Dodo Wonders Part 25

Jack had taken a cigarette and held it unlit as he looked about.

"Do try," he said. "I happen to be in want of a box of matches."

"I daresay you do," said Dodo, "but I'm not in want of snowdrops. You must think of me, Jack."

He took a coal out of the hearth with the tongs, lit his cigarette and singed his moustache.

"My job is over too, as well as yours, Dodo," he said, "and I'm d.a.m.ned if I want to have another job of any sort. I believe the railwaymen are going to strike next week----"

"My dear, we must get up to town before that happens," said she.

"I don't see why. What's the use of going anywhere, or doing anything?

I'm quite in sympathy with people who strike. Why shouldn't I sit down if I choose and do nothing? I have worked hard; now I shall strike."

Dodo gave him a quick, sidelong glance.

"Are you tired, Jack?" she asked. "Fed up?"

"No, not the least tired, thanks, but I'm the most fed-up object you ever saw. I shall strike."

Dodo tried a humourous line.

"Get up a trades-union of landowners," she said. "Say you won't perform the duties of landowner any longer. My dear, you could hold on with your strike for ever, because you are rich. Other strikes come to an end, because the funds come to an end, or because the Government makes a compromise. But you needn't compromise with anybody, and as long as you live within your income, you will never starve. I shall join you, I think. What fun if all the peeresses went on strike, and didn't give any more b.a.l.l.s or get into divorce courts, or do anything that they have been accustomed to do."

"Very amusing," said Jack drily.

"Then you ought to laugh," said Dodo.

"I daresay. But why should I do anything I ought to do?"

Dodo suddenly became aware that she had got somebody else to think about besides herself. Up till to-day she had been completely engrossed in the fact that, with the pa.s.sing of the hospital, she had got nothing to do, and, for the present, did not feel inclined to take the trouble to bestir herself for her own amus.e.m.e.nt. But now it struck her that other people (and here was one) might be feeling precisely as she felt herself. She had supposed that some day somebody or something would come along and begin to interest her again, and then no doubt she would rouse herself. She had thought that Jack would be the most likely person to do that; he would propose a month's yachting, or a few weeks in London, and be very watchful of her, and by all means in his power try to amuse her. She knew quite well that the faculty of living with zest had not left her, for long before her first twenty-four hours of complete laziness were over, she had pined for employment, and hailed the fact of an untidy business-room as a legitimate outlet for energy.

But now she found herself cast for a very different part; she had imagined that Jack would help her on to her feet again, and it seemed that she had to help him. For all these years he had found in her his emotional stimulus without any effort on her part. He had never failed to respond to her touch, nor she, to do her justice, to answer his need.

But at this moment, though the symptoms were so infinitesimal, namely the failing to be amused at the most trivial nonsense, she diagnosed a failure of response.... And at that, she felt as if she had been suddenly awakened by some noise in the night, that startled her into complete consciousness, and meant danger; as if there were burglars moving about the house. All her wits were about her at once, but she moved stealthily, so that they should not guess that anyone had heard or was stirring.

"My dear, you've hit it," she said in a congratulatory voice. "Why should we do anything we ought to do? Don't let us. Oh, Jack, you're old and I'm old. For a couple of years now I have suspected that our day was done. We've had the h.e.l.l of a good time, you know, and we've had the h.e.l.l of a bad time. Let's have no more h.e.l.ls, or heavens either for that matter. Probably you thought that I should want to go skylarking about again; indeed, I've said as much, and told you that you had to stimulate me, and get me going again. But oh, I wish I could convey to you how I hated the idea of that. I thought you would come back with your work over, and all your energy bursting to be employed again, and that you would insist on my ringing the curtain up, and beginning all the old antics over again. I would have done it too, in order to please you and keep you busy and amused. But what a relief to know you don't want that!"

Dodo suddenly became afraid that she was putting too much energy into her renunciation of energy, and gave a long, tired sigh.

"Think of Edith," she said. "How awful to have that consuming fire of energy. The moment the war was over she threw her typewriter out of the window and narrowly missed her scullery-maid in the area. She had locked up her piano, you know, for the period of the war, and of course she had lost the key, and so she broke it open with a poker, and sat down on the middle of the keys in order to hear it talk again. She has gone straight back to her old life, and oh, the relief of knowing that you don't want me to. I couldn't possibly have done it without you to whip me on, and thank G.o.d, you dropped your whip. Jack, I thought you would expect me to begin again, and would be disappointed if I didn't. So, like a good wife, I resigned myself to be spurred and whipped, just telling you that you would have to do that. But the joy of knowing that you want to be tranquil, too! Don't let us go up to town to-morrow, or next week, or until we feel inclined."

