The Peerage Cure

by E. F. Benson

 

Illustration: Wrapped in a fur coat, this unfortunate young man sat by the open window of the pink drawing-room so that the lively strains might reach the dancers."

 

THE PEERAGE CURE

By E. F. BENSON

ILLUSTRATED WILMOT LUNT

IT had been the most wonderful autumn for Mrs. Amy Bondham: never before had she lived so exclusively in the society of the great and the ennobled. She had spent October in a round (you might call it a merry-go-round) of visits; for though she had originally planned only four week-ends, she had made herself so popular at each of them that some member of the party had insisted, or at least consented, that she should spend the intervening days before her next engagement at a Castle or a Grange or something very moated and hereditary. Then, when the world began to stream back to London again in November, it was her turn, and every day the hospitable table in her house in Mount Street was laid for intimate and high-born little parties. Though still fond of professional distinction, she had dropped, but only temporarily, her literary, artistic and histrionic friends, whom she meant to pick up again in the close time for the high-born circle which flocked to the Riviera after Christmas.

Just now her aim and ambition was the high-born, and the pages of her "Peerage," in which she put a little cross in the margin opposite the names of those who had entertained her or been entertained by her, became full of these discreet little pencil-marks, and pleasantly swollen became the album of picture postcards into which she gummed, with absolutely scrupulous honesty, only the photographs of mansions which she had actually visited, inscribed with the appropriate date. The rumour, therefore, that she bought these in indiscriminate packets, as illustrating the houses at which she would like to stay, was an unfounded fabrication, devised by the jealousy of less fortunate competitors.

Her circular and devoted little husband Christopher had accompanied her on her progress in October, but he was not so strong as she, and also was quite unable to resist the pleasures cf the table. Throughout November, in spite of the obedient walks he took daily round and round the park, he remained very liverish and gouty; and when, early in December, Amy was about to set forth on the visit which really was the crown of all her social attainments, he was persuaded by her to go off to Bath, and try to get fit again for the Christmas Campaign. This crowning visit was to the Duke of Whitby, and though it was certainly now coming off, it had required all Amy's tact and perseverance to effect it, for the Duchess had continued to be impervious to her hints for an unusually long time. But finally doggedness carried the day, the Duchess had yielded, and had asked her to Doncaster Castle while she was entertaining a bevy of distinguished savants from the Psychological Conference in York. It was not precisely the sort of party which Amy would have chosen, but if it had been a party of chimney-sweeps and chiropodists she would have eagerly accepted. She could murmur her "Nunc Dimittis" now, and see about all the clever people she had dropped.

She and Christopher dined alone for the first time since September, as Amy delightedly remembered, on the evening before he went to Bath and she to Doncaster. For once she had broken her rule about the picture-postcard album, and had allowed herself to buy four striking views of the magnificent Norman pile in which she would be dining next night, and subsequently sleeping, if excitement would allow her to do so.

"I may as well put them in now," she said, "because they will just fill up the last page in my book. I must get a new one when I come back, for we're going to Eagles for Christmas and Tenterden Grange for the New Year."

"Better not, Posie," he said. "It may bring bad luck. The Duchess may put you off to-morrow morning. You've not got there yet."

She laughed.

"You superstitious old man!" she said. "That's gout. It's just acidity. Morbid ideas like that are purely physical.—Where's the gum-pot?—My dear, what a wonderful autumn it has been. Look, the book was nearly new in September."

She turned over the rich pages.

"All those!" she said. "I think I shall have it bound in a manner more worthy of its contents. I wonder what we shall have in the next volume?"

She came and sat on the hearth-rug, propped her back against the arm of his chair, and stretched her feet out to the blaze.

"Perhaps there won't be a next volume," she said, "for really, Christopher, I feel I've been very frivolous all the autumn."

The words "perhaps there won't be a next" gave Christopher a queer little shudder, but that probably was acidity too.

"You bet there will, Posie," he said, "if there are enough fine houses left in England to fill it. You have become a fashionable little dame."

She sighed.

"But there are other things besides that," she said, rather doubtfully. "There's that volume of Proust which I must read, an£ The Life and Times of Tutankhamen, and that book on Auto-suggestion. I shall take them up to Yorkshire. And when my visit's over I shall join you at Bath."

"Better not do that," he said. "You'll be bored to death."

She considered.

"Well, we'll see," she said. "I've noticed sometimes in the paper that there are interesting people at Bath—and some interesting houses in the neighbourhood," she added.

