Dodo: A Detail of the Day. Volumes 1 and 2

The door opened and Lord Chesterford came in.

"Morning, Jack," he said, "what a lazy chap you are. It's half-past ten, and you're still breakfasting. Dodo, what a beastly smell of smoke."

"Oh, it's Edith," remarked Dodo. "You mustn't mind her, dear. You know she's doing a symphony, and she has to smoke to keep the inspiration going. Dear old boy, you are so sweet about these things; you've never made a fuss since I knew you first. You look very nice this morning. I wish I could dress in a homespun Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers. Grantie and I are going to bring you lunch. What should you like? You'd better have some champagne. Don't step in that egg, dear; it will make your nice brown boots all beastly. It's awfully cold. You'd better have two bottles. Tell Raikes to send you two. Chesterford, I wish you'd tell Raikes to cut off the end of his nose. I'm always afraid he'll hit me with it when he hands things. He might have it grafted into his chin, you know; he hasn't got any chin. Jack, have you finished? Yes, you'd better start. We'll meet you at the bothy. I'll go and ask Edith if she can spare Bertie."

"What does she want Bertie for?" said Chesterford.

"Oh, I expect she'll let him come," remarked Dodo; "she's really busy this morning. She's been composing since a quarter past eight."

Dodo went across the hall and opened the drawing-room door. Edith was completely absorbed in her work. The grilled bone lay untouched on a small table by the piano. Bertie was sitting before the fire.

"Bertie," said Dodo, "are you coming shooting?"

This woke Edith up.

"Oh, it's splendid," she said. "Dodo, listen to this."

She ran her hands over the piano, and then broke out into a quick, rippling scherzo. The music flew on, as if all the winds of heaven were blowing it; then it slowed down, halted a moment, and repeated itself till Dodo burst out: "Oh, Edith, it's lovely! I want to dance." She wheeled a table out of the way, kicked a chair across the room, and began turning and twisting with breathless rapidity. Her graceful figure looked admirable in the quick movements of her impromptu dance. Bertie thought he had never seen anything so deliciously fresh. Dodo danced with peculiar abandon. Every inch of her moved in perfect time and harmony to the music.

She had caught up a thin, Indian shawl from one of the sofas, and passed it behind her back, round her head, this way and that, bending, till at one moment it swept the ground in front of her, at another flew in beautiful curves high above her head, till at last the music stopped, and she threw herself down exhausted in an arm-chair.

"Oh, that was glorious," she panted. "Edith, you are a genius. I never felt like that before. I didn't dance at all, it was the music that danced, and pulled me along with it."

"That was the best compliment my music has ever received," said Edith. "That scherzo was meant to make you want to dance. Now, Dodo, could I have done that after eating two poached eggs?"

"You may have grilled bones seven times a day," said Dodo, "if you'll compose another scherzo."

"I wanted a name for the symphony," said Edith, "and I shall call it the 'Dodo.' That's a great honour, Dodo. Now, if you only feel miserable during the 'Andante,' I shall be satisfied. But you came about something else, I forget what."

"Oh, about Bertie. Is he coming shooting?".

"I wish it was right for women to shoot," said Edith. "I do shoot when I'm at home, and there's no one there. Anyhow I couldn't to-day. I must finish this. Dodo, if you are going to take lunch with them, I'll come with you, if you don't go too early. You know this music makes me perfectly wild, but it can't be done on poached eggs. Now set me down at the Handel Festival, and I'll be content with high, tea – cold meat and muffins, you know. Handel always reminds me of high tea, particularly the muffins. He must have written the 'Messiah' between tea and dinner on Sunday evening, after an afternoon service in summer. I've often thought of taking the Salvation Army hymn-book and working the tunes up into fugual choruses, and publishing them as a lost work of Handel's, Noah, or Zebedee's children, or the Five Foolish Virgins. I don't believe anyone would know the difference."

Dodo was turning over the leaves of Edith's score book.

"I give it up," she said at last; "you are such a jumble of opposites. You sit down and write a Sanctus, which makes one feel as if one wants to be a Roman Catholic archbishop, and all the time you are smoking cigarettes and eating grilled bone."

"Oh, everyone's a jumble of opposites," said Edith, "when you come to look at them. It's only because my opposites are superficial, that you notice them. A Sanctus is only a form of expression for thoughts which everyone has, even though their tastes appear to lie in the music-hall line; and music is an intelligible way of expressing these thoughts. Most people are born dumb with regard to their emotions, and you therefore conclude that they haven't got any, or that they are expressed by their ordinary actions."

"No, it's not that," said Dodo. "What I mean is that your Sanctus emphasises an emotion I should think you felt very little."

"I!" said Edith with surprise. "My dear Dodo, you surely know me better than that. Just because I don't believe that grilled bones are necessarily inconsistent with deep religious feeling, you assume that I haven't got the feeling."

Dodo laughed.

"I suppose one associates the champions of religion with proselytising," she said. "You don't proselytise, you know."

"No artist does," said Edith; "it's their business to produce – to give the world an opportunity of forming conclusions, not to preach their own conclusions to the world."