Dodo ran over what she had said in her mind, and thought it covered the ground. She had fully explained why she had told Jack that he mustn't be a snowdrop, and all that sort of thing. She was convinced of her wisdom when he put up his feet on a chair, and showed no sign of questioning her sincerity.

"We've all changed," he said. "We don't want any more excitements. At least you and I don't. Edith's a volcano, and till now, I always thought you were."

Dodo made a very good pretence at a yawn, and stifled it.

"I remember talking to Edith just before the war," she said. "I told her that a cataclysm was wanted to change my nature. I said that if you lost every penny you had, and that I had to play a hurdy-gurdy down Piccadilly, I should still keep the whole of my enjoyment and vitality, and so I should. Well, the cataclysm has come, and though it has ended in victory, it has done its work as far as I am concerned. I've played my part, and I've made my bow, and shall retire gracefully. I don't want to begin again. I'm old, I'm tired, and my only reason for wis.h.i.+ng to appear young and fresh was that you would expect me to. You are an angel."

Dodo's tongue, it may be stated, was not blistered by the enunciation of these amazing a.s.sertions. She was not in the least an habitual liar, but sometimes it became necessary to wander remarkably far from the truth for the good of another, and when she engaged in these wanderings, she called the process not lying, but diplomacy. She had made up her mind instantly that it would never do for Jack to resign himself to inaction for the rest of his life and with extraordinary quickness had guessed that the best way of starting him again was not to push or shove him into unwelcome activities, but cordially to agree with him, and profess the same desire for a reposeful existence herself. She regarded it as quite certain that he would not acquiesce long in her abandoning the activities of life, but would surely exert himself to stimulate her interests again. For himself he was an admirable loafer, and had just that spice of obstinacy about him which might make him persist in a lazy existence, if she tried to shake him out of it, but he would be first astonished and soon anxious if she did the same thing, and would exert himself to stimulate her, finding it disconcerting and even alarming if she sank into the tranquil apathy which just now she had a.s.serted was so suitable to her age and inclinations. This Machiavellian plan then, far from being a roundabout and oblique procedure, seemed, on reflection, to be the most direct route to her goal. Left to himself he might loaf almost indefinitely, but a precisely similar course on her part, would certainly make him rouse himself in order to spur her flagging faculties. And all the time, it was she who was spurring him.

She proceeded to clothe this skeleton of diplomacy with flesh.

"I always used to wonder how this particular moment would come to me,"

she said, "and though I always used to say I would welcome it, I was secretly rather terrified of it. I thought it would be rather a ghastly sort of wrench, but instead of being a wrench it has been the most heavenly relaxation. I had a warning you see, and I had a taste of it, when I collapsed and went off alone to Trus...o...b..; and how delicious it is, darling, that your resignation, so to speak, has coincided with mine. I thought perhaps that you would preserve your energy longer than I, and that I should have to follow, faint but pursuing, or that you would fail first, and would have to drag along after me. But the way it has happened makes it all absolutely divine. I might have guessed it perhaps. We've utterly grown into one, Jack; I've known that so many years, dear, and this is only one more instance out of a thousand. Just the same thing happened to Mr. and Mrs. Browning----"

"Who?" asked Jack.

"Brownings--poets," said Dodo, "all those books. After all, they were Mr. and Mrs., though it sounds rather odd when one says so. Don't you remember that delicious poem where they sat by the fire and she read a book with a spirit-small hand propping her forehead--though I never understood what a spirit-small hand meant--and thought he was reading another, and all the time he was looking at her?"

Dodo suddenly thought she was going a little too far. It was not quite fair to introduce into her diplomacy quite such serious topics and besides, there was a little too much _vox humana_ about it. She poked the fire briskly.

"'By the fireside'; that was the name of it," she said, "and here we are. We must advertise, I think, in the personal columns of the _Times_, and say that Lord and Lady Chesterford have decided to do nothing more this side of the grave, and no letters will be forwarded. They inform their large circle of friends that they are quite well, but don't want to be bothered. Why, Jack; it's half-past seven. How time flies when one thinks about old days."