There had been a week's frost in England, and Amy, next morning, seeing in the paper that there was skating in the north, decided to take her skates with her. She was quite an expert on the ice, having spent the last winter at St. Moritz, where she had come across a great many agreeable people, and had, in fact, laid the foundation of the superb autumn she had just enjoyed. One of her picture postcards also showed a lake below the walls of the Castle, and another a mediæval moat round it. Probably the lake or the moat would bear, and the idea of discussing the newest views on Auto-suggestion with eminent psychologists, and then breaking off to astonish them by her lissome feats on the ice, was very attractive. Like most of her plans this turned out well, for the Duke was an ardent skater himself, and after opening the Psychological Conference with a weighty speech, he refused to attend any more meetings, and stopped at home in order to waltz with Amy on the ice-covered moat. His secretary was an adequate pianist, and he was bidden to neglect all his business and play dance music for them. Wrapped in a fur coat, this unfortunate young man sat by the open window of the pink drawing-room so that the lively strains might reach the dancers, while Amy and the Duke pirouetted all day on the frozen water of the moat immediately below. One evening a Royal Princess dined at the Castle, and Amy grew greater than ever, for they skated again after dinner, and she nestled against the Riband of the Garter. She sat up half the night writing one account of all this to poor Christopher at Bath and another to a struggling young friend of hers who wrote paragraphs for the Press. She would make half a dozen paragraphs out of such material, and Amy, though yawning her head off, did not go to bed till she had fully completed this act of disinterested kindness.

The day of her departure, already twice postponed, arrived, and the pain of parting was slightly lessened by the fact that a thaw had set in. The Duke, however, said that the ice would hold for the morning, and they swished about in ever-deepening puddles of water. Ominous crackings and bubblings of air at last warned them that the ice was safe no longer, but then it was too late. A piece collapsed, and they were left standing in thick mud with icy cold water about up to the waist.

They struggled out, and Amy, after a change and a hot bath, protested that she never caught cold, and was none the worse. She was urged to postpone her departure again, but Christopher must not be disappointed once more, for she was to join him at Bath next day, since the papers announced the arrival there of some interesting people. But she had a bad shivering fit on the way up to London, and it was evident that she had broken her rule for once and caught a severe chill. She was well enough next day to write an amazing quantity of postcards to her friends, asking them all to come and see her, but not well enough to travel. The day after she was not well enough to do anything at all except to have a high temperature, and all the friends had to be put off.

She grew rapidly worse: pleurisy set in. She became slightly delirious and babbled in a way that puzzled her nurse about garters and strawberry-leaves. It was in vain that she was assured that her garters were quite safe, and when her nurse told her that strawberries were out of season, she said drowsily, "Yes, but strawberry-leaves aren't." In the intervals of delirium, though her breathing was difficult, she seemed extraordinarily content and happy.

Then pleuro-pneumonia developed, and Christopher was sent for. It was not a very severe attack, but there were disquieting symptoms. She made no effort of any kind to fight and resist: she seemed like one who had attained the goal of earthly ambition, and had no desire left for the accomplishment of which she had the will to live.

"I don't like that symptom," said the doctor to Christopher after one of his visits. "The state of her lungs is not such as to warrant our taking—well, a serious view of her condition, though of course pneumonia is always anxious work. Her strength is well maintained, her heart action is quite good, but she must somehow be roused. Go in and sit with her, and try to interest her in things which used to interest her. She mustn't talk, but you try subject after subject, and see if you can't get her to rouse herself."

He shook hands.

"I shall be back about two o'clock," he said. "You mustn't be too anxious yet. She has plenty of vitality if we can only get it to work."

Christopher went to her room. She was lying quite still, her eyes sometimes open, sometimes shut. She knew him, and smiled faintly.

"Now I've come to sit with you a bit," he said. "How do you feel, darling? You mustn't talk, you know; better not to talk. I'll do all the talking. Perhaps you'd like me to read to you."

She seemed drowsy and very apathetic, but her eyes grew a little more alive at this suggestion.

"Yes, read," she whispered. "Good Christopher."

On the table at the foot of her bed were the book by Proust and the new work on Auto-suggestion.

"Ah, I know what you would like," he said. "Something out of that book of Proust's which you took to Doncaster with you. Will you give me that book, nurse? Very interesting, I am sure."

The invalid's face grew fretful.

"No, not that stupid rubbish," she whispered.

"Well, shall we try that book on Auto-suggestion, dear? " said Christopher. "You were very much interested in that. You told me you were going to read it in the train."

