Dodo's Daughter: A Sequel to Dodo

Dodo's zest for life did not decrease with years, nor did her interest in it in the least diminish as the time of her youth began to recede into horizons far behind her. For all the time other horizons were getting closer to her, and she could imagine herself being quite old – "as old as Grannie" in fact – without any of the tragic envy of past years that so often make wormwood of the present. She had indeed settled the mode of her procedure for those years, which were still far enough off, with some exactitude, and was quite determined to have a mob-cap with a blue riband in it, and gold-rimmed spectacles. Also she would read Thomas à Kempis a great deal, – she had read a little already, and was now deliberately keeping the rest until she was seventy – and walk about her garden with a tall cane and pick lavender. She had, moreover, promised herself to make no attempts at sprightliness or to have her hair dyed, since one of the few classes of women whom she really objected to were those whom she called grizzly kittens, who dabbed at you with their rheumatic old paws, and pretended that they had no need of spectacles, though it was quite clear they could not read the very largest print. But she fully intended to remain exceedingly happy when those years came, for happiness so it seemed to her was a gift that came from within and could not be taken from you by any amount of external calamities or accumulation of decades. Certainly in the years that had passed she had had her share of annoyances, and in support of her theory with regard to happiness it must be confessed that they had not deprived her of one atom of it. Her late husband's conduct, for instance, had for years been of the most disagreeable kind, and she had borne with it not in the least like a tearful lamb but more like a cheerful lion. It had not in the least discouraged her with life in general, but only disgusted her with him. For the last two years before she got her divorce, he had been, as she expressed it, "too Bacchic for anything," and she had sent Nadine away from their homes in Austria to live with a variety of old friends in England. Eventually Dodo had decided that she would waste no more time with her husband and got her freedom coupled with an extremely handsome allowance. She continued to call herself "Princess Waldenech," because it was still rather pleasant being a Princess, and Waldenech told her that, as far as he was concerned, she might call herself "Dowager-Empress Waldenech," or anything else she chose.

So for a year now she had been in England, and had stepped back, or rather jumped back, into the old relations with almost all that numerous body of people who twenty years ago had helped to make life so enchanting. And with the same swiftness and sureness she had established herself in the hearts of the younger generation that had grown up since, so that the sons and daughters of her old friends became her nephews and nieces. Nadine, with the beauty, the high spirits and power of enjoyment that was hers by birthright, had so it seemed to her mother succeeded to a place that was very like what her own had been rather more than twenty years ago. Of course there was a tremendous difference in their modes, for the manners and outlook of one generation are as divergent from those of the last, as are the clothes they wear, but the same passionate love of life, the same curiosity and vividness inspired her daughter's friends, even as they had inspired her own. And since she herself had lost not one atom of her own vitality, it was not strange that the years between them and her were easily bridged over.

There were one or two voices that were silent in the chorus of welcome with which Dodo's reappearance had been hailed. One of these was Edith Arbuthnot, who, though she did not desire to put any restrictions on Berts' intimacy (which was lucky, since Berts was a young gentleman hideously gifted with the power of getting his way) loudly proclaimed that she could never be friends with Dodo again. But the answer she had sent to Dodo's remarkable telegram about combusted egoism a few days before seemed to indicate that she had surrendered and, though she had subsequently announced that Dodo was heartless, might be regarded as a convert, especially since Jack had at last yielded too, and had invited himself down here. Another fortress hitherto impregnable was Mrs. Vivian, for whom Dodo in days gone by had felt as solid an affection as she was capable of. Consequently she regretted that Mrs. Vivian was invariably unable to come and dine, and never manifested the slightest desire that Dodo should come to see her. Her regret was slightly tempered by the fact that Mrs. Vivian had an ear-trumpet in these days, which she presented to people whose conversation she desired to hear rather in the manner that elephants at the Zoo hold out their trunks for refreshments. Somehow that seemed to make her matter less, and Dodo had not at present made any determined effort to beleaguer her. But she intended when she went back to town in July to capture what was now practically the only remaining stronghold of the disaffected.

