Mezzanine E-Book

E.F. Benson

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

The first of the autumn frosts had come, scenting the windless morning with its clean undefinable odour, and promising a radiant October day. When Elizabeth Langdon came down to breakfast the sun on this hill-top was already warm, and the air a-sparkle, though down below the cup-shaped hollow of the valley, where the town stood, was full to the brim of white mist. Level as a lake it stretched across the basin and along the course of the chalk stream, but it was fast drying up, and the tops of the trees in the Close and the Cathedral tower pierced it and rose above it, luminously gleaming in the pale sunshine.

Leseprobe

Mezzanine

E. F. Benson

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385743161

PART I

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

PART II

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

Mezzanine

PART I

CHAPTER I

The first of the autumn frosts had come, scenting the windless morning with its clean undefinable odour, and promising a radiant October day. When Elizabeth Langdon came down to breakfast the sun on this hill-top was already warm, and the air a-sparkle, though down below the cup-shaped hollow of the valley, where the town stood, was full to the brim of white mist. Level as a lake it stretched across the basin and along the course of the chalk stream, but it was fast drying up, and the tops of the trees in the Close and the Cathedral tower pierced it and rose above it, luminously gleaming in the pale sunshine.

The dining-room bore signs of an earlier meal than hers, hastily partaken of, and not yet cleared away; a cup of coffee only half drunk stood there, a plate on which was the more fluid part of a poached egg and a burned-out match, and the crisp smell of a cigarette spiced the air. Elizabeth rang the bell to show she was down, and opening the long window that gave access to the garden, strolled out while she waited for the arrival of her breakfast. Walter must have had a rush to catch his train, she thought; he had just looked in on her as she dressed, with a greeting for her birthday, and a moment afterwards she had seen from her bedroom window the top of his head skimming past along the top of the garden wall, and heard the sharp tingle of his bicycle bell as he curved into the main road below; five minutes later she had seen the London express slide along the embankment into the town. But if he had missed it he would have been back by now.

The sun was infusing the frost-scented morning with the odour of dead leaves and damp earth, the very essence and spirit of autumn. A gravel path ran spaciously along the garden front of the house; the wet pebbles of it glowed like topazes, and the lawn below, where melted rime lay thick, was shimmering white. On each side of it gleamed herbaceous beds backed by high brick walls, where sunflowers, already seeding and dispetalled, hung their broad heads, circular and solid like great buns. The rooting up of these, thought Elizabeth, should be her first task in the garden that morning, for their moultings left them shabby, but she would keep the heads as winter provender for the tits, hanging them on strings outside the windows. It was pretty to see the small, bold birds cling to their swinging table and pick out the oily seeds. The dahlias were but little blackened by the frost of the night; they would be gay for another week yet, crimson and orange perches for the late red admiral butterflies that were already sunning themselves there. At the bottom of the lawn were three or four trees of fine growth springing from a space of rough grass, which was bright in spring-time with the bulbs she had planted there. Below was a half-acre of kitchen garden, fenced from the road that led steeply down into Maychester by a thick thorn hedge.

Elizabeth took in all these items with a glance of general recognition, as if greeting an expected and familiar friend, and then gave them a further attention in detail, for she was one to whom these independent little natural existences had each an individuality of its own. She was tall and solidly made, and like most big women carried herself well; she looked brisk and capable and serene, as if she had dealt very successfully with life hitherto, and was assured of efficiency in the future. You would guess, too, from that sensitive mouth and those large grey eyes that had so direct a gaze that it was not so much by diplomatic methods that she had managed to keep on such good terms with others and herself as by the wisdom of goodwill and simplicity; she might be expected to solve a difficulty less by acuteness than by a breezy and indulgent handling of it.

She strolled along the walk above the lawn with the paper, which she had picked up in her passage through the dining-room, still unopened in her hand, for possible events of public interest had less allure for her than her own personal concerns, in the forefront of which, for the moment, was this morning of strenuous gardening which she had promised herself. Autumn did not present itself to her mind as a season of gradual decay and approaching death for her garden, nor hitherto had she read warning and a wintry outlook in her own whitening hair, or, this morning, in the undoubted fact that it was her forty-seventh birthday. External autumn was to be taken day by day on its merits, and here was a warm and sunny impression, which the spice of the night’s frost but accentuated. As for winter, it was not death for these adorable creatures of the earth, but rather a sleep that restored their blossoming energies.

