As a girl, she had owned a superb Titian hue, but Mr. Pantitzi’s ministrations had only in part preserved it. ”

“ The younger generation, my dear lady, must inevitably be ahead of us in development, and, therefore, in incomprehensibility. If you could understand your dear Robin—may we say ‘our’ dear Robin?—it would imply that he was a generation behind his time. Nothing fills me with more delighted wonder and surfeits me with more entranced surmise than how the younger generation are going to govern the world. ”

“ Helen had sufficient generosity to allow for this nerve-storm, to tell herself that it was not really Aline who spoke, but some tortured semblance of her.
“Well, do something for this friend of yours,” she said, “and don’t speak to me like that. I have no intention of turning my back on you, so long as you want my friendship. But you must be reasonable. I personally should not dream of giving a ball just now. People would be apt to say disagreeable things. And you must remember that they will say disagreeable things about you more readily than they would about me.” ”

“ So few months ago she had been the engrossed pilot in extravagant and rudderless voyagings: now, anchored in the same waters, she was equally engrossed in the not very promising love-affairs of a one-legged boy, with whom she had nothing in common except a bond of humanity, and the bond of the cause in which he had suffered. So long as all was well with Robin, she could not better spend priceless irrecoverable time than in participating in Jaye’s love-affairs. ”

“ Below the leather coat was a thick woollen jersey, and Robin, in the midst of tiaras and satins, ate his belated dinner with as little a sense of embarrassment as he would have felt if he had been picking at a cold duck with Damon. But Mr. Bellingham could not quite leave these remarkable occurrences without comment.
“And you actually permitted yourself, my dear Robin,” he said, “to be whirled away among the inconstant breezes without a word of protest? For me I should have protested with all the violence of which my nature is capable. ”

“ Lady Grote laughed again: she had the laugh of a child, open mouthed and abandoned.
“You won’t listen to my explanation,” she said. “I’ve explained away everything but genteel, which I can’t do, and now I’ll explain away snob. You aren’t in the least a snob in the ordinary sense: you don’t like princes better than dukes and dukes than marquises, like Mr. Boyton who is coming down here this evening, but you like a certain quality which you call breeding. If a prince hasn’t got it you don’t like him. Lots of them haven’t. ”

“ You do not care for friends: they mean nothing to you, and you cannot understand my misery. You tell me I shall have to say what my sympathies are, and if they are German, I shall lose my English friends, and if they are English, I shall lose my German friends. That’s what you mean, and you think that to me it is only like drawing a card out of a pack. I have no quarrel with anybody: I want to be friends with all. Besides, there is not war yet. You may be wrong about it: you mustn’t think you are always right. ”

“ To-day Lady Gurtner had brought down a young Neapolitan poet on Lady Grote’s invitation, who recited some amorous outpourings of his own to an enraptured audience, who understood not a word he was saying, for he shouted and whispered and bellowed and hissed in the dialect of the Neapolitan Camorra, of which society he was a prominent and active member. But it was wildly exciting to see anybody get so excited, especially since it was a sort of Apollo who raved, and he was further notable for having killed his wife, whom he passionately adored, for the very best of motives. ”

“ Nobody seems to be entertaining at all: I should think any night would do. I will give a big dinner first, you and Lord Grote must both come. Do you remember my last big dinner when the Princess came and was so charming? What night shall I choose, Helen?”
Helen had been thinking what to say, should this very inconvenient topic come up again.
“Do you know, I don’t think I should give a ball, Aline, if I were you,” she said. “As you say, nobody is entertaining. People don’t feel like it: everything is too deadly and serious. Many of us have lost relations: we have all lost friends.” ”

“ Though she never had risen to that higher altruism which equally rejoices in being associated with the troubles and sorrows of those it loves, and mourns for those who mourn even more sincerely than it plays for those who dance, she had always taken pleasure in spending her time, her money and herself on the enjoyment of others, and had found her reward in such application. The gem-like brilliance of her life had ever been undimmed by the softer fires of pity and compassion: she had had no use for the failures and the ineffectives of this world. ”

“ Perhaps she was wrong about the nothingness from which she came, and the nothingness into which she would go. Perhaps some ingenious artificer had designed all this, and how must he laugh to see the hearts into which he had put the capability of suffering, ache and rebel at his contrivances. Some day he would get tired of his sport, and throw away the play-thing that had diverted the tedium of eternity; but for the time it must amuse him to give his puppets the power of loving, so that he might listen to their squealings when he took away what he had encouraged them to love. ”

“ You do quantities of kind and unselfish things. It gives you enjoyment to do them.”
“It would be very kind of you, for instance, to pass me those matches,” remarked Henry Thorley. “I’m sure you would enjoy it. Thanks.”
Lady Massingberd sat stiffly up in her chair. She looked rather like a smart young guardsman who had chosen to dress in a tailor-made gown.
“That is just like you, Helen,” she said. “You always impute low motives to people. You are good enough—I don’t know about your sincerity—to say I do kind things, but only because it amuses me.” ”

“ And in that case both Russia and France might be already considered as crushed. What chance had they against that huge military machine? It was as if a man with a shot-gun set out to attack an adversary with a repeating rifle. And, apart from that, there was the German fleet. Supposing England was not taking a hand, how the great Deutschland Dreadnoughts would sweep down the Channel, and reduce Calais and Boulogne and Dieppe and Havre to ruins! Deutschland could land its armies where it chose in France, while other armies, sweeping through Belgium, drove the French before them. ”

“ If I followed my inclination, my hands would be mere ribands of raw flesh before evening. Like some celestial and magical amalgam you weld into a complete whole the amazingly different units that come here to pay you homage. Why is it that no one else has the smallest idea of how to do it, or, to put it differently, how is it that you have so complete a recipe for making us all homogeneous?”
Lady Grote, for all her splendour, was the most modest of mankind, but she rather liked other people being immodest, so to speak, about her. ”