When Dodo drowsily awoke that night just at the time that Hugh and Nadine had finished their talk it was the thought of Jack that first stirred in her mind. Instantly she was perfectly wide-awake. During this last year, though he was great friends with Nadine, he had absolutely avoided coming into contact with herself. He never went to a house where Dodo was expected, and once finding she was staying for a Saturday-till-Monday with the Granthams, had left within ten minutes of his arrival. Miss Grantham had conceived this misbegotten plan of bringing them unexpectedly face to face, with the only result that the party numbered thirteen, and her father was very uncomfortable for weeks afterwards. Once again they had been caught in a block in taxi-cabs exactly opposite each other. Dodo, taking the bull by the horns, had leaned impulsively toward him with both hands outstretched and cried, "Ah, Jack, are we never to meet again?" On which the bull, so to speak, paid his fare, and continued his journey on foot. Dodo had been considerably disappointed by this rebuff: it had seemed to her that no man should have resisted her direct appeal. On the other hand, Jack on seeing her had nailed to his face so curiously icy a mask that his appearance became quite ludicrous. Also he knocked his hat against the roof of the closed half of his cab, and it fell into the road, in the middle of an unusually deep puddle. She noticed that he was not bald yet, which was a great relief, since she detested the sight of craniums.

And now Jack had yielded, had walked out of his citadel without any further assault being delivered, and was to arrive to-day. At the thought, when she woke in the stillness of earliest morning, Dodo's brain started into fullest activity, and, as always, as much interested in the motives that inspired actions as in the actions themselves, she set herself to ponder the nature of the impulse which had caused so complete a volte-face. But the action itself interested and charmed her also: all this year she had wanted to see Jack again. He had understood her better than any one, and in spite of the vile way in which she had used him, she had more nearly loved him than either of the men she had married. Her first husband had never been more to her than "an old darling," and often something not nearly that. Of Waldenech she had simply been afraid: under the fascination of fear she had done what he told her. But Jack —

Dodo felt for the switch of her electric light: the darkness was too close to her eyes, and she wanted to focus them on something. Clearly there were several possibilities any of which would account for this change in him. He might perhaps merely wish to resume ordinary and friendly relations with her. But that did not seem a likely explanation, since, if that was all, he would more naturally have waited till she returned to town again after this sojourn in the country. There must have been in his mind a cause more potent than that. Naturally the more potent cause occurred to her, and she sat up in bed. "It is too ludicrous," she said to herself, "it cannot possibly be that." And yet he had remained unmarried all these years, with how many charming girls about who would have been perfectly willing to share his wealth and title, not to speak of himself.

Dodo got out of bed altogether; and went across the room to where a big looking-glass set in the door of her wardrobe reflected her entire figure. She wished to be quite honest in her inspection of herself, to see there not what she wanted to see but what there was to be seen. The room was brightly lit, and through her thin silk nightdress she could see the lines of her figure, molded in the soft swelling curves of her matured womanhood. Yet something of the slimness and firm elasticity of youth still dwelt there, even as youth still shone in the smooth unwrinkled oval of her face and sparkled in the depths of her dark eyes. Right down to her waist hung the thick coils of her black hair, still untroubled by gray, and slim and shapely were her ankles, soft and rosy from the warmth of her bed her exquisite feet. And at the sight of herself her mouth uncurled itself into a smile: the honesty of her scrutiny had produced no discouraging revelations. Then frankly laughing at herself she turned away again, and wholly unconsciously and instinctively took half a dozen dance-steps across the Persian rugs that were laid down over the polished floor. She could no more help that impulse of her bubbling vitality than she could help the fact that she was five feet eight in height.

