Mammon and Co.

by E. F. Benson

She had lunched alone in her sitting-room off a tray, for it was warmer there than in the dining-room, and had tried a dozen ways of making the hours pass. It was impossible to go out; the snow, which had begun before Jack had left, was getting momently thicker and falling in giddy, frenzied wreaths. The air was bitterly cold, and she could see but dimly through the whirling atmosphere the lines of shrubs in the garden, standing with thick white mantles on. A couple of puffy-feathered sparrows crouched on her window-sill, and Kit in the bitterness of her heart hated them, and, going to the window, frightened them away. They dropped stiffly down on the lawn below, and half walked, half fluttered, to the shelter of a bush near. Then a sudden compunction came over her, and, throwing open the window, she flung out the crumbs from her lunch-tray, but the sudden movement only scared them off altogether. She stood long at the window, looking out on to the blinding desolation, and then by a violent effort detached herself for the moment from all the things that troubled her. They would all have to be taken and dealt with, but she could do nothing alone. Jack had to be told something—Jack and another.

The electric light was out of order, and about a quarter past three of that howling winter's afternoon she left her place by the fire and her unread book and rang for lamps. Then there were orders also to be sent to the stables, and she detained the man a minute to give them, knowing that when he had gone she would be alone again. The omnibus and the brougham must both meet the train, and the horses must be roughed, and was there any telegram for his lordship. One had come, and, guessing it was from Alington, she opened it.

"Bad slump in Carmel East," she read. "Cannot advise."

Kit crumpled the telegram up, and threw it impatiently into the grate. Here was another thing to be banished from her mind; truly this was a somewhat extensive exile. She determined not to sell; unless something happened to send the prices up, it would be a mere reminder of her losses to rescue so small a salvage from the wreck. She did not want a little money, she wanted a great deal, and she would just as soon have none as a little. So, having determined to dismiss the whole subject, she thought of nothing else for the next half-hour.

Outside the evening grew darker and wilder, and the windows on the north-east of her room, the quarter from which the wind blew, were already half blinded by the snow, and every now and then a furious, unseen hand would rattle their casements as if demanding instant admittance. The wind, which had been rising and falling and rising again all day in fitful gusts, now blew with an astonishing and ever increasing vehemence. The line would be deep in snow, perhaps almost impassable; in any case the train which should bring Jack and the rest must be late. Kit felt that the elements, the snow and the storm, were malignant beings fighting against her; the solitude of the next few hours became unbearable, and who knew how many hours she might still be alone? Quick to catch at relief, it seemed to her that to have people about, to have the ordinary innumerable duties of a hostess to perform, would be the solution of her troubles, and the omnibus full of folk who had already left London were so many anchors to her. She would have to talk, laugh, entertain people, be her normal self, and hours and days would pass without giving her time or opportunity for thought or regret. She tried to tell herself that her present difficulties, like the unanswered letters, would manage and answer themselves. The nights she did not fear: hitherto she hardly knew what it was to be awake, and even if one did, there were those convenient things like morphia which one could always take.

Tea-time came; her room had grown intolerable to her, and she went to the hall, where they always had tea if there were people with them, waiting for the snow-muffled sounds of the carriage-wheels. The train was due half an hour before, and they might be here any moment if it had been punctual. Punctual she knew it could not be against this hurly-burly; but still, every minute that passed now was a minute in which they might have reached the station, less hopeless than those she had passed since lunch. The tea-things were brought in, and she ate a piece of bread-and-butter, thinking she would not make tea till they came, but the minutes went on pushing at the hands of the clock, and at last she made enough for herself, and drank a cup. But it seemed neither to warm nor invigorate her; the taste of the cream made her feel sick, and pouring the half of it away, she left the table, and came to sit nearer the fire, book in hand.

Outside the storm went on like some senseless lunatic symphony. Now the long steady note of a horn would blow weirdly in the chimney, and a choir of shrieking gusts like the violins would break in upon it, rising and rising higher and higher as if leading to some stupendous climax. But no climax came; they would die down again with nothing gained, and the slow sobbing of 'cellos would answer them. Then for a moment there was hail mixed with the snow, and the sudden tattoo of the kettle-drums upon the window would seem to announce something, but nothing came except a long chromatic passage from the strings, leading nowhere, portending nothing. Then the horn in the chimney would have a bar or two, repeating its motif, as if to emphasize it, and strings and horns came in simultaneously in crazy music. Then for a moment there would be a dead, tense pause; the conductor seemed to stand with raised baton collecting the orchestra for the finale, but, instead of some immense riot of sound, only a flute would wail a broken note, and the whole movement begin again.

The noise maddened Kit; it seemed to her that her own thoughts were being made audible. Like the blind, senseless blasts, she would take up one meaningless strand of her life and try to weave it into some sort of pattern. But before she could hit on any idea, she would drop it again, and her mind would fly off now to that evening when she had cheated Alington at baccarat, now to the week at Aldeburgh, now to the affairs of Carmel East, and again, and yet again, to the week at Aldeburgh. It was all in fragments, loud, jangling, terrifying, with hysterical bursts of false feeling.

Then, for the first time in her life, the horror of the days that were gone, the horror of the moment, the horror of the future, seized Kit in their threefold grip, and shook her. She looked back on the years in which, day after day, she had clutched greedily, ravenously, at the pleasure of the moment; with both hands she had torn the blossoms off life, making herself great nosegays like a child in a hayfield, and now when she looked at them there was not a flower that was not withered and wilted. Through the past she had arrived at this awful present. She looked forward; the future was a blank, save for one red spot of horror in it, which would come closer and closer every day till it was on her. There was no escape for her.