For herself, too, she liked the winter; she made plans, at any rate, to do the things which it had been impossible to do during the summer; to improve her mind with books, to encourage a nimbleness of finger on the piano, and, best of all, there would be long, cheerful evenings by the fire, when dusk fell early and the curtains were drawn, and she and Walter would be uninterruptedly alone together. They were both quite sociably disposed, but really they were happier at home on wintry nights than anywhere else. He was quite of her mind about that; he groaned at the idea of accepting an invitation to dinner at such seasons. “Why go out of doors when we’re so well off at home?” he would ask. “Write a tactful note, darling, and imply, if you don’t want actually to say it, that I’ve got a toothache. Or say straight out that we don’t expect to be hungry next Thursday. Or say that there are only three more days of January left, and that in consequence we’re very busy.” But this winter she felt that she must take him out a little more, even at the sacrifice of her own inclination, for it wasn’t good for a man to be eternally alone with his wife in the evening. Last year his health (even if not his toothache) had been a valid excuse, but now he had recovered with a completeness for which once she had hardly dared to hope. That was the joyful cause of his expedition to London to-day; he had gone on what she felt sure would be the final visit to his doctor, to get a clean bill of health given him.

It was this, she knew, that most conduced to her sense of exhilarated content this morning; it was the sword in the side of the dragon of fear with whom she had waged so long a combat. Fear for the last two years had been the arch-enemy of her soul, and sweet it was to see it lying stark and slain. Walter had been invalided home in the last summer of the war, an emaciated shadow of himself, and all this weary time he had been subject to continual attacks of the malaria he had caught on the poisoned plains round Salonica; as fast as he made a pallid recovery from one, another broke him down again. But now for the last few months there had been no recurrence of them; it looked as if he had finally routed them. With that his general vitality had enormously improved; he seemed to have recaptured the spring of youth again. He had become as young, she told him, as he was when first they met, eleven years ago, and when, so soon after that, they had married. That rejuvenation had not been physical alone, he was young again in outlook, in activity of mind as well as muscle. His long period of illness, indeed, had done for him what winter did for the plants and trees; he had lain quiescent and recuperating, storing the sap which now so briskly flowed again to the beckoning of spring.

All this presented itself to her contented consciousness more like a picture flashed before her mind than a sequential train of thought, and hovered before her like some bright transparency without obscuring her perception of the garden sights and sounds. Across the lawn a big horse-chestnut tree, yellow-leaved, stood gleaming like new-minted gold in the early sunshine. Now and then a prickly husk dropped from its stalk, softly rustling in its fall through the foliage, and she heard the thump of it on the grass below. That would burst its ripeness open and disclose, embedded in the leathery cushion within, the shining mahogany nuts, which her nine-year-old Anthony would search for presently, to be strung and do battle against each other. He and his father waged these terrific wars with squeals of agony as well as of triumph, for knuckles were liable to receive the fierce random blows which were intended for your adversary’s chestnut. And not only were the nuts falling from the tree, but the five-fingered leaves also. Silently, one by one, they detached themselves, and twirling round and round in the windless air, settled on the ground. They were falling fast now as the sun warmed the sapless stalks which had been chilled by the frost, and the grass underneath the tree was yellow with them.

They fell in one piece, she noticed, stem and leaf together, not like the foliage of the ampelopsis on the garden wall; there the leaf was first detached, and the bare stem of it clung for a few days more to the mother-tendril. A neater plan, she thought, was that of the horse-chestnut: if you had to shed your leaves, shed them stem and all, and have done with decoration. To do otherwise was to cling to the undecorative remnant of your summer-time. Besides, the other was more convenient for gardeners, since one sweeping-up made everything tidy again. There lurked a parable, Elizabeth felt, in the compared conduct of the two, and she would think it out when, as soon as breakfast was over, she spent her morning according to plan—that disgusting Teutonic phrase—in her garden. It had something to do with the ways of growing old.

The appearance of her parlour-maid with glad news of breakfast and the simultaneous ringing of the telephone-bell brought her into the house. Parish attended to the latter, and presently returned with an inquiry as to whether Mrs. Gosson might look in at tea-time. Mrs. Gosson was the energetic wife of a most tranquil Dean: Walter’s name for her was the “Home-breaker,” for on the errands of charity and good works which so incessantly occupied her, she often made the fell discovery that a husband was a drunkard, or his wife a woman of loose morals, and then Mrs. Gosson greedily tore them asunder, and arranged separations and allowances and the custody of the children, whereas, said Walter, they would all have been much happier muddling along together. But Mrs. Gosson’s day was wasted unless she had got on the scent of a tale of sin and sorrow, which she followed up, like an excited terrier with enthusiastic yappings. She had a cast-iron code about conduct, and in spite of her ceaseless administration of charities was essentially uncharitable. She looked on the world as a very dangerous and wicked place; but then she was there to help, and to haul delinquents by the scruff of the neck into the way of salvation. Those who were not delinquents—sadly few—were “dear saints” or “sweet things,” according to their sex, and God, in Mrs. Gosson’s view, a sort of tremendous clergyman who observed Sunday very strictly, and was a rabid teetotaler. She was one of the most zealous of His district visitors.

Elizabeth knew she was an admirable woman, but she did not want her to tea. Walter detested her, and, unfortunately Walter’s absence in town made rather a good opportunity. Elizabeth sighed.

“Oh, I suppose so, Parish,” she said.

“Yes’m,” said Parish.

