Arundel

by E. F. Benson

Very small phenomena—more remembered now than noticed at the time—had announced, like horns faintly blowing, the train of circumstances that were growing peaked, like a volcano-cone, and promised eruption. Such, for instance, had been her sense that something had happened on the afternoon when Edward had interrupted Elizabeth's practising. It was barely noticeable at the time, but it tended to confirm her view of subsequent happenings, which began to take shape and substance in her mind on the evening of the opera. That night Elizabeth had been rather oddly excited, and though an excited Elizabeth was a daily, if not an hourly, phenomenon, her excitement then had been of peculiar texture. Though not given to similes, it had represented itself, quaintly enough, to Edith's mind, under the image of Elizabeth holding some young living thing—a puppy or a kitten—down in a bucket of water to drown it, while to draw off attention from her employment she had been wildly and incoherently talkative. At the time it had struck Edith that her excitement was not merely a reaction from the climax of music and drama; she was certainly attempting to drown something, and while her tongue was voluble with vivid talk her fingers were holding something down, shrinking but resolute.

This was not wholly an affair of memory and interpretation; the impression had been conveyed to Edith at the time, and now, taken in conjunction with other events and conclusions, it assumed the importance of a cipher, when a numeral is prefixed to it. And the numeral, without doubt, was Edward. For on the night of the opera, after Elizabeth had gone to her bedroom, Edward had lingered for a talk, and he had been as inanimate as Elizabeth had been vivid, as grey as she had been rainbowed. He was absent-minded, preoccupied, inaccessible; he had nothing enthusiastic or enraptured to tell her about the opera which had so stirred his companion, and yet when questioned he said that so far from being disappointed with it it had been magnificent. To her comment that Elizabeth had seemed to enjoy it, he had for reply, that "he believed she did." Half a dozen times he had tried to rouse himself, and for a few minutes had pulled himself up by muscular effort, as it were, to a normal level, but as often as he thus exerted himself he fell back again below the surface, below waves and waters. And once more her own image of Elizabeth trying to drown something occurred to her. Then, again, Edward would ask after her injured ankle, and not listening to her reply, repeat his inquiries; he suggested a train for their return next morning to Heathmoor, having himself arranged half an hour before they were to drive down in his car. Finally, Edith, half-amused, half-piqued with him, had told him that whether he knew it or not, he was tired, and had better follow Elizabeth's example and go to bed. For a few minutes after that he had roused himself to the performance of the little loverlike speeches, the touches and hints of their relationship. It had never been the habit of either to be demonstrative, but to-night these attentions seemed to her purely mechanical things, wooden and creaking, not the result of the fatigue with which she had saddled him.

Since that night, instead of seeing him, as she was accustomed to do, every evening on his return from town, she had not once set eyes on him. He had telephoned next day that stress of business kept him that night in London (a thing that occasionally happened) but the same stress of business, it appeared, had prevented his coming down to his house next door ever since. A Sunday had intervened, and he had merely told her that he was engaged to pay a week-end visit, and this morning a further note had come, saying that a similar engagement prevented his coming down on the Saturday that was at hand. It was true that he had written to her with frequent regularity, for every morning presented her with a note from him, but those communications were of the most unsatisfactory description, with perfunctory regrets for his continued absence, and perfunctory assurances of the imperativeness of the employments which detained him. Once he had said that the hot weather had pulled him down from the usual serenity of his health, and visited him with headaches, but her inquiry and sympathy on this point had brought forth no further allusion to it. He was still staying at the Savoy Hotel, for while work was so heavy it was not worth while getting to Heathmoor late in the evening, only to leave by the early train in the morning. This, he said, would only add further fatigue to a fatiguing day. And he had clearly written in, between lines, "I should not set eyes on you, even. How is your ankle?"

These notes, as has been mentioned, arrived with regularity, but they were not the only communications received at Arundel from him. Twice, to Edith's knowledge, Elizabeth had heard from him, and, allowing herself now to suspect everything and everybody, Edith imagined that her cousin had heard oftener than that. For the early post was delivered at the house an hour before breakfast-time, and was sent up to the rooms of its various destinations. But a week ago now, Edith, by chance, had come down before its arrival, and when it came had sorted it out herself and seen the neat unmistakable handwriting; and to-day, in obedience to a definite jealousy and suspicion, she had come down early again, and again found that Edward had written to her cousin. This time, hating herself for it, yet unable to resist, she had fingered the envelope and come to the conclusion that there were certainly two sheets in it. To neither of these letters had Elizabeth made the slightest allusion.