"Yes; but your music is the expression of your conclusions, isn't it?"

"Yes, but I don't argue about it, and try to convert the world to it. If someone says to me, 'I don't know what you mean! Handel seems to me infinitely more satisfactory, I can understand him,' I simply say, 'For Heaven's sake, then, why don't you go to hear Handel? Why leave a creed that satisfies you?' Music is a conviction, but Handel's music has nothing to do with my convictions, nor mine with Handel's."

Edith sat down sternly, and buried herself in heir convictions.

CHAPTER FIVE

It was a perfect winter's day, and when, two hours afterwards, Dodo and the others drove off to meet the shooting-party, the grass in the shadow was still crisp with the light, hoar frost, but where the sun had touched it, the fields were covered with a moist radiance. It had just begun to melt the little pieces of ice that hung from the bare, pendulous twigs of the birch-trees, and send them, shivering to the ground. Through the brown bracken you could hear the startled scuttle of the rabbit, or the quick tapping of a pheasant, who had realised that schemes were on foot against him. A night of hard frost had turned the wheel-ruts into little waves and billows of frozen mud, which the carriage wheels levelled as they passed over them.

They caught up the shooting party shortly before lunch, and, as it was cold, Edith and Dodo got out, leaving Miss Grantham, who preferred being cold to walking under any circumstances, to gather up the extra rugs round her.

"See that there's a good fire, Grantie," called Dodo after her, "and tell them to have the champagne opened."

The sight of abundant game was too much for Edith, and, as Lord Chesterford fell out of line to join Dodo, she asked him if she might have a couple of shots.

The keeper's face expressed some reasonable surprise when he observed Edith snapping the cartridges into her gun with a practised hand. His previous views with regard to women in connection with guns were based upon the idea that most women screamed, when they saw a gun, and considered it a purely unaccountable weapon, which might go off without the least encouragement or warning, and devastate the country for miles round. He was still more surprised when he saw her pick off a couple of pheasants with precision and deadliness of aim. She gave her gun back to Lord Chesterford as they neared the lodge, and volunteered to join them after lunch for an hour, if they didn't mind. Chesterford stole an appealing glance, at Dodo, who, however, only gave him a half-amused, half-pitying look, and nodded assent.

"The worst of it is," said Edith, "I care for such lots of things. There's my music, and then there's any sort of game – have you ever seen me play tennis? – and there isn't time for everything. I am a musician, and a good shot, and an excellent rider, and a woman, and heaps of other things. It isn't conceit when I say so – I simply know it."

Dodo laughed.

"Well, you know, Edith, you're not modest. Your worst enemies don't accuse you of that. I don't mean to say that I am, for that matter. Did you ever play, the game of marking people for beauty, and modesty, and cleverness, and so on? We played it here the night before you came, and you didn't get a single mark from anybody for modesty. I only got eleven, and five of those were from Chesterford, and six from myself. But I don't believe your husband will ever give you five. You see, Bertie didn't give you any, if you're thinking of marrying him."

"Oh, I'm not going to marry anybody," said Edith. "You know I get frightfully attached to someone about three times a week, and after that never think of any of them again. It isn't that I get tired of them, but somebody else turns up, and I want to know him too. There are usually several good points about everyone, and they show those to new acquaintances first; after that, you find something in them you don't like, so the best thing is to try somebody else."

"Oh, that depends on the people," said Dodo, meditatively. "Some people wear well, you know, and those improve on acquaintance. Now I don't. The first time a man sees me, he usually thinks I'm charming, and sympathetic, and lively. Well, so I am, to do myself justice. That remains all through. But it turns out that I've got a bad temper, that I smoke and swear, and only amuse myself. Then they begin to think they rated me too high at first, and if they happen to be people who wear well themselves, it is just then that you begin to like them, which is annoying. So one goes on, disgusting the people one wants to like, and pleasing people whom one doesn't like at all. It's fate, I suppose."

Dodo plucked a piece of dead bracken, and pulled it to bits with a somewhat serious air.

"You oughtn't to complain, Dodo," said Edith. "You're married to a man who, I am sure, wears well, as you call it, though it's a dreadfully coarse expression, and he doesn't seem to get tired of you. I always wonder if it's really worth while trotting oneself out or analysing one's nature in this way. I don't think it is. It makes one feel small and stupid."

"Ah, but it's better to do it yourself, than to feel that other people think you small and stupid," said Dodo. "That's disagreeable, if you like. Wait till Mrs. Vivian comes, and she'll do it for you. She's the only person who makes me feel really cheap – about three-halfpence a dozen, including the box."

"Oh, but she won't make me feel small," said Edith coolly, "because I'm not small really. It's only myself that makes me feel small."