Elizabeth had rather lost herself in rumination over the subject of Mrs. Gosson. Would she be a better woman if she was like Mrs. Gosson? But the sound of her own words brought her to the surface again.

“Oh, Parish, don’t tell her that,” she said. “Don’t say that I suppose so. Say I’ll be delighted, so pleased. Half-past four.”

Parish unfroze into a grin.

“Yes’m; I understand,” she said.

There was nothing in Elizabeth’s post that required an immediate answer, though one letter certainly demanded consideration. This was from the owner of the house they now occupied, of which, when Walter had been invalided home she had taken a three years’ lease, with a break on either side at its termination. It had been clear that for some time he would not be able to get back to his work in the City, and he was ordered out of the fogs and blacknesses of London to seek recovery in a purer and more bracing air. Now there was but a year more of their lease to run, and the owner inquired whether she would entertain the idea of purchase. The price asked was very moderate, and it was well within Elizabeth’s means to buy the house. Though she had lived most of her life in towns, these two years had brought her to believe that at heart she was a country-lover. She had grown very fond of the place. She liked the big down-land and her garden and the convenient house; above all, she felt warmly to the spot that had so marvellously restored Walter. She would love to have it as a permanent home; but there were many things to be considered. She chose just now not to consider any of them; there was no immediate hurry, and she could settle nothing without consulting him.

Manual work, especially if it is of a rough and simple kind, like the uprooting of sunflowers and the sweeping together of dead leaves is a fine incentive to meditation, and Elizabeth’s mind was soon as hard at work as her active and robust body. The autumn seemed to have given her a good text on which to discourse to herself, but she did not find her own homily disagreeable. She had never shunned the approach, nor did she now shun the advent of middle age. It promised, so she began to tell herself, a soft mild climate, which ought to be pleasant enough, provided you banished from your mind all desire for unsuitable activities. Often she had imagined that it would be possible to enjoy it very greatly, so long as you picked no quarrel with the afternoon light and the tendency of shadows to lengthen. She fancied she had schooled herself into acceptance of its inevitable limitations whenever they began to assert themselves, and had seen no difficulty, prospectively, in meeting them with friendliness, convinced of their kindly intentions. Decorations, physical charms naturally fell off from the middle-aged, even as the leaves were falling from the chestnut-tree, underneath which she was now busy with broom and wheelbarrow, and the right thing to do was to let them fall and sweep them away. Off they came—and now the parable of contrast between the chestnut-tree’s method of defoliation and that of the ampelopsis, which had eluded her before, declared itself. It was wiser to let the summer decoration go completely, and not retain a remnant of it for a day longer. The bare stems, once crowned with green, only called attention to what had vanished.

Suddenly the whole of this silent and edifying sermon rang untrue to the inward ear that listened to it. The preacher who occupied her private pulpit was that mild old parson who had harangued her so often and so suitably in those two years of Walter’s illness, when all the values were different. She knew now that when she had listened to that very proper discourse, she had never really believed that Walter would get back full measure of health, or recapture the youth that was still rightly his, much less that exuberance of living which had been restored to him. She had figured him as never likely to be robust again, never young any more, easily tired, a stranger henceforth to the spendthrift extravagance of youth, which so gaily squandered its energies in the certainty that its balance in the bank of life would always be made good. That forecast of his future, she saw now, had been chiefly responsible for her own quiet acceptance of a middle age in which so much vigour and vitality would remain, all of which should minister to him. He, in his untimely loss of youth and health, would lean on her, and find in her all that he needed in the ways of care and tenderness.

But now the imagined situation was utterly changed by that amazing recovery of his, and their relations to each other, as she had forecast them, would bear not the faintest resemblance to reality. He would no longer be in need of the strong, capable arm to lean on in invalid fashion, nor of her robustness to reinforce his languor. The ten years difference in their ages was no longer a gulf to be bridged over by her health and his weakness, but would yawn ever more widely between them. In three years she would be fifty, and those same three years would only consolidate him on the firm heights of his manhood. A man of forty, and she fifty. . . .

The sun had dispersed the mists which so short a time ago had hidden the town that clustered in the hollow, so that it lay softly blurred and only dimly visible. Some illumination like that dispersed the acquiescence in middle age which hid its real features from her, and she saw, sharply defined, what had not been visible to her before. She had heaped together the scattered gold from the chestnut-tree, raking it up into a shining heap, but leaving the plump burst nuts for Tony to collect. There was plenty more to occupy her hands, but, as the new preacher in her private pulpit ousted the old, she abandoned her physical activity, and, drawing off her thick gardening gloves, sat down on the seat below the tree, to listen with undivided attention to a very different discourse.

