E. F. Benson

“ Karl lingered over the bouquet of his Burgundy.
“It is a strange thing,” he said, “that mankind are so gross as to confuse the sense of taste with greediness. No, my dear boy, I am not at this moment attacking you. But there is no organ, even that of the ear, in this wonderful body of ours so fine as that of taste. Yet to most people the sight of a man deeply appreciating his dinner conveys a feeling of greediness. But I always respect such a man. He has a sense more than most people.”
“But isn’t it greedy?” asked Martin. ”

“ Martin’s face had grown quite serious; the brightness in it seemed to have ceased to be on the surface only; it glowed beneath like the core of a prospering fire.
“Tell me what to do, then,” he said.
“Work, and live also. Do not forget that any experience in life, so long only as it is not sensual,—for whatever is sensual blurs and deadens the fineness of any gift,—gives richness and breath to your power in music. Live, then; live to your utmost and your best. Do not be afraid of anything. ”

“ A dozen times yesterday at dinner, a dozen times more this afternoon, he had asked himself how the observations of a woman who really appeared to be scarcely capable of consecutive orderly thought could be worth consideration, but as often some plump grain of solid sense, showing acuteness and perception amid the husks and chaff, answered the question. He himself was conscious of not being quite at his ease with her, but he could not help admiring her intense vitality, her speed, her busy, acute inquisitiveness. And it was she who hailed Martin, poor, desultory, idle Martin, as a genius. ”

“ Helen did not ask if he was better.
“Can I help you in anything?” she said.
“No, dear Miss Helen, thank you. I think he will be quieter for a little now. But I should like Dr. Thaxter to be sent for at once, please. Yes, he is very ill. He is as ill as he can be. There, there, my dear!”
Helen clasped her hands together a moment, holding them out towards Martin with a dumb, beseeching gesture, as if imploring him.
“And I am so strong,” she said. “Why can’t I give him some of my strength! It is cruel.” ”

“ Prayer and work were the two great guides of life. These must be constant and concentrated; and how gravely and mortally would he himself be to blame if through any want of inculcation on his part his son grew up tepid in the one and slack in the other. Still, and here his essential tenderness groped about, Martin was young yet and more tender perhaps in mind even than in years, and the clash of croquet-balls and a sudden burst of boyish laughter from the lawn made him long to enter into his children’s pleasures. ”

“ If he is like that when he is practically uneducated, to what may not he grow? Heaven knows, the world is so very stupid that we should hoard and save every grain of talent that exists. It is like what you so beautifully said to me last night about the ten talents in a napkin.”
“Surely not,” said Mr. Challoner, a faint smile breaking his gravity.{52}
“Well, the one talent, then. I have no head for numbers. And poor Martin’s talent seems to me to be put in a very damp napkin, except now and then when somebody like me lifts up a corner of it and lets the sparkle of gold appear.” ”

“ The handkerchiefs are for the tears I shall shed, and the comic paper is to check my laughter when he plays the Paganini Variations. Dear Stella, how very wise of you to marry a genius. You will never be dull. But it is rather bold, too. Oh, please take Suez Canal out of the grate; he is trying to commit suicide, I think, because Sahara is not here. Yes. Geniuses are so unexpected and violent. It must be like marrying somebody who keeps several full-sized flashes of lightning about him, and also a large lump of damp clay. ”

“ It happened very rarely that Lady Sunningdale was stirred into such coherence and earnestness. As a rule, her multifarious little interests were like children playing “King of the Castle,” rapidly pulling each other down from their momentary pre-eminence, first one and then another perching precariously on the summit. But certainly the most long-lived “King” there was music, and Martin’s future, with the rain-storm of Chopin and the mad frolic of Brahms still in her ears, was very securely throned.
“Think me impertinent, my dear Mr. Challoner,” she went on. ”

“ Helen is not naturally frivolous. Look at her work here with her classes. How admirable she is, how they adore her, how her heart is in it. And to bring a girl up in ignorance of what the world is like does no good. Sometimes I wonder whether I have not sheltered her too much, kept her too much in this sweet place with all her duties and pleasures round her. But it is not of her that I am most thinking. She will come back unspoiled, with just the memory of a great deal of laughter and innocent amusement. No; it is of Martin. ”