The coolness and refreshment of the two hours before dawn streamed in through her open window, and she put on the dressing-gown with its cascades of lace and blue ribands that lay on the chair by her dressing-table. Supposing it was the case that Jack was coming for her, that he wanted her now as in the old days when she had thrown his devotion back at him like a pail of dirty water, what answer would she make him? Really she hardly knew. Neither of her marriages had been a conspicuous success, but for neither of her husbands had she felt anything of that quality of emotion which she had felt for the man she had treated so infamously. She gave a great sigh and began ticking off certain events on her fingers.

"First of all I refused him before I married poor darling Chesterford the first," she said to herself. "Secondly, having married Chesterford the first, I asked Jack to run away with me. But that was in a moment of great exasperation: it might have happened to anybody. Thirdly, as soon as Chesterford I. was taken, I got engaged to Jack which I ought to have done originally; and fourthly, I jilted him and married Waldenech."

Dodo had arrived at her little finger and held her other hand poised over it.

"What the devil is fifthly to be?" she said aloud.

She got out of her chair again.

"It is very odd but I simply can't make up my mind," she thought, "and I usually can make it up without the slightest trouble; indeed it is usually already made up, just as one used to find eggs already boiled in that absurd machine that always stood by Chesterford at breakfast. I hate boiled eggs! But I wonder if I owe it to Jack to marry him if he wants me to? Supposing he says I have spoiled his life, and he wants me to unspoil it now? Is it my duty apart from whatever my inclination may be, and I wish I knew what it was?"

Dodo felt herself quite unable to make up her mind on this somewhat important point. She felt herself already embarked on an argument with Jack, as she had been so often embarked in the old days, and on how pleasant and summery a sea. She would certainly tell him that nobody ought to let his life be spoiled by anybody else, and she would point to herself as a triumphant instance of how she had refused to let her joy of life get ever so slightly tarnished by the really trying experiences in her partnership with Waldenech. Here was she positively as good as new. And then unfortunately it occurred to her that Jack might say "But then you didn't love him." And the ingenious Dodo felt herself unable to frame any reply to this very bald suggestion. It really seemed unanswerable.

There was a further reason which might account for Jack's coming: Nadine. Dodo knew that the two were great friends. She had even heard it suggested that Jack had serious thoughts with regard to her. Very likely that was only invented by some friend who was curious to know how she herself would take the suggestion, but clearly this was not an improbable, far less an impossible, contingency. But that Nadine had serious thoughts with regard to Jack was less likely. Dodo felt that her daughter took after herself in emotional matters and was probably not at that age seriously thinking about anybody. Yet after all she herself had married at that age (though without serious thought) and the experiment which seemed so sensible and promising had been a distinct disappointment. Ought she to warn Nadine against marrying without love? Or would that look as if, for other reasons, she did not wish her to marry Jack? That would be an odious interpretation to put on it, and the worst of it was that she was not perfectly certain whether there was not some sort of foundation for it. Something within her ever so faintly resented the idea of Jack's marrying Nadine.

Dodo's thought paused and was poised over this for a little, and she made an eager and a conscious effort to root out from her mind this feeling of which she was genuinely ashamed. Then suddenly all her meditations were banished, for from outside there came the first faint chirrupings of an awakening bird. Deep down in her, below the trivialities and surface-complications of life, below all her warm-heartedness and her egoism there lay a strain of natural untainted simplicity, and these first flutings of birds in the bushes roused it. She went to the window and drew up the blind.

The dusk still hovered over the sea and low-lying land, and in the sky already turning dove-colored a late star lingered, remotely burning. The bird that had called her to look at the dawn had ceased again, and a pause holy and sweet and magical brooded over this virginal meeting of night and day. But far off to the right the hill-tops had got the earliest news of what was coming and were flecked with pale orient reflections and hints of gold and scarlet and faint crimson. But here below the dusk lay thick still, like clear dark water.