She had embarked, so he reminded her, on one of the most hazardous expeditions in which a woman can adventure herself, when she had made up her mind to marry a man ten years younger than herself. Her friends had tried to dissuade her, but her ear had been deaf to their arguments, though some small voice in her own heart, croaking common sense, had ranged itself with them. But her heart had been so full of glad music that it was easy to disregard that little melancholy caviller. She had fallen in love with Walter—who wanted to find an excuse for that?—and quite deliberately she had done all that a self-respecting woman could to attract and absorb him. She was, at thirty-six, very young for her age, she was big and beautiful, and she was well off, for her mother’s death, which had taken place shortly before she met him, had left her in more than easy circumstances. For ten years before that she had devoted herself, with gay courage and cheerfulness, to the despotic whims of a hypochondriacal and self-pitying woman; what wonder then that when she came out of that tunnel of a life into sunshine and the free air, and by divine chance found this young man with eyes ready from the first to regard her admiringly, she gave him of her best, using the dower with which Nature had so abundantly enriched her in the service of love? His admiration and interest were soon infused with a more glowing quality, and before six months were past he had asked her to marry him.

Elizabeth wanted to state the case fairly. The fact that she had fallen in love with him was excuse enough then, and perhaps still, for her deliberate deafness to the voice of the cautious and the sensible, but she had had, she knew well, an ally to fight for her more powerful perhaps than any of those intrinsic attractions which were legitimately hers. Just as she first saw him in the reaction of daylight and freedom after the long dimness of her mother’s self-centred invalidism, so he first saw her when he was just reacting from a disaster of his own affections. He had, not a year before, been engaged to a girl of his own age, who had thrown him over for a more brilliant destiny. There had never been a more heartless proceeding. Evie Glazebrook had merely dropped him, when wealth and position as the wife of Lord Ambleside had presented itself, turned from him with a scarcely regretful smile and a shrug of her white shoulders, and passed on to a more attractive future. And then Elizabeth had appeared, breezy and warm-hearted and infinitely welcoming. He wanted comfort, he wanted love, and there they were ready to be poured out on him. Strange, indeed, would it have been if she had rejected his acceptance of them.

She had her choice. She was not blind to the fact that she was marrying a man ten years her junior, nor did she wish him to be blind to it. She had, in fact, been perfectly open with him, had told him that the day would come when she would be old, and he still young, and that the envious years would send in their bills. She had—how vividly she remembered it to-day—put to him exactly the situation which was now upon her, bidding him consider what manner of companionship would be theirs when she was within the three-year limit of her fiftieth birthday, and he still as far off from forty. But she had known that he would not be able to realize that any more than she did, and with what incredulity had she suggested it. Her reason knew it to be true, but not for a moment had her heart admitted it, and with what incredulity had he listened to her. His gay disregard of such chilly and remote imaginings had been wine to her. Surely, he had said, there was a quality in love which scorned the corrosion of the years. He affirmed that he knew it was so; did she suppose he loved her merely for her eyes or her hair? Even if he did, what then? They would be there still, he supposed, and he would kiss them then, even as he kissed them now.

The memory of his confident ardour blazed before her now; she warmed her heart at its sunlight before she passed into the shadow which must be explored. How right they had both been, for their confidence had borne a splendid fruit, in that it had yielded them ten years of excellent happiness. Surely that was a great harvest, safely garnered now and imperishably possessed. For there was the magical quality of the happiness that springs from love, that the happy days may be past, but the golden grain of them remains still safe in the storehouse of the heart. Would that storehouse be conceivably half as full as it was now, if she had listened to the sage counsels of prudence? She knew it would not, for the world did not hold another man for her, such as him. And he had been happy too; his devotion to her had never waned; never, so the pride of her heart assured her, had the smallest regret or sense of lack made the flame of his content to flicker.

There, in this justified optimism, was the lantern to take with her into the shadow that was outlined before her. Strange, indeed, was the origin of it, for, to look at its nature precisely, it was just the removal of her fear and anxiety over Walter’s long illness which cast it. The unspeakable joy of that should surely have kindled for her a sunshine that made dim the liquid glory of the morning, but, instead, it spread in front of her this disquieting darkness as of some commencing eclipse, which threatened to plunge the world in a noonday blackness. Such a shadow did Walter’s rejuvenation and restored health cast across her path. She must step into it and scrutinize it.

A little shiver went though her; then stiffening herself, she looked and saw. For the last two years she had been a wonderful nurse to him, selfless and utterly devoted to his care. But now, so she was convinced the medical verdict would be, there was no need for the nurse any longer. She must take off that uniform of the sick-room and resume her wifely relations, be to him all that he had a right to look for, and satisfy all the male needs, subtle and straightforward alike, of a man much younger than herself. She must have the sensitiveness and quickness of youth, as well as youth’s vigour in demand and response. A man wanted what youth gave him unconsciously and without effort; could she do that? Physically it gave him smooth skin and the brightness of eye and hair, mentally it gave him the attributes which exactly corresponded with these, the quick perception, the mind of infinite and fresh variety that intrigues him with sudden surprises and delights. Every man in his degree was an explorer, and the woman-country which he penetrates must have fresh features for ever coming into view to keep his wonder alive. In the early days Walter was always finding out new things about her; then had come the four years’ severance from him in the war, followed by two more of his invalidism, when her business with him had been that of a nurse or a mother, and she had fed him, like a baby at the breast, with the milk of her splendid vitality. But that office of hers, which had so surely helped in bringing him back to a rejuvenated life, had just as surely aged her, and now he was restored to her, younger by far than he had been, and would by that dominating, demanding instinct which characterized a man’s way of love, look to her for the rapturous fulfilment of his needs. She, on her side, must be as vitally responsive, with that glowing tenderness, which, in the woman’s part, as ever before, to all that it was natural for him to seek in her. How much, in these ageing years, had she lost of that responsive spring?

