The House of Defence v. 1

by E. F. Benson

“You think, then, that I am so disloyal as to be able to imagine even that anyone is more deserving than you?” he asked.

Again he was a little flowery. Her effort had done her good, and she could tell herself that he was even a little fruity.

“You still delight in phrases, I see,” she observed.

“In sincere ones,” he answered.

They joined the others after this, finding that the millionaire cousin, to his infinite chagrin, had lost seven-and-sixpence, and not long after Catherine suggested adjournment to the women of the party. She herself, for some reason, felt really rather tired, though she had been fresh enough at dinner, and went upstairs immediately and to bed. But sleep, in spite of, or perhaps in consequence of her tiredness, did not soon come to her, and first one thing, then another, held her back from crossing the drowsy borderland. Now it would be the thought of Thurso that pulled her back into waking consciousness, and the perplexed wonder as to what was the wise step to take about him. You could not play with drugs like that; it was safer to play with loaded guns. Yet he had allowed her to throw that bottle away: his will was his own still.... Then her mind took a swift excursion forward into the events of next week. It was crammed from end to end, and she must go up to town quite early on Monday. She was glad it was full; she would have no time for thought. She did not want to think.... Then she turned on her side and proceeded to do so.

Why had Rudolf Villars come back to trouble the busy tranquillity of her life? He had said that he had come back—it amounted to that—to resume his friendship with her. But what if she could not give it him—what if friendship was not the word for her with regard to him? She felt quite sure he still loved her—had never ceased to love her. And for herself? No one else had ever affected her as he did. She felt all she had felt twelve years ago. She resented that; she rebelled against it. Her will, she had asserted, was her destiny; but what if it came into conflict, as he had said, with another will? She was afraid of him, too, or was it of herself that she was afraid?

And he had changed so little! Youthful violence, perhaps, had gone, but the strength of a man had taken its place. If only he had aged in body even!

Round and round in her head went the incessant wheel of thought. She thought of Thurso again, and of the danger in which he stood; she thought of a hundred things, and then she thought of Rudolf Villars again. She could almost hear his voice in her ears.

She had drawn back her curtains, leaving only the blind to cover the wide-open windows, and the moon outside shone full on it, making the furniture and details of her room vividly visible. The walls were white, the sofas and chairs were white also, and on her dressing-table glimmered the silver of the mirror-frame and the silver handles of brushes and toilet articles. How much or how little, she thought, these common-place, familiar things might mean! How external sights and sounds and objects could be soaked with emotion, and how, again, they could be just like dry sponges, hard and gritty almost to the touch, dead and fossilised! And all she saw here, in this her bedchamber, was no more than dry sponge; no wine or liquor of love had soaked into those things. All her life, but once for a few short weeks, she had been without it, and how much she had missed she was now unwillingly and rebelliously beginning to guess. ’Arry and ’Arriet in the street, who shouted songs and changed hats, were so infinitely richer than she, in spite of all that was hers—her position, her gifts, her beauty. All these should have been just the trappings and embellishment of the chariot in which Love rode. Without Love they were nothing—odds and ends, fit for a jumble sale. Once, it is true, she had seen the chariot of Love ready for her, but she had turned back from it, though her foot was on the step. She had been very young; she could not guess how all-important was her choice, and at that age her mother’s will rather than her own had been her destiny. But now again she felt sure the chariot was coming to her. What she had rejected before was to be offered her again.

Yet still her will was her destiny, and sooner than play with these thoughts or admit argument about them, she got up, meaning to read a book till sleep came to her. The book she wanted was on the table in the window, and before she lit a candle she crossed the room to get it. The clock on her mantelpiece had just chimed two, and a light shone from under the chink of the door on the left that led to Thurso’s dressing-room, so that she knew he was awake still. Also, from outside she heard the subdued crunch of gravel under the heel of someone who still loitered in the air of this still summer night. And then below his breath someone outside—the loiterer, no doubt—began whistling a plaintive Hungarian folk-tune that she had not heard for years. But that—that untutored little melody was soaked and dripping with emotion for her.