Her forehead furrowed itself into unhappy creases.

"Boring nonsense," she said. "How stupid you all are."

Christopher tried the effect of telling her about Bath, but she took not the smallest interest in Bath. He told her how the telephone-bell had been ringing: everyone who knew she was not well had been inquiring after her, and everyone who didn't know had been asking her to dinner. That uncreased her forehead a little, but still she did not seem to care much, and poor Christopher's heart sank. He realised then what a change there was.

He racked his brains for something more. He felt wretchedly helpless, and the waters of Bath had not purged the acidity from him to such an extent that he could think without superstitious forebodings about those picture postcards of Doncaster Castle which for once she had prematurely put into her book. She had said, too, that perhaps there would never be another book—— He felt he had known then that ill-luck would come of her ill-considered act. And yet how diabolical was the Nemesis that had followed it. Just because she had gummed a few picture postcards in.... "I lunched with a Marquis one day," he said brokenly.

Illustration: Christopher gave a little squeal of triumph, and ran from the room."

She gave a little sob.

"No, not Marquises," she said. "Not Marquises. Garters and strawberry-leaves."

The nurse had come to the bedside, and was looking anxiously at her. "That's what she kept saying night and day," she said. "I told her that her garters were all right and it wasn't the season for strawberries, and I suppose she got tired of trying to make me understand. And now she's begun again. Whatever can she mean?"

"Garters and strawberry-leaves," said Amy faintly.

Christopher crushed his temples in his hands. Some remote association, dim as yet, began to form itself in his mind. It was connected somehow with something Amy had written to him in one of those wonderful letters from Doncaster.

"Your garters, darling?" he said.

Illustration: "A faint flush came on her pallid cheeks."

"No, his," said Amy.

"She's wandering," said the nurse, shaking down a clinical thermometer. "I hope her temperature isn't going up again."

Suddenly Christopher sprang up.

"No, she's not wandering," he cried. "Oh, why did nobody tell me sooner? I know the sort of thing she means, and we'll get at it. She wanted me to read, too——"

He bent over her.

"About the Duke of Whitby, isn't it, dear?" he asked.

A faint flush came on her pallid cheeks.

"Yes, all about him," she whispered.

Christopher gave a little squeal of triumph, and ran from the room.

He tore downstairs without a thought of his twinging toe, and came rushing up again, three steps at a time, with her copy of the "Peerage." He turned rapidly over the leaves with their copious little pencil-marks, until he came to W, and sat down again by her bed, and read.

"Whitby, Duke of. James Francis Adelbert Charlemayne de Vere, K.G., K.C.M.G., K.C.B., O.M., P.C. Born 1882. Educated at Eton and Christ Church College, Oxford. Late Major in 1st Life Guards, Knight of the Order of the Holy Roman Empire, of the Golden Fleece. Married in 1906——"

A happy little sigh came from the bed.

"Ah, that's nice," said Amy, in stronger tones. "Go on."

"Married in 1906," continued Christopher, "Frances Elizabeth Plantagenetta, second daughter of 5th Duke of Merionethshire, and has issue: John James Plantagenet, Marquis of Pateley, born 1908; Lady Cynthia Elizabeth Plantagenetta, born 1909. Aunts living—— Would you like to hear about the Aunts, darling?"

Amy turned her face towards him.

"Yes, all," she whispered, "and the collaterals. And when you've finished them go on to the Merionethshires."

Christopher read and read and read. There was no end of Whitby collaterals, and the Merionethshires seemed as the sand of the sea for number. But life was coming back to Amy, her breathing grew less distressed, her temperature declined. Half an hour's solid information about these noble lines was poured out in Christopher's sympathetic voice, and she seemed to grow stronger every moment.

At last it was all done.

"I shall get better now," she said. "It was just that I wanted, and nobody would understand. Christopher, you've saved me. I feel hungry, too; I should like a little chicken-broth, and then I think I shall have a nap. Tell everyone I am better and shall soon be well. So happy again!"

Dr. Elliott came back at about two o'clock, as he had promised. Amy was sunk in a peaceful, restorative sleep and was smiling as she slumbered. A glance at her and a couple of words with the nurse was enough for the professional eye, and he came down-stairs again to Christopher rubbing his hands.

"Well, that's all right," he said. "You've done the trick, Mr. Bondham. A marked change for the better, and I may say she's turned the corner. How did you manage to rouse her to interest in life again?"

"I read to her a little," said Christopher modestly.