It was not that she felt old; to herself her pulses seemed to beat as brisk a measure as ever; her eye was as vivid as ever in its welcome to loveliness, her capacity for service still indefatigable. But she was aware that some shadow had silently crept up till the edge of it enveloped her, and that out of it, some presence, invisible as yet, regarded her. The difference in age between them had from the first been accepted by him, even as it had by her, and together they had laughed to think that there was anything disquieting there. But now her laughter had ceased; not the wintriest of smiles remained of that incredulous merriment. As yet there had not been, even to her sensitiveness, the smallest sign that Walter was conscious of the insurgent spectre, or of the shadow in which it sat. But in the very nature of things the time must come when he would see the presence of which she was now conscious, and with what sort of defiance would he face it? Long ago they had agreed that love was of a quality that scorned the marauding years, and that whatever they might pilfer, its sanctuary would remain unrifled, and the light on its altar undimmed. But now age figured itself to her as eddying like some cold draught round the flame, blowing it this way and that, and making the firm wax to gutter, till finally it quenched it. And she would shudder and feel for him in the darkness and find only the touch of cold and unresponsive hands.

Elizabeth had let her mind drift along in the current of these thoughts without control. But now with a spasm of self-contempt she took up her oars, and pulled her way into sunshine again. It was not those who allowed themselves to dwell in shadows who could successfully fight them, but those who made the sunshine which dispelled them.

She got up from her seat. Here, at any rate, was a creature of the sun come to make illumination, for Tony, freed from his morning lessons, was galloping towards her across the lawn.

“Hurrah!” he cried, “I’ve finished. Mummy, can’t you have a birthday every day, and then I shall have a half-holiday every day? Why not?”

He gave an enraptured squeal.

“Oh, chestnuts!” he said. “Ever so many chestnuts! Come and help me to collect them.”

“Darling, I can’t just yet,” she said. “I must go on with my gardening. There are all those sunflowers to pull up.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re getting shabby. Come and help me first. We’ll cut their heads off and make a bundle of the stalks with all these dead leaves, and get Game to make a bonfire of them.”

“Real fire?” asked Tony.

“Genuine,” said Elizabeth.

Tony hesitated, balancing the rival merits of these occupations. Surely there was a medicine for shadows in that adorable incarnation of youth, that was bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh. The boy was dressed in knickerbocker shorts and a jersey; his head and legs were bare but for some wisp of a sock that flapped over his canvas shoes. She lived again, and so pre-eminently did Walter in that tumble of yellow hair and gay grey eye.

“I don’t know what to do,” announced Tony. “I want some chestnuts, but I want a bonfire too. Which should I like best?”

CHAPTER II

Elizabeth had not yet come downstairs from making herself tidy when Parker announced the arrival of Mrs. Gosson. Tony and his mother had had a delectable afternoon, for Game made a pile of dry rubbish in the corner of the kitchen garden which burned with absolutely genuine fire, and they fed it with sunflower stalks which fizzled and bubbled and then with loud, mysterious reports burst into flame. The chestnut leaves were quite as satisfactory; their five-fingered hands writhed and curled and were easily seen to be those of witches duly suffering at the stake for their iniquities. Elizabeth enjoyed herself immensely and quite forgot she was forty-seven; she forgot also that Mrs. Gosson was coming to tea until close on the hour of her appearance, and hurried upstairs to change her dress which smelt strongly of the reek of burnt leaves. Mrs. Gosson had lately taken to calling her by her Christian name, but Elizabeth had not yet found herself able to respond with “Hermione.” It seemed so very unlikely that Mrs. Gosson was Hermione; the idea offended the sense of probability.

Hermione was never idle; she was always provided with something useful or improving to do, in case she found an unexpected moment of leisure. She seldom did, because her day was a succession of duties, none of which she ever neglected, but in case, as now, of having to wait a few minutes for someone less practical than herself, there was always ready a piece of sewing or knitting, which she carried with her in a small serviceable sack, or, if improvement of the mind was what she felt she needed just then, the sack supplied her with a pocket edition of some standard work of a serious scope. But most of the day she was busy with hard, charitable employments.

She rose as Elizabeth entered, and putting her piece of needlework into the sack, screwed up her face into a contortion of welcome. This agreeable grimace entailed opening her mouth very wide and fluttering her eyelids with great rapidity, as if dazzled by the sight of “such a sweet thing.” In person she was large and stout, and if anything so unlikely as an inquest ever happened to her, the coroner would certainly have described her as “the body of a well-nourished female.”

