The Osbornes

by E. F. Benson

“I think it’s a pity to fall in love then, if it makes one so selfish,” she remarked.

“No doubt you are right, darling. Good-bye,” said May.

It was, as May had said, close on six, and in anticipation of Mr. Osborne’s arrival, Dora removed herself from the little fore-and-aft drawing room which looked out in front through two windows on to Eaton Place, and at the back through one on to the little square yard behind the house, and went upstairs to her bedroom, taking the hat with one swan feather fixed in it and the other still unplaced, with her. But even the hat, though in this extraordinarily interesting condition with regard to its trimming, failed at the moment to make good any footing in her mind. It was not that hats were less interesting than before (especially to the maker and wearer) but that during this last month something else had grown infinitely more interesting than anything else had ever been; the standard of interest possible in this world which Dora found so full of enchanting things, had been immeasurably raised. Life hitherto had been brilliantly full of surface brightnesses, but it seemed to her now as if life, the sunlike spirit of life, which shone with so continuous a lustre on her, struck the surface of herself no longer, but penetrated down into depths that she had not yet dreamed of. There, in those depths, so it seemed to her, she sat now, while on the surface, so to speak, there floated all the pleasant and humorous and friendly things of life. The hat she held in her hand floated there, dogs swam about there and flowers sparkled, May Thurston was there and friends innumerable. But as in the exquisite picture of the birth of Eve by Watts, a big photograph of which hung over her bed, it was as if all these were but a skin, a rind which even now was peeling off her, showing beneath the form and the wonder of the woman herself.

She sat in the window seat, and the hot air of the tired afternoon streamed slowly and gently in, just lifting and letting lie again the bright brown of her hair. Outside the hundred noises of the busy town mingled and melted together, and seemed to her to form, even as the blending of all colours forms the apparently colourless white, a general hush and absence of noise. Rousing herself for a moment, and consciously listening, she could detect and name the ingredients of it; there was the sharp clip of horses’ hoofs, the whirr of motors, the chiding of swifts, the agitated chirp of sparrows over some doubtful treasure of the roadway, the tapping of heels on the hot pavement, the cool whisper of cleansing from a water cart, and the noise of news being cried round the corner. But all these were blended together and formed not confused noise but quietness, and from the quietness of her face, and the immobility of her hands which were usually so active, you might have guessed that she was tired or bored, and found this hour pass heavily. But a second glance would have erased so erroneous an impression: there was a smouldering brightness in her eye, and ever and again a little trembling at the corners of her mouth which might develop into a smile, or, equally easily almost, be the precursor of flooded eyes.

For the last month now she had had moods like this, when she dived down from the froth and effervescence of her surface mind and sat below in deep and remote waters. It was not that she had lost the power of living on the surface, for this afternoon with her friend she had been quite completely there, until toward the end of their talk she had felt that she was being beckoned down again and knew that when May left her she would sink into these depths that till lately she had not known existed. Yet the path that had led to them had been quite natural; all her life she had above all things loved beauty, whether of waves or birds or sunsets, or human beings. Thus it was without any sense of a strange or unusual thing happening to her that she had admired frankly and naturally the dark merry face of this young man. He had taken her into dinner once or twice; he had danced with her a half dozen times. And then, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, he belonged to the surface of things no longer as far as she was concerned. Something smote at her heart, and the flowers and birds peeled away like rind as from Eve when she was born, and the woman shone within.

And indeed, there was little in all this to wonder at, for in spite of crabbed and cynical proverbs about beauty being only skin-deep, it remains and will remain to those who have eyes themselves, the wand of the enchanter. No doubt the enchantment can be made without the wand, but when eyes are keen, and blood is young, how vastly more easily is the enchantment effected with the aid of that weapon. And Claude to her thinking, before ever she even wondered if she was falling in love with him, was certainly not without the wand. He was dark, a potent colour to her who was so fair; hair nearly black grew low and crisp on the forehead, and eyebrows quite black met above his brown eyes. Then came the lean, smooth oval of his face, a mouth rather full-lipped, and a squarish chin. Often before he spoke, especially if he had, as not infrequently happened, some rather determined remark to make, he jerked his head a little back and put out his chin. It was a gesture of extraordinary decision, and “oh,” said Dora to herself now, as she thought of it, “I do like a man to know his mind.”

The same signs of knowing his mind were visible, too, in his movements. He never strayed about a room, or leaned against anything. If he purposed to stand up, up he stood; if he wished for support he sat down. But as far as Dora had seen, he seldom wished for support; those rather long slim limbs and boyish figure appeared remarkably capable of supporting themselves. He moved quickly and with a certain neatness that was attractive; once—these tiny details were important in making up her impression of him—she had seen him strike a match in a windy place to light his cigarette; one quick stroke had kindled it and his thin brown fingers made a cavern for it, in which it burned unwaveringly as in a room. And he could dance, really dance, not slide about in a crowded ballroom with an avoidance of collision which was really magical, and without—doubtless these things were all of the surface, but they caused the whole image to sink down with her into those depths—without having to mop his face when they stopped, which in general was not before the music stopped.

Suddenly, from the combined quietness of the noises outside, a sound detached itself and made itself very clear to her ear. It was a motor just preparing to start somewhere close below her in the street, and Dora, feeling instinctively, somehow, that this was significant to her, got up and leaned out of the window. Her instinct was correct enough; a big, short, broad man with an extremely shiny top-hat was just stepping into the big Napier car that stood at her mother’s door. Even as she looked out the chauffeur nipped into his place again, and in answer to the footman’s inquiry she heard Mr. Osborne say “‘Ome” quite distinctly. Then he lifted his shiny hat and carefully wiped the top of his bald head. Upon which Dora had, no doubt in reaction from her really serious half hour of thought, a slight fit of the giggles.

But the giggles soon stopped; they were but of the nature of coming to the surface to breathe, and she was already beginning to sink back toward the depths again, when there came a tap at her door, and her mother entered.

Lady Austell was very tall, and one felt at once that there was not the slightest doubt that she was not a countess; it seemed somehow far too suitable a thing to have really occurred. But in the endless surprises of this world, in which everything unconjecturable happens, and everyone is what he should not be, the ideally fit thing had occurred, and a countess she was in spite of the obviousness of the fact that she must be. That she was dowager was no less easy a guess, for though eighteen years had elapsed since her husband’s death, there was something about her dress, a little strip of crape insertion in the violet of her gown, it may be, or the absence of any jewels except an amethyst cross, or at other times a cap very Dutch and becoming with a ribbon of black in it that sat loosely on her abundant hair, that suggested, though it did not notify, widowhood. These insignia, it must be noted, she did not wear simultaneously, but there was never a day on which one at least of them, or others like them, was not present. No doubt also her manner gave confirmation to the impression conveyed by her dress, for it was one from which all exuberance had departed, though it suggested and reminded you (like a clear sunset) that a brilliant day had preceded it. Her voice also was rather faint and regretful, the voice of a widow with an unsatisfactory son and an unmarried daughter. But those who knew her best had in their minds the very distinct knowledge that it was difficult if not impossible to silence that faint voice, or make it say anything different to what it had already said. Lady Austell, when her views were in conflict with those of others, never said very much, but she never changed her tune, nor indeed ceased faintly chanting it, until the opposition had been borne down by her quiet persistence. As for the regretfulness of which her gentle accents were full, it may have been composed of grief for the fact that others, not she, would eventually be obliged to yield.