Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “Tom, don’t pretend you belong to the school that says that everything that exists is worth representing. No one wants to see drawings of dunghills.”

  Tom rose from his chair and began to walk about the room.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “I can’t be sure about it. Before I judge I shall go and see the