“Elizabeth!” she said. “How dear and sweet of you to let me come to see you! My dean had unexpectedly to attend a meeting this afternoon, so I said to myself, ‘I will pop in and see sweet Elizabeth, if she will let me.’ And how is all with you, and how is dear Mr. Walter?”

Elizabeth shook hands.

“What a good idea of yours,” she said. “But Walter’s gone up to London to-day to see his doctor—no, not to be told he’s ill, but just the opposite. To be told, I trust, that he is perfectly well again and of no further interest.”

“Ah, what a joy, what a thankfulness, dear!” ejaculated Mrs. Gosson. “Tea? Thank you. A teeny cup of tea, with one weeny bit of sugar. So naughty of me: sugar is a self-indulgence I seldom permit myself. And so you’re all alone.”

That she was not all alone was instantly demonstrated by the entry of Tony ceremonially bearing his mother’s birthday cake, which was to be a complete surprise to her. For the last three days she had seen it in process of construction in the kitchen, and this morning her cook had been fixing the forty-seven little wax tapers, now bravely burning, round the edge of its foundation. So she was fairly well prepared for the surprise and could adequately express her amazement and gratification. Then Tony had to count the tapers to make sure the number was right, and so sometimes Elizabeth was fifty, and sometimes forty-three. After which the tapers were extinguished and the cake cut, and Mrs. Gosson was naughty again, on a larger scale, with sugar.

She had coaxed the reluctant Tony to sit on the edge of her chair.

“I know who’s a lucky little boy to have such a sweet mamma,” she observed.

“I don’t. Who’s that?” said Tony uncompromisingly.

Mrs. Gosson gave her great grin again, and followed it by the laugh which she had reason to believe brought cheerfulness into sad hearts. Walter said you could see her uvula when she laughed.

“A little boy, oh, not nearly a hundred miles from where you’re sitting, darling,” she said.

Tony condescended to guess and was rewarded by a tender squeeze.

“Such a happy little boy he ought to be,” said Mrs. Gosson, “and such a good little boy too, for fear of vexing his sweet mamma.”

Not having any children of her own, Mrs. Gosson knew exactly how they should be brought up, with the constant consciousness of a loving Providence and some angels to look after them. When they grew up they might of course become wicked, and then she looked after them pretty sharply; but while still in the age of innocence they were lambs and little joyful ones. . . . She pointed up to the middle of the ceiling.

“Do you know who lives up there, Tonikins?” she asked.

Tony followed the direction of her finger.

“Yes: daddy,” he said. “That’s his bedroom.”

Mrs. Gosson enfolded him closer.

“Yes, darling,” she said, “and above that, oh! so far away in the blue sky. Do you know who lives there Tony?”

“Of course I do” said Tony.

“And don’t you want to go there?”

“No,” said Tony.

Elizabeth desperately wanted to laugh.

“Tony, dear,” she said.

Tony turned on her an aggrieved but logical face.

“Well, I don’t, mummie,” he said. “I should have to die if I went there. You don’t want me to go there either.”

“Well, finish your cake,” said Elizabeth. That was a dreadfully feeble answer, but she could think of nothing better to say.

Tony finished his tea, and wriggling out of Mrs. Gosson’s chair, without allowing himself to be kissed, scampered from the room. Mrs. Gosson followed his retreat with an ecstatic smile, but was not really sorry when the door closed behind him.

“Little joyful one!” she said. “Oh, what a dear responsibility, Elizabeth! Does he love saying his prayers? Yes?”

That did not quite express Tony’s attitude towards his devotions.

“Well, he’s fairly good about them,” she said. “His nurse always insists on their being said.”

Mrs. Gosson drew in her breath as if wincing.

“But, sweet one,” she said, “the mother’s knee! . . .”

Elizabeth got up. Her cordiality was quite unabated, but she did not intend to discuss Tony’s religious upbringing with her visitor.

“Tony and I have been having a wonderful afternoon with a bonfire,” she said. “The rubbish we burned figured as witches at the stake. You’ll be glad to hear there isn’t a witch left in the garden. . . .”

She was standing opposite the long window, and at that moment heard a step on the gravel outside, and there was Walter, who must have caught the earlier train. Luckily he caught sight of her visitor and very stealthily retreated. She longed to ask him what the verdict had been, but that must wait, for meetings between him and Mrs. Gosson were not socially successful. . . .

She turned quickly back, trusting that Mrs. Gosson had not heard his step. That lady was still tenderly smiling, but with a puckered brow, as if trying to recollect something.

“Ah, I have it,” she said. “There is something I wanted to ask you, dear Elizabeth. Something that it is my duty to ask you.”

“I hope I shall be able to tell you,” said Elizabeth.

“Your speaking of your garden fortunately reminded me of it,” said Mrs. Gosson. “Your gardener—Game is it not?”