Just below her window lay the lawn, garlanded round with sleeping and dew-drenched flower-beds and the incense of their fragrant buds and folded petals still slept in the censer, till in the East should rise the gold-haired priest and swing it, tossing high to heaven the fragrance of its burning. And then from out of the bushes beyond there scudded a thrush, perhaps the same as had called Dodo to the window. He scurried over the shimmering lawn with innumerable footfalls, and came so close underneath her window that she could see his eyes shining. Then he swelled his throat, and sang one soft phrase of morning, paused as if listening and then repeated it. All the magic of youth and joy of life was there: there was also in Dodo's heart the indefinable yearning for days that were dead, the sense of the fathomless well of time into which forever dropped beauty and youth and the soft sweet days. But that lasted but a moment, for as long as the thrush paused. Another voice and yet another sounded from the bushes; there were other thrushes there, and in the ivy of the house arose the cheerful jangling of sparrows. Fresh-feathered forms ran out upon the lawn, and the air was shrill with their pipings. Every moment the sky grew brighter with the imminent day, the last star faded in the glow of pink translucent alabaster, and in the green-crowned elms the breeze of morning awoke, and stirred the tree-tops. Then it came lower, and began to move in the flower-beds, and the wine of the dew was spilled from the chalices of new-blown roses, and the tall lilies quivered. There was wafted up to her the indescribable odor of moist earth and opening flowers, and on the moment the first yellow ray of sunlight shot over the garden.

Dodo stood there dim-eyed, unspeakably and mysteriously moved. She thought of other dawns she had seen, when coming back perhaps from a ball where she had been the central and most brilliant figure all night long; she thought of other troubled dawns when she had wakened from some unquiet dream and yet dreaded the day. But here was a perfect dawn and it seemed to symbolize to her the beginning of the life that lay in front of her. She looked forward to it with eager anticipation, she gave it a rapturous welcome. She was in love with life still, she longed to see what delicious things it held in store for her. She felt sure that God was going to be tremendously kind to her. And in turn (for she had a certain sense of fairness) she felt most whole-heartedly grateful and determined to deserve these favors. There were things in her life she was very sorry for: such omissions and commissions should not occur again. She felt that the sight of this delicious dawn had been a sort of revelation to her. And with a great sigh of content, she went back to bed, and without delay fell fast asleep and did not awake till her maid came in at eight o'clock with a little tray of tea that smelt too good for anything, and a whole sheaf of attractive-looking letters, large, stiff square ones, which certainly contained cards that bade her to delightful entertainments.

She always breakfasted in her room, and when she came downstairs about half-past ten, and looked into the dining-room, she found to her surprise that Waldenech was there eating sausages one after the other. This was a very strange proceeding for him, since in general he adopted slightly shark-like hours and did not breakfast till at least lunch-time. Time, or at any rate, his habits and method of spending it, had not been so kind to him as to Dodo and though it had not robbed him of that look of distinction which was always his it had conferred upon him the look of being considerably the worse for wear. He seemed as much older than his years as Dodo appeared younger than hers, and she was no longer in the least afraid of him. Indeed it struck her that morning as she came in, with a sense of wonder, that she had ever found him formidable.

"Good-morning, my dear," she said, "but how very surprising. Has everybody else finished and gone out? Waldenech, I am so glad you suggested coming here, and I hope you haven't regretted it."

"I have not enjoyed any days so much since you left me," he said.

"How dear of you to say that! Every one thought it so extraordinary that you should want to come here or that I should let you, but I am delighted you did."

He left his place, and came to sit in a chair next her. The remains of Nadine's breakfast were on a plate opposite: half a poached egg, some melon rind, marmalade and a cigarette end. He pushed these rather discouraging relics away.

"It is not extraordinary that I should want to come here," he said, "for the simple reason that you are the one woman I ever really cared about. I always cared for you – "

"There are others who think you occasionally cared for them," remarked Dodo.

"That may be so. Now I should like to stop on. May I do so?"

"No, my dear, I am afraid that you certainly may not," she said. "Jack comes to-day and the situation would not be quite comfortable, not to say decent."

"Do you think that matters?" he asked.

"It certainly is going to matter. You haven't really got a European mind, Waldenech. Your mind is probably Thibetan. Is it Thibet where you do exactly as you feel inclined? The place where there are Llamas."