There remained to colour, as it were, all these various outlined features with a general "wash" the aspect of Elizabeth, the impression of her. Of Edward she could only judge by the tenor of his notes, and in them he revealed nothing except reticence. But Elizabeth was here, her moods, her appearance, her voice, all gave information about her; and if Edward's notes suggested reticence, Elizabeth suggested repression. It required very little knowledge of human nature (luckily for Edith, since her acquirements in that supreme branch of knowledge were of the most elementary description) to see that her mind was beset by some monstrous incubus. Often she sat silent and absorbed, and then, with an effort, would break into a torrent of broken-winged high spirits and gaiety, which presented the appearance of a fair forgery of her normal appreciative pleasure in life. Then, with equal suddenness, she would seem incapable of keeping up this spurious pageant, and in the middle of some voluble extravagance she would sink back again into a nervous silence. More than once this change had come on the ringing of the front door bell, which, sounding in the kitchen passage, was clearly audible from the garden. Not once or twice only in this last week had Edith seen her drop suddenly into a restless silence when this innocent harbinger was heard, while with eager and shrinking anxiety she watched beneath dropped eyelids for the appearance of a visitor. Sometimes some such would appear and Elizabeth would soon make an excuse for a visit to the house or a conjecture as to the arrival of the post.

Now up till the moment of her falling in love with Edward, Edith's potentialities for jealousy had remained practically dormant and sealed up in her nature, the reason presumably being that she had not cared enough about anybody to be able to wake that green-eyed monster, three-quarters fiend and one-quarter angel, from its hibernation. For though jealousy is a passion which at first sight seems wholly ugly and contemptible, it must not be forgotten that its very existence postulates the pre-existence among its ancestors of love. Love, we may say, represents one of its grandparents; it is always of that noble descent. Or, if it be argued that a passion so utterly mean is wholly lacking in the open-hearted trust which so emphatically is in the essence of love, it must at least be conceded that love is in the hand that turns the key or breaks the seal of the cell where jealousy lies confined, then flings open the door to let the wild and secret prisoner escape and roam. The love that is lofty, that seeks not its own, will no doubt wring its hands in despair to see what sort of intruder it has set loose, will use its best efforts, shocked at the appearance of this monster, to confine it again; but without love never has jealousy been allowed to get free, to root about among the springing crops of the heart, devouring, trampling, spoiling. And in Edith's case her love had from the first come mixed with the sense and pride of possession; its first act, while yet new-born, was to set guards round its treasure, sentinels to watch. To-day they were wide-eyed and alert.

From inside the drawing-room came the sound of the galloping squadrons of chord and scale and harmony; Brahms was working up to one of his great intellectual crises with an attack thought out, brilliantly manoeuvred, before delivering the irresistible assault. Then quite suddenly the music entirely ceased in the middle of a bar, and there was dead silence. For half a second Edith conjectured the turning of a page, but the half second grew and grew, and it was clear that it was no such momentary halt as this that had been called. Simply, Elizabeth had finished, had broken off in the middle.

An idea, an explanation leaped into Edith's mind, suggested to her by one of her green-eyed sentinels, and in her present mental condition, sapped as it was by the secret indulgence of a week's jealousy, she was unable to resist testing the accuracy of her conjecture as she was to resist the demands of her lungs for air. But in pursuance of her object she waited without moving until the pulse in her clenched hand had throbbed a hundred beats. Then very quietly she got out of her chair and went softly in through the open garden door into the drawing-room.

Elizabeth was sitting with her back towards her at the writing-table that stood at the far end of the room. As Edith entered the swift passage of her pen ceased, and she sat with her head resting on one hand, thinking intently. Then, taking it up again, she began writing once more. Edith had seen enough for her present purpose, and she took an audible step forward. Instantly Elizabeth turned round, and as she turned she shut the blotting-book on her unfinished letter.

"Oh, how you startled me!" she said. "I thought somehow you had gone out driving with Aunt Julia."