The House of Defence. Volume 2. Benson Edward Frederic

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СКАЧАТЬ who have talked insincerely on deep matters who prefer to splash about on the surface. But a few surface remarks followed.

      “Yet it is almost certainly one’s own fault if one is bored,” said Catherine. “To be bored only shows that a bore is present – probably oneself. Yet, Maud … if I tell him about the bazaars, and sales, and speeches, and so on, he is bored; and they do make up a big part of my life.”

      “On the surface,” said she, “since we are being frank.”

      “No, not on the surface, since we are contradicting each other. The deepest and most real part of me that I know is sorry for poor devils, and it expresses itself in these ways. And it is exactly that which gets on his nerves. If I get up from lunch because I have got to go somewhere, he is irritated. He thinks I am restless. Well, so I am. I want to be doing things, not eating stupid cutlets. What do you want me to do? What does he want me to do? Eat opium instead?”

      Maud gave a long sigh.

      “Oh, Cathy, that was a pity!” she said.

      Catherine gave a little hopeless gesture.

      “Oh yes; it was a pity. Lots of things are. Our attitude towards each other is a pity. But I’m sorry I said that. Oh, do help me! Let’s be practical. Remember, I am at home when I am doing things. And I want to know what to do about a hundred things.”

      Catherine got up again. She was, as she said, always practical, and she was always restless. This afternoon in particular, after the inconclusive wakefulness of the night before, she longed to map out plans, rules of conduct, a line to take about all these complications. Yet, since all her life she had been chary of emotion, apt to regard it as useless, if not dangerous, stuff to have on board; now, when it was certainly there, either through her will or in opposition to it, she found herself – she, the ready speaker – destitute of words to deal with it to Maud. And in her silent search for expression again she paced up and down the busy bee-travelled flower-beds. Then there came a crisper note – the sound of crunched gravel – and a dog-cart drew up at the front-door, some fifty yards only from where they sat. There was only one person in it, a young man, who dismounted and rang the bell, and stood at the pony’s head waiting for it to be answered. But apparently the servants were drowsy too, as befitted Sunday afternoon, and after a pause he rang again.

      No definite process of reasoning went on through Catherine’s mind, but somehow her heart sank. This was no caller, no one who would need entertainment; but there was something dimly familiar in that cart, and in the tradesman-like young man, that reminded her of medicines, of the time when the children had the measles. Yes; it was a man from the chemist’s … and next moment she knew why her heart sank.

      “I will see who it is,” she said to Maud. “The servants seem to be asleep;” and she went across the grass to the front-door.

      She had a word with the man, who gave her a small package, neatly sealed. Then he touched his hat, mounted, and turned his horse. Catherine came back to where Maud was sitting.

      “It is directed to Thurso,” she said, “and it is from the chemist in Windsor. Maud – ”

      Maud understood; but she shook her head.

      “Oh, you can’t open other people’s things,” she said – “you can’t. Oh, Catherine, what are we to do?”

      Catherine sat down again, with the bottle – the shape of it was plain – in her hand. Then Maud spoke again.

      “But we must,” she said. “Open it carefully, so that if it isn’t what we think we can do it up again. Oh, I hate it all; it seems mean, but I don’t care. I’ll open it if you would rather not.”

      Catherine seemed to think this unnecessary, and carefully broke the seals. There was a bottle of dark blue glass inside, with a red label of “Poison” on it. It was closed with a glass stopper, which she withdrew, and she smelled it. Then, paper and all, she passed it to Maud.

      Maud put the stopper back into the bottle, squeezed up the paper and string in which it had been wrapped into a tight ball, and threw it deep into the flower-bed. Then she went to the opening in the yew-hedge and flung the bottle itself into mid-stream.

      “So we’ve both had a hand in it,” she said when she returned. “Oh, Cathy, last night only he let you throw the wretched stuff out of the window, and the very next day has to go and order some more. Poor dear old boy! He must have ordered it when he went in with Theodosia after lunch. He must have told them he wanted it quickly. It’s death and hell, you know. I didn’t stop to think. I had to throw it into the river. What next? Are we to know anything about it or not?”

      “Yes; he would find out in any case. The chemist’s man would say he gave it to me. But there is no reason why you should come into it.”

      “Oh, give me my share,” said Maud quickly. “I want to help.”

      “Of course you can help; but I am quite willing to take the whole responsibility for what we have done,” said Catherine.

      “No; I want it to come from both of us,” said Maud, “if that is of any use.”

      Catherine considered this.

      “It is,” she said. “You have more weight with him than I have, you know.”

      There was no trace of any bitterness in her tone. It was plain unemotional speech, but it struck Maud as one of the saddest things she had ever heard said. She had long known, of course, that the married life of her brother and Catherine was not very happy, but this afternoon the tragedy of it was becoming, by these little trivial words, infinitely more real. And the materials for tragedy were being dreadfully augmented. This little bottle she had just thrown into the Thames was like one of those little incidents in the first act of a play, from which disaster will certainly be evolved later. What hideous scene in the last act did the great Playwright of life mean to make out of this?

      Then suddenly some memory of things Mr. Cochrane had said to her up in Scotland, some sentences from a book concerning Christian Science which he had lent her, came back to her mind. He had warned her that she would find in it certain things which would seem to her ridiculous, and he had asked her to pass over those. But he had told her that she would also find there certain things which were indisputably true, and, remembering one of them, she told herself now that she was thinking wrongly in anticipating evil like this. If she was to be of any use in the world, or produce any happiness in herself or others, she must turn away from evil, must deny it, and look at and affirm this great reality of Love and Good. To dwell on sin and error and on their consequences was to invite them, to make them her guests. It was another Guest – a very willing One – that was to be made welcome, but He was autocratic: you had to do His bidding all the time, even in details.

      “Yes, let me help,” she said. “And we must tell him at once what we have done. Don’t let us deceive him, even if we could.”

      “He will be furious,” said Catherine.

      “We can’t help that. We have certainly got to tell him. Besides, we don’t want to conceal what we have done; we don’t want to think of some plan for preventing it coming to his knowledge. We are not ashamed of it. Wouldn’t you do it again? I would. I would throw all the laudanum bottles in the world into the Thames if I could prevent the stuff reaching him.”

      People began to gather again after this. Rudolf Villars and his companion came back from the river, he looking fatigued, while Alice was fresher than paint. Her husband came out from the house with considerable alertness, as if letter-writing had been an СКАЧАТЬ