A Reaping

by E. F. Benson

‘It will be harder than ever this year,’ she said, half to herself. ‘And there are nine drawers full!’

‘Circumscribe the drops of heart’s blood as they come,’ said I. ‘Don’t think there are nine drawers full. Only keep thinking of the particular thing that has to be kept or thrown away.’

‘Oh, but it’s only the fact that there are nine drawers full that makes it possible to throw anything away at all,’ said she.

‘Hush, woman!’ said I.

Personally, I am extremely methodical over the work of destruction. I clear a table and dump upon it a pile of heart’s blood. This I sort into three heaps, one of which is for destruction, one for preservation, and one for further consideration. I proceeded to do so now.

There were many pieces of string. Throughout the year I keep pieces of string, because I know I shall use them. As a matter of fact, when I want a piece of string I cut it off Helen’s ball, and never use any of the bits that I have saved, because I don’t know where they are, and they would prove to be the wrong length if I did. So on the day of destruction I consign them to the dust-bin, and begin to collect again immediately. Then there was a pill-box full of soft yellow powder, which Legs and I had collected from the little cedar-cones at some house where we were staying in the autumn. That I put on to the heap of destruction, but transferred it to the heap of consideration. Then there were a dozen little bits of verd-antique which I had picked up years ago on the beach at Capri, and which I had periodically tried to throw away. But I never could manage it, and this morning, knowing it was useless to strive against the irresistible, I made no attempt whatever to steel myself to their destruction, but put them at once into the pile that was predestined unto life. There was a chunk of amber that I had picked up at Cromer, equally imperishable; yards and yards of indiarubber tape that is the filling of a rubber-cored golf-ball; a small bottle with a glass stopper, clearly impossible to throw away, since it might come in useful any day, and how foolish I should feel if this afternoon I wanted a bottle with a glass stopper, and had to send into the town for one, whereas, if I had been less iconoclastic, I might have airily produced the exact thing needed out of the left-hand top drawer. Then came a little tin box full of pink powder, which I concluded was rouge. This was puzzling.

‘When did I use rouge?’ I asked Helen.

‘I don’t know. Was it Legs’, do you think, when he acted the Red Queen last year?’

No, I couldn’t throw that away. The Red Queen had been a piece of genius. And next came the telegram from him to me saying that he had passed into the Foreign Office. Then there was a vile caricature of myself at the top of my so-called swing at golf—quite unrecognizable, I assure you, but....

Then came a mass of letters, receipted bills, and accounts rendered. Accounts rendered always fill me with suspicion, and I have to hunt among unpaid bills to find the items of the account rendered, as I feel a moral certainty that this is an attempt to defraud me. But they are invariably correct. But these and the receipted bills, which had to be docketed and tied up together in a bundle, took time. Probably, however, I could tie them up with one of those many pieces of string which I had so diligently collected. By a rare and happy chance I found one that would do exactly, and tied them up with a beautiful hard knot, and put them on the predestination heap. A moment afterwards I found several more to join the same packet, split my nail over trying to untie my beautiful knot, and had to go upstairs for nail-scissors to cut it smooth, and brought them down to cut the knot. No other piece of string in my collection would do, and so I cut a piece off Helen’s ball, for she had left the room for the moment.