Across the Stream

by E. F. Benson

"I don't care a toss whether I take alcohol or not," said Archie. "As you remarked last night, father, I hardly touched it till a month ago."

Lord Tintagel laughed.

"But you've shown remarkable aptitude for it since," he said. "You found no difficulty at all in getting the hang of the thing."

Faintly, like a lost echo, there entered into Archie's mind the inherent horror of such an interview between father and son. But it was drowned by the inward laughter with which the scene inspired him, and his spirit, whatever it was that watched the play, looked on as from some curtained box, where, unseen, it could giggle at unseemliness, at some uncensored farce. Last night the same thing had amused him, but then he was in that contented oblivion of his troubles which alcohol lent him, whereas now it was morning and the time when he was least likely to take any but the most bitter and savage view of a situation. But all morning he had been possessed by the sunny lightness of heart with which Martin's communication of last night had inspired him. He must be patient, disperse and blow away by the great winds of love the hatred and intolerance that had been obscuring his soul. And surely it was not only for Helena that he must feel that nobler impulse: all that touched his daily life must be treated with the same manly tenderness. Nothing must shock him, nothing must irritate him, for such emotions were narrow and limited, incompatible with the oceanic quality of love. All this seemed directly inspired by Martin, who had brought him the first ray of true illumination. And yet, while he sunned himself in the light, there was something that apparently belonged to his bitter, his disappointed self that cried out for recognition, insisting that these dreams of love and tolerance were of a fibre infinitely coarser than its own rebellious attitude. It strove and cried, and the smooth edification of Martin's voice silenced it again.

The suggested compact between father and son soon framed itself into a treaty. There was to be nothing faddish or unreasonable about it: wine should circulate in its accustomed manner at dinner; but here, once and for all, was the end of trays brought to Lord Tintagel's study. A glass or two of claret should be allowed at lunch, but the cocktails and the whiskies in the evening were to be closed from henceforth. And the arrangement entered into appeared to be of a quality that sacrificed the desire of each for the sake of the other, or so at least it passed in their minds. Archie stifled the snigger of his inward laughter, and thought how clear was his duty to save his father, even at this late day, from falling wholly into the pit he had digged, while to his father the compact represented itself as an effort to save Archie from the path he had begun to tread. But, even as they agreed on their abstemious proceedings, there occurred to the minds of both of them a vague, luminous thought, like the flash of summer lightning far away which might move nearer…

Once again Archie was seized with the ironic mockery that all the time had quaked like a quick-sand below his seriousness.

"I haven't had my cocktail yet, father." he said. "I'll drink success to our scheme. You've had yours, you know. Our plan dates from now, when I've had mine. After that—no more."

His father's eyes followed him as he mixed the gin and vermouth.

"Well, upon my word, Archie," he said, "you ought to ask me to have a drink with you."

Archie somehow clung to the fact that his father had had a cocktail and that he had not.