Throughout March they stopped down at Winston, and the subtlety of Dodo's diplomacy soon began to fructify. She saw from the tail of her eye that Jack was watching her, that something bordering on anxiety began to resuscitate him, as he tried to rouse her. Once or twice, in the warm days of opening April, he coaxed her down to the stream with him (for fis.h.i.+ng was a quiet pursuit not at variance with the reposeful life) to see if she would not feel the lure of running water, or be kindled in these brightening fires of springtime. If fish were rising well, she noted with a bubble of inward amus.e.m.e.nt that he would forget her altogether for a time, but then, though hitherto he had always discouraged or even refused her companions.h.i.+p when he was fis.h.i.+ng, he would come to her and induce her to attempt to cast over some feeding fish in the water above. So, to please him, she would take the rod from him and instantly get hung up in a tree. But oftener when he proposed that she should come out with him, she would prefer to stay quiet in some sheltered nook on the terrace, and tell him that she was ever so happy alone. Once or twice again he succeeded in getting her to come out for a gentle ride, solicitous on their return to know that it had not overtired her, eager for her to confess that she really had enjoyed it.

And then Dodo would say, "Darling, you are so good to me," and perhaps consent to play a game of picquet. He did not disquiet himself over the thought that she was ill, for she looked the picture of health, ate well, slept well, and truthfully told him that she had not the smallest pain or discomfort of any kind. Often she was quite talkative, and rattled along in the old style, but then in midflight she would droop into silence again. Only once had he a moment of real alarm, when he found her reading the poems of Longfellow....

Then one day to his great joy, she began to reanimate herself a little.

A new play had come out in London, and some paper gave a column-long account of it, which Jack read aloud.

"Really it sounds interesting," she said. "I wonder----" and she broke off.

"Why shouldn't we run up to town and see it?" said he. "There are several things I ought to attend to. Lets go up to-morrow morning."

"Yes, if you like," she said. "I won't promise to go to the play, Jack, but--yes I'll come. You might telephone for seats now, mightn't you?"

Certainly the play interested her, and they discussed it as they drove home. One of the characters reminded Dodo of Edith, and she said she had not seen her for ages. On which Jack, very guilefully, telephoned to Edith to drop in for lunch next day, and arranged to go out himself, so that Dodo might have a distinct and different stimulus. Unfortunately Dodo, hearing that Jack would be out, scampered round about lunch-time to see Edith, and drink in a little froth of the world before returning to the nunnery of empty Winston, and thus they both found n.o.body there.

She and Jack had intended to go back to the country that afternoon, but Dodo let herself be persuaded to go to the Russian ballet, which she particularly wanted to see. Jack took a box for her, and in the intervals several friends came up to see them. He enjoyed the ballet enormously himself, and longed to go again the next night. This was not lost on Dodo, and she became more diplomatic than ever.

"Stop up another night, Jack," she said, "and go there again. I shall be quite, quite happy at Winston alone. Let's see; they are doing 'Petroushka' to-morrow; I hear it is admirable."

"I shouldn't dream of stopping in town without you," said he, "or of letting you be alone at that--at Winston. You won't stop up here another day?"

Dodo was getting a little muddled; she wanted to see "Petroushka"

enormously, and had to pretend it was rather an effort; at the same time she had to remember that Jack wanted to see it, though he pretended that he wanted her to see it. He thought that she thought.... She gave it up; they both wanted to see "Petroushka" for their own sakes, and pretended it was for the sake of each other.

"Yes, dear, I don't think it would overtire me," she said. "But let's go to the stalls to-morrow. I think you will see it better from straight in front."

"I quite agree," said Jack cordially.

About three weeks later Dodo came in to lunch half an hour late and in an enormous hurry. She had asked Edith to come at 1.30 punctually, so that they could start for the Mid-Surrey links at two, to play a three-ball match, and be back at five for a rubber before dinner which would have to be at seven, since the play to which they were going began at eight. She was giving a small dance that night, but she could get back by eleven from the play. They were going down to Winston early next morning (revisiting it after nearly a month's absence), so that Jack could get a day's fis.h.i.+ng before the Sat.u.r.day-till-Monday party arrived.

"I don't want any lunch," said Dodo. "I'm ready now, and I shall eat bread and cheese as we drive down to Richmond. Things taste so delicious in a motor. Jack, darling, fill your pockets with cheese and cigarettes, and give me a kiss, because it's David's birthday."

"We were talking about you," he remarked.

"Tell me what you said. All of it," said Dodo.

"We agreed you had never been in such excellent spirits."