“ Helen’s visit to Cambridge had been restricted by no statute of limitations in regard to time, and the days passed on, the vague “few nights” growing to a week, and the week to a magnified fortnight. For these quiet, uneventful hours in which (except when the twin was with her) even the ticking of clocks seemed muffled had an extraordinary and growing charm for her, since she had learned that behind the outward placidity in her aunt there lay a very real inward life in which she longed without possibility of satisfaction and suffered without bitterness. ”

“ At any rate, take yourself, Martin, and me,—all, I expect, quite normal people. Well, we all want to wander, to experience everything. We are probably not really afraid of any experience that could conceivably happen to us. And we claim the right to all experience. We claim the right to our own individuality, too. It seems to us quite certainly ours; the only possession we have which is inalienable. We may lose everything else, from our character to our teeth, but not our individuality. Do you remember how Magda throws her arms wide, and cries, ‘Son Io!’—‘I am I’? ”

“ Often before, though never perhaps so vividly, had the ugliness of Protestantism struck him; often before, though never perhaps so insistently, had his nature, wishing to aspire, demanded beauty as its ladder. Most of all here was beauty necessary, for the sublimest act of all was here performed, the worship and praise of God, the sacramental approach to him. Even as a little thing, a little rhythmical noise, may utterly distract a man’s attention from a subject which requires concentration, so this ambient ugliness utterly distracted Martin. Only ugliness was no little thing to him. ”

“ Martin, mean time, was spending the morning on the banks of the stream which had given him those good moments early the day before. But to-day the sun was very hot and bright, and after an hour’s fruitless, but patient, attempts on the subaqueous lives, he abandoned the vain activity of the arm, and with the vague intention of returning home and getting through some Æschylus before fishing again towards evening, sat down to smoke a cigarette in the fictitious coolness, bred by the sound of running water, preparatory to trudging back across the baked fields. ”

“ Yes, dear Helen, I hope so. No woman is worth very much until she has been through a good deal of sadness, a great deal of wanting what she cannot get. I hope you will go through that. But, dear, if you turn bitter under it, you had almost better not have lived; and certainly you had better die, for death is better than bitterness. But if you take the love and the sadness, which is inseparable, from life without bitterness, it strengthens and cleanses you. ”

“ For, after all, when one’s body is dead one is put away. But people whose intellect is dead are not put away at all; they pervade society. There is no one in the world so lost as the intellectually lost. How big hell must be! Talking of that, how is your father? What a bear!”
Martin had settled himself in a rose-coloured chair, and gave a great shout of laughter, suddenly checked.
“Quite well,” he said. “He always is.”
“Yes, that is so like him,” said she. “But, really, have you any strain of insanity in your very extraordinary family? My darlings, did I kick you? Oh, Sahara, naughty! ”

“ Martin half shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “There we are again.”
“That is quite true,” he said. “But what can I do when music, which to me is the greatest joy and pleasure in life, seems to you just a waste of time. You have often told me so. You don’t know one bit what it means to me; and as it seems to you a waste of time, how can I confide in you about a thing you don’t really approve of and of which, you will pardon me, you are absolutely ignorant? In the middle of the Brahms, or whatever it was, you come in and interrupt by saying that I am wasting my time, as usual. ”

“ That is what people think who haven’t got any individuality of their own. Lots of people haven’t. They are like mirrors slightly cracked, which reflect with certain dimnesses and distortions what is put opposite them. They say individuality is selfishness. What bosh!”
“Aunt Susan hasn’t got any,” remarked Helen, letting the conversation drift away a little. “It is that which makes her so restful. Her mind is like a cushion. It is quite soft, and if you lean on it you make great dents in it.”
Martin remained quite serious, staring at the water with vacant black eyes. ”

“ Come to Chartries, if you like.”
Helen took his arm.
“That is so good of you, Uncle Rupert,” she said; “but I think I should like to go quite away, if father will let me. I think I should like to go to Cambridge. Martin is there. And Martin is so good for one, if one is, well, not very happy.”
“Yes; that is a good plan. You can stay with Susan. My dear, I’m more sorry for you than I can tell you, and also I am as sorry for your father. You and I both know him, and we both love him, and, though we are made very differently, we know how—how splendid he is. ”

