Edward Benson - The Relentless City

'I see,' he said: 'you propose to make trouble. I'm glad you told me.'

'I told you?' she asked, laughing lazily. 'Little vimmy me? I say, I'm brainy too.'

'What do you propose to do?' he asked.

'Well, wait first of all till you are engaged. I say, Bertie, I like teasing you. When you wrinkle your forehead as you are doing now, you look adorable. I don't mean a word I say, you know, any more than you meant a word of that very, very funny letter you once wrote me, which is now,' she said with histrionic utterance, 'one of my most cherished possessions.'

'You told me you had burned it,' said he.

'I know; I meant to burn it, but I couldn't. When I told you I had burnt it, I really meant to have burnt it, and so I didn't tell you a lie, because for all practical purposes it was burned. But then I found I couldn't; it was too funny for words. Really, there are so few humorous things in the world that it would be murder to destroy it. Of course, you didn't mean it. But I can't burn it. It is here somewhere.'

Bertie did not smile. He sat up straight in his chair, and put the tips of his fingers together.

'And don't look like Gallio,' remarked Mrs. Emsworth.

'Look here, Dorothy,' he said, 'you can make things rather unpleasant for me, if you choose. Now, why do you choose? You know perfectly well that at one time the world said things about you and me; you also know perfectly well that – well, that there was no truth in them. You encouraged me to fall madly in love with you because – I don't know why. I thought you liked me, anyhow. Then there appeared somebody else. I wrote you a letter expressing my illimitable adoration. That was all – all. You have got that letter. Is not what I have said true?'

'Yes – slightly edited. You see, I am a very improper person.'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, if you choose to write a very fervent letter to a very improper person, people will say – it is no use denying it – they will say What a fine day it is, but hot.'

Bertie got up.

'That is all I have to say,' he said.

'People are so ill-natured,' said Mrs. Emsworth.

The catlike laziness had left her, though her attitude was the same; instead of looking sensuously lazy, she looked very alert.

'Good-bye, then,' said Bertie; 'we meet next week at Long Island.'

'Yes; it will be very pleasant,' said she.

He left the room without more words, and for five minutes she remained where she was. But slowly, as she lay there, the enjoyment and the purring content faded completely out of her face. Then it grew hard and sad; eventually, with a long-drawn sigh, half sob, she got up and called to her dog. He rose limb by massive limb, and laid his head on her lap.

'Teddy R.,' she said, 'we are devils. But there are two worse devils than you and I. One has just gone away; one is just coming. Worse-devil one is worse because he thinks – he thinks that of me. Worse-devil two is worse because he – he did that to me. So – so you and I will think nothing more about it at all, but keep our spirits up.'

She fondled the great dog's head a moment, then got up suddenly, and drew the blind down to shut out the glare of the sun, which was beginning to lay a hot yellow patch on the floor.

'He thought that,' she said to herself – 'he really thought that.'

She walked up and down the room for a moment or two, then went to a table on which stood her despatch-box, opened it, and looked through a pile of letters that lay inside. One of these she took out and read through. At moments it seemed to amuse her, at moments her smile was struck from her face. When she had finished reading it, she paused a few seconds with it in her hands, as if weighing it. Then, with a sudden gesture of impatience, she tore it in half, and threw the pieces into the grate. Then, with the quick relief of a decision made and acted upon, she whistled to her dog, and went into her bedroom to make her toilet. Resplendency was part of her programme, and with the consciousness of a busy hour before her, she told her butler – Bilton's liberal interpretation of her requirements had included a manservant – that if Mr. Harold Bilton called, he was to be asked to wait.

The 'room to sleep in' was, if anything, more satisfactory than the 'room to digest her chop in.' Like all proper bedrooms, there was a bed in it, a large table, winking with silver, in the window, and very little else. By the bedside there was a bearskin; in front of the dressing-table in the window there was a rug; otherwise the room was carpetless and parquetted, and devoid of furniture and dust. Dark-green curtains hung by the window, dark-green blinds could be drawn across the window. The bathroom beyond held the hopeless but necessary accessories of dressing. Her maid was waiting for her – Parkinson by name – and it was not Dorothy who came to be dressed, but Puck.

'Parkinson,' she said, 'once upon a time there was a very fascinating woman called X.'

'Lor'm!' said Parkinson.

'Quite so. And there was a very fascinating young man called Y. He wanted to marry her, and wrote to say so. But meantime another man called Z also wanted to – to marry her. So she said "Yes," because he gave her a great deal of money. But she kept Y's proposal – I don't know why, except because it was so funny. And so now I suppose she is Mrs. Z. That's all.'

'Lor'm!' said Parkinson. 'Will you wear your shiffong and lace dress?'

'Yes, shiffong. Parkinson, supposing I suddenly burst into tears, what would you think?'

'I should think you wasn't quite well'm.'

'Quite right; also there isn't time.'

Mrs. Emsworth had not been gone more than ten minutes or so before Bilton was shown up. He appeared to be in a particularly well-satisfied humour this morning, and as he moved about the room, noting with his quick eye the stamp of femininity which Mrs. Emsworth had already impressed into the garnishing of the place, he whistled softly to himself. In his hand he carried a small jewel-case with her initials in gold upon the top. As always, in the relaxed mood the true man came to the surface; for a man is most truly himself, not at great moments of emergency or when a sudden call is made on him, but when his ambitions for the time being are gratified, when he is pleased with himself and his circumstances – above all, when he is alone. Thus, though just now the hard eagerness of his face was a little softened, yet its alertness hardly dozed; and though he had made, he felt sure, a great success in bringing Dorothy Emsworth to America, he hardly allowed himself even this momentary pause of achievement, but had called this morning to talk over with her the details of a protracted tour through the principal cities of the States. True son of his country, he realized that to pause spelled to be left behind.

As his manner was, Bilton did not sit down, but kept walking about, as if not to be caught idle either in mind or body. As in many of his countrymen, the habit of perpetually being ready and eager to snap up an opportunity had become a second nature to him, so that it was far more an effort to him to rest than to work. Working was as natural to him as breathing; to cease to work required the same sort of effort as to hold the breath. To him in his profession as impresario any movement, any glimpse at a room or a picture, could perhaps suggest what in the fertile alchemy of his mind might be transformed into a 'tip,' and he looked with special attention at two Watteau prints which hung on the walls; for in the second piece which Mrs. Emsworth was to produce under his direction a certain scene was laid in the gardens at Versailles, and the note of artificial naturalness had to be struck in the scenery as Watteau and no one else had struck it. Big trees cut formally and square in their lower branches, but with the topmost boughs left unpollarded; fountain in the centre, quite so, and a glimpse, just a glimpse, of the terrace of the palace with the two bronze fountains beneath the trees.