“Yes.”

“It’s a painful question, dear,” said Mrs. Gosson. “But have you ever had any reason to think that he drinks?”

Elizabeth had plenty of reason not only for thinking that but for knowing it. It only happened occasionally, and Game was always very sorry afterwards. Any idea of dismissing him, if that was Mrs. Gosson’s ultimate goal, with a view to his reformation, was utterly out of the question and need not be discussed, for he was a very old man and an abominably bad gardener and would never get another place. So on the whole. . . .

“Oh, dear me, no,” she said. “What could have made you suppose such a thing?”

Mrs. Gosson gave a great sigh. It might have been a sigh of relief, but it had more the timbre of resignation.

“That’s off my mind then,” she said. “Oh, how pleased I am! But in the dusk, a few nights ago, as I was going home, I passed a man in the High Street, reeling and staggering, and I thought it was Game. But I’ll find out who it was.”

She got up.

“Sweet one, I must go,” she said. “Such a lovely visit. But my dean will be back, and he is lost without me.”

Elizabeth saw her off, taking the precaution of talking to her all the time in a loud clear voice, so that Walter might have knowledge of their approach, if he was anywhere about, and as soon as Mrs. Gosson was gone went to look for him. He and Tony were under the chestnut-tree so busily engaged in collecting further champions for their duels that neither of them heard her approach. Tony was giving a shrill version of his agreeable conversation with Mrs. Gosson.

“And then she asked me if I didn’t want to go there, daddy,” he said. “And of course I told her no. And I said that mummie didn’t want me to go there either.”

“And what did mummie say?” asked Walter with deep interest.

“She told me to finish my tea, which wasn’t a real answer.”

Walter straightened himself from his gleaning and saw her.

“Hurrah!” he said. “Has the hag gone?”

“What’s a hag?” asked Tony.

“Yes, this minute. Oh, my dear, you were nearly caught.”

“But what’s a hag?” repeated Tony.

“It’s French, darling,” said Elizabeth. “You wouldn’t understand it. Well, Walter?”

“I wasted my day in the train,” he said. “I’m beyond the reach of medical aid. In fact, they aren’t going to try to reach me any more.”

“Oh, blessed news! I was sure it would be so. Absolutely discharged?”

“Yes, they’re sick and tired of me, and I’m sure I don’t wonder. Tony, that’s enough chestnuts. We’ve got troops sufficient for Armageddon.”

“I don’t know what that is,” said Tony, “but I want some more.”

Walter emptied his bulging pocket into Tony’s basket.

“And did Mrs. Gosson only come to inquire whether Tony wanted to go to heaven?” he asked.

“No, there was more. Tony, darling, take your basket indoors.”

“And will you come and play Happy Families?” asked Tony.

“Yes, in ten minutes. Run along; I’m going to have a stroll with daddy.”

The two walked off down the path to the kitchen garden.

“Oh, my dear, she was so embarrassing,” she said. “And she’s so sincere and high-minded and improving and detestable. I wish I could like her, but I can’t, and it’s no use asking you how I’m to set about it.”

“Not a bit. But how was she embarrassing?”

“She wanted to know if Game drank, for she thought she had seen him reeling about. And that forced me to lie to her. I think I shall have to send her a small subscription for her Girls’ Friendly Society by way of atonement. What silly gabble it all is! As if anything mattered compared to what your doctor said. Go on, what else did you do?”

“I hadn’t time for much. I wanted to catch the earlier train back if I could. I did a bit of shopping, and lunched at the club with one foot in a taxi. And whom do you think I saw at the station?”

“That’s a silly question,” said Elizabeth. “How on earth can I guess?”

“Evie and Lord Ambleside,” said he. “They were going down to Garth, which they’ve opened again. I haven’t seen her for eleven years, you know, but she came up and spoke to me at once. She called me Walter too.”

Elizabeth found it difficult to frame any reply that should be sufficiently colourless. The chance meeting meant nothing whatever to Walter and nothing to herself; it was hard in fact to say anything adequately meaningless.

“I’ve never seen her,” she said. “And what’s she like? Changed much?”

“Not an atom. She introduced me to her husband, a withered little old fellow but frightfully alert. And we all stood talking for about three minutes. An odd encounter after all these years.”

“I think it’s odder that you shouldn’t have seen her for so long,” said she.

There seemed nothing more to say on the subject. Walter had nothing more to tell, nor she to ask, and yet the momentary silence had some quality, felt by both, of strain and unusualness. But Tony’s shout from the drawing-room window that the ten minutes were over and the Happy Families ready relieved it.

“Yes, darling, we’re coming,” she called back.

“At once!” screamed Tony.

Elizabeth turned to Walter.

“Come and make another happy family, Walter,” she said. “You and Tony and I.”