"I don't think I should call you morbidly modest," said Dodo. "But here's the keeper's cottage. I'm awfully hungry. I hope they've brought some pâté, Don't you like pâté? Of course one's very sorry for the poor, diseased goose with a bad inside, but there are so many other things to think about besides diseased geese, that it doesn't signify much. Come on, Chesterford, they can count the dead things afterwards. Grantie's waiting. Jack, pick up that pheasant by you. Have you shot well? Look at the sun through those fir-trees – isn't it lovely? Edith, why aren't we two nice, little simple painters who could sit down, and be happy to paint that, instead of turning ourselves inside out? But, after all, you know, one is much more interesting than anybody or anything else, at least I am. Aren't you? What a blessing it is one didn't happen to be born a fool!"

Dodo was sitting alone late in the afternoon. The shooting-party had come back, and dispersed to their rooms to wash and dress. "You all look remarkably dirty and funny," Dodo had said when they came in, "and you had better have tea sent up to you. Does shooting bring on the inspiration, Edith? Take a bath."

Edith had gone up to her room, after insisting on having two of Dodo's bottles of eau-de-cologne in her hot bath. "There is nothing so refreshing," she said, "and you come out feeling like a goddess." Certainly Edith looked anything but a goddess just now. Her hat was pushed rakishly on to the side of her head, there was a suggestion of missing hair-pins about her hair; she wafted with her about the room a fine odour of tobacco and gunpowder; she had burned her dress with a fusee head that had fallen off; her boots were large and unlaced, and curiously dirty, and her hands were black with smoke and oil, and had a sort of trimming in the way of small feathers and little patches of blood. Decidedly, if she came out feeling or looking like a goddess, the prescription ought to want no more convincing testimonial. But she insisted she had never enjoyed herself so much, she talked, and screamed, and laughed as if nothing serious had occurred since breakfast. As Dodo sat in the drawing-room, opening a few letters and skipping all except the shortest paragraphs in the Times, she heard the noise of wheels outside, and hurried into the hall to meet Mrs. Vivian. Somehow she looked forward to Mrs. Vivian's coming with a good deal of pleasure and interest. She was aware that another strain in the house might be advisable. Bertie and Jack, and Miss Grantham and Edith, were all somewhat on the same lines. Personally, she very much preferred those lines; and it was chiefly for her husband's sake that she wanted the new arrival. Lord Chesterford had done his duty nobly, but Dodo's observant eye saw how great an effort it was to him; at lunch he had been silent, at tea even more so. Dodo acknowledged that Edith had relieved the party from any sense of the necessity of supporting conversation, but it was obvious to her that Chesterford was hopelessly out of his element, and she felt a keen desire to please him. She had sat by him after lunch, as they smoked and talked, before resuming the shooting, and Dodo had patted his hand and called him a "dear old darling" when nobody happened to be listening, but she had a distinct sense of effort all day in attending to him, and enjoying the company of the others as much as she wished. There was certainly a want of balance in the party, and Mrs. Vivian's weight would tend to keep things even. Dodo had even aroused herself to a spasmodic interest in the new curate, but Lord Chesterford had exhibited such unmistakable surprise at this new departure, that she at once fell back on the easier and simpler expedient of blowing smoke rings at him, and drinking out of the same glass by mistake.

Mrs. Vivian was extremely gracious, and apparently very much pleased to see Dodo. She kissed her on both cheeks, and shook both her hands, and said what a pleasant drive she had had with dear Maud, and she hoped Lord Chesterford was as well and happy as Dodo appeared to be, and they both deserved to be.

"And you must have a great talk with me, Dodo," she said, "and tell me all about your honeymoon."

Dodo was pleased and rather flattered. Apparently Mrs. Vivian had left off thinking she was very small. Anyhow, it was a good thing to have her. Lord Chesterford would be pleased to see her, and he was building some charming almshouses for old women, who appeared to Dodo to be supremely uninteresting and very ugly. Dodo had a deep-rooted dislike for ugly things, unless they amused her very much. She could not bear babies. Babies had no profiles, which seemed to her a very lamentable deficiency, and they were not nearly so nice to play with as kittens, and they always howled, unless they were eating or sleeping. But Mrs. Vivian seemed to revel in ugly things. She was always talking to drunken cabmen, or workhouse people, or dirty little boys who played in the gutter. Dodo's cometic interest in the East End had been entirely due to her. That lady had a masterly and efficient way of managing, that won Dodo's immediate admiration, and had overcome for the moment her distaste for the necessary ugliness. Anything masterly always found a sympathetic audience in Dodo. Success was of such paramount importance in her eyes, that even a successful organiser of days in the country for match-girls was to be admired, and even copied, provided the other circumstances of success were not too expensive.

Mrs. Vivian was a complete and immediate success on this occasion. Dodo made a quantity of mental notes on the best way to behave, when you have the misfortune to become middle-aged and rather plain. Everyone who already knew her seemed to consider her arrival as the last drop in their cup of happiness. Lord Chesterford, on entering the room, had said, "My dear Mrs. Vivian, this is too delightful of you. We are all charmed to see you," and he had sat down by her, and quite seemed to forget that Dodo was sitting on the other side of the fire. Jack also had, so to speak, flown into her arms. Dodo immediately resolved to make a friend of her; a person who could be as popular among the aristocracy as she was among cabmen was distinctly a person to cultivate. She decidedly wanted the receipt.