"I do as I feel inclined wherever I am," said he.

Dodo remembered, again with wonder, the awful mastery that that sort of sentence as delivered by him used to have for her. Now it had none of any kind: his personality had simply ceased to be dominant with regard to her.

"But then you won't be here," said she. "You will go by that very excellent train that never stops at all; I have reserved a carriage for you."

He lit a cigarette.

"I must have been insane to behave to you as I did," he said. "It was most intensely foolish from a purely selfish point of view."

She patted his hand which lay on the table-cloth.

"Certainly it was," she said, "if you wanted to keep me. I told you so more than once. I told you that there were limits, but you appeared to believe there were not. That was quite like you, my dear. You always thought yourself a Czar. I do not think we need to go into past histories."

He got up.

"Dodo, would you ever under any circumstances come back to me?" he said. "There is Nadine, you know. It gives her a better chance – "

Dodo interrupted him.

"You are not sincere when you say that. It isn't of Nadine that you think. As for your question, I have never heard of any circumstances which would induce me to do as you suggest. Of course we cannot say that they don't exist, but I have never come across them. Don't let us think of it, Waldenech: it is quite impossible. If you were dying, I would come, but under the distinct understanding that I should go away again, in case you got better, as I am sure I hope you would. I don't bear you the slightest ill-will. You didn't spoil my life at all, though it is true you often made me both angry and miserable. As regards Nadine, she has an excellent chance, as you call it, under the present arrangements. All my friends have come back to me, except Mrs. Vivian."

"Mrs. Vivian?" said he. "Oh, yes, an English type, earnest widow."

"With an ear-trumpet now," continued Dodo; "and I shall get her some day. And Jack comes this afternoon. Voilà, the round table again! I take up the old life anew, with the younger generation as well, not a penny the worse."

"You are a good many pennies the better," said he in self-justification. "As regards Lord Chesterford: why is he coming here?"

"I suppose because, like you, he wants to see me and Nadine or both of us."

"Do you suppose he wants to marry you?" he asked. "Will you marry him?"

Dodo got up, reveling in her sense of liberty.

"Waldenech, you don't seem to realize that certain questions from you to me are impertinent," she said. "My dear, what I do now is none of your business. You have as much right to ask Mrs. Vivian whether she is thinking of marrying again. You have been so discreet and pleasant all these days: don't break down now. I have not the slightest idea if Jack wants to marry me now, as a matter of fact; and I have really no idea if I would marry him in case he did. It is more than twenty years since I spoke to him – oh, I spoke to him out of a taxi-cab the other day, but he did not answer – and I have no idea what he is like. In twenty years one may become an entirely different person. However, that is all my business, and no one else's. Now, if you have finished, let us take a stroll in the garden before your carriage comes round."

"I ask then a favor of you," he said.

"And what is that?"

"That you be yourself just for this stroll: that you be as you used to be when we met that summer at Zermatt."

Dodo was rather touched: she was also relieved that the favor was one so easy to grant. She took his arm as they left the dining-room and came out into the brilliant sunshine.

"That is dear of you to remember Zermatt," she said. "Oh, Waldenech, think of those great mountains still standing there in their silly rows with their noses in the air. How frightfully fatiguing! And they all used to look as if they were cuts with each other, and there they'll be a thousand years hence, not having changed in the least. But I'm not sure we don't have the better time scampering about for a few years, and running in and out like mice, though we get uglier and older every day. Look, there is poor John Sturgis coming towards us: let us quickly go in the opposite direction. Ah, he has seen us! – Dear John, Nadine was looking for you, I believe. I think she expected you to read something to her after breakfast about Goths or Gothic architecture. Or was it Bishop Algie you were talking to last night about cathedrals? One or the other, I am sure. He said he so much enjoyed his talk with you."

Waldenech felt that Dodo was behaving exactly as she used to behave at Zermatt. Somehow in his sluggish and alcoholic soul there rose vibrations like those he had felt then.