The most notable fruit of Walter’s shopping was presented to Elizabeth after an exciting hour over the cards. This was his birthday present to her, which took the form of a fur foot-warmer lined with wool. Only a few days before he had found her with her feet wrapped up in a rug as she wrote her letters one chilly morning, and it was like him to have made a mental note of that for the choice of his gift to her. These birthday presents always presented features of difficulty. When asked, she could never tell him of anything she wanted; besides, the fact that he wanted to give her something contained, according to her, all the essentials of a birthday gift. But that would not do for Walter; his good wishes, he said, must incarnate themselves.

“Think hard,” he used to say to her. “Think in a serious and concentrated manner. Try to remember when last you said to yourself, ‘Oh, I wish I had got’—whatever it was.” But she was certainly deficient in the perception of her needs, and year by year he must exercise his ingenuity in detecting them for her. One year he had given her two return tickets to London because she had so nearly missed her train through having to wait in a queue at the booking office; another year his gift was a thousand boxes of matches, because he saw her laboriously rolling a paper spill to light her cigarette. Some small domestic joke, in fact, had to do duty for her lamentable lack of imagination.

But this year his gift sprang from the solid foundation of her need. Walter was delighted with himself for having found something she really wanted, and presently he and Tony had evolved a new game out of it, and he with both feet in it, and consequently unable to walk, but only progress in constricted bounds, had to catch Tony. They adjourned to the hall, which furnished an arena less encumbered with furniture, for this athletic pursuit, and Elizabeth, a little tired with her gardening, made herself comfortable by the fire, for in spite of the heat of the day the evening was chilly and promised another frost.

Shrieks and heavy bumps, as Walter hopped after his son with lithe, athletic bounds, made an accompaniment to her fireside musings, and indeed supplied the material for them. She wanted really to bask and soak in the atmosphere that surrounded her, to realize it and her own supreme content with it, rather than pursue any deliberate train of thought. The door of the drawing-room was left open, and every now and then Tony, if sore pressed, rushed in, followed by the leaping Walter, calling out, “No, Tony; it isn’t fair to come in here. Of course I can’t catch you round the table, and besides, we’re disturbing Mummie. Come out, you little brute. . . .” There he was, his hair tumbled over his eyes, hot, dishevelled, lissom as a boy, with his feet manacled in the beautiful foot-warmer which was designed to keep her warm, and Tony, insulting him from behind the sofa, and, wriggling out of the hands that nearly clutched him, careering out into the hall again.

That was surely atmosphere enough for her. A year ago Walter had been a languid invalid, white and shivering and feverish; now health and youth had come back to him. She knew all the summer how vastly he was improving, but this verdict of the doctor that he need not show his face again gave seal and signature and endorsement. There was no more nursing to be done; she had got him back, young and well and wholly restored. And there was Tony, that piece of quicksilver, eager and robust, whose strength kept pace with his lengthening limbs. Those two immeasurably outweighed the rest of the world to her, and if it was well with them there was nothing she asked for further.

She smiled broadly and deeply to herself; the smile rose from her very heart. . . . Surely no foot-warmer on the market would stand that sort of usage. A foot-warmer was meant for a sedate and sedentary person who sat quietly at her table and inserted her feet into it with care and kept them still. It was ever so ingenious of Walter to have thought of that for his birthday gift, for her feet did get cold if she sat writing or reading for long at a time. Walter had noticed that, and suddenly she found herself wishing that he had given her a skipping-rope or some other device which promoted warmth by the employment of greater activity. A skipping-rope with her initials enamelled on the handles would have been quite in the humorous spirit of his usual birthday present. But the foot-warmer had seemed to him more suitable. She wondered what he would give her next year: perhaps a pair of crutch-handled sticks to support her tottering steps.

There was a final shriek from outside. The penalty for being caught was to be tickled, but the tickled apparently was giving as good as he got, for Walter was shouting, “No, Tony, that’s not fair. You mustn’t tickle me; it’s against the rules. Besides, it’s very bad for me to be tickled. . . . Well, then, it’s pax. I’ll stop too.”

Tony’s bed-time had come, and when he had gone upstairs Walter came in and sat himself on the floor by the side of her chair. His sun-browned face was streaming; a plume of yellow hair was plastered on to his forehead.

“Heavens, what a heat I’m in,” he said. “I was never so hot in my worst fevers. And a wonderful foot-warmer, darling; I am pleased with myself. It appears, if properly used, to warm the entire body. Half an hour with it is as good as a Turkish bath. Now put your feet in it; you shall have a share in your own foot-warmer.”

He took hold of her shoes and placed them inside.

“My dear, it’s too lovely,” she said. “And what a baby you are.”

“I know. So would you be if you had been told this morning that you had got out of the grip of that fiend. For two years it has had its claws in me, and now it’s gone, and there isn’t a scratch. And whom have I got to thank for that?”

He leaned back his head as he spoke, looking up at her over the arm of her chair. His face was flushed with the strong wholesome colour; his breath, still quickened by his romp, dilated his nostrils.

“You’ve got yourself to thank,” she said, “for having been patiently hopeful and not giving up.”