“ You have got to be the critic of the music you play,—you have to interpret it. But out of all the ways of playing that, out of all that can be seen in it, you saw nothing, your rendering was absolutely without meaning or colour. To play needs all you are; you gave that fingers only. If I want you to practise fingers only, I will tell you so, and give you a finger exercise or Diabelli. Otherwise you may take it for granted that when your fingers are perfect your work begins. But to play—ah—you have to burn before you play.”
Martin still hung over the piano. ”

“ How can men be such butchers! I shall take it and show it to your uncle.”
He shook the blood off his finger and bound it tightly round with the handkerchief.
“Oh, Lord Yorkshire, I’m so sorry,” said Helen again. “I am an absolute born idiot. How could I be such a fool?”
He laughed again.
“My dear Miss Challoner,” he said, “nothing whatever has happened which can justify your violent language. Besides, it would have been worth while to set that poor, jolly beast free at the cost of real pain, and not just a finger-scratch. Well, we’ve vindicated the liberty of one individual anyhow. ”

“ There must have been something in the conjunctivity of the twins—except, indeed, at the vicarage at Chartries—which disposed the beholder to indefensible levity. London had felt their spell, and even Cambridge, it appeared, that home of sweet and sober seriousness, went a little off its head about them. The spell, whatever it was, lay in their combination. Helen alone, it is true, could rouse that impulse of social gaiety which is evoked so easily by a girl’s beauty and high spirits, and Martin could make other people enjoy themselves by the sight of his own enormous power that way ”

“ Like some supersaturated solution of chemical{100} experiment, his mind, long crying out for and demanding beauty, needed but one more grain of desire to render its creed solid, and to himself now for the first time came the revelation of himself, and like a spectator at some enthralling drama, he watched himself, learning what he was, without comment either of applause or disgust, but merely fascinated by the fact of this new possession, his own individuality, and, even as Frank had said to Helen only yesterday, his own inalienable right to it. ”

“ Dear God, is that all?”
“The result in the way of conduct is identical,” said Frank, quietly.
“Yes, yes; but are we not taught that works without faith are dead? Ah, I beg your pardon; indeed I do, my dear fellow. I spoke without thinking. I was thinking only of my poor Martin. Pray, forgive me. And is he happy, do you think?”
“Yes, quite extraordinarily happy. He has fallen in love, too, with the same white ardour that he brings to everything which appeals to him.”
Mr. Challoner considered this a moment, and then faced Frank.
“I want your opinion, Lord Yorkshire,” he said. ”

“ But, dear Lady Sunningdale, the clay does!”
Lady Sunningdale was really immensely interested. She had her own methods of getting the girl to rummage in the dark corners of her mind and bring out all that was there, and she pursued them now.
“Clay is not really disconcerting,” she said; “it is only the possibility of clay when you expect lightning. My own darling Sunningdale is entirely clay. Of course there is clay in Martin; there is in everybody. How have you managed to come across it? Because he has singularly little.”
“Music is his lightning,” said Stella. ”

“ I never get in a rage. I have no time for that sort of thing. Stella dearest, I think it will have to be you to go down to Chartries next, and induce the Bear to be propitiated. Heavens, how dreadful it must be to have a very strong sense of duty! It must be like toast-crumbs in your bed, after you have breakfasted there, when one can’t lie comfortable for five minutes together.”
“No, I am the next,” said Martin. “I shall be staying with my uncle at Easter, and shall try to see my father then. I daresay it will do no good.”
“Do you really care?” asked Lady Sunningdale. ”

“ Oh, Aunt Susan, I don’t throw away his love or repudiate my debts. It is not fair to say that. Simply I can’t help it—I must. Something has come which is stronger{183} than everything else. Ah, Aunt Susan, you know what it is.”
Lady Susan’s delicate little china-looking face flushed suddenly.
“Yes, dear, I know,” she said. “At least I know some of it. We women are meant to be wives and mothers. I know half of what a woman longs to know. And the half I know, dear Helen, is so very fine that it is worth making some little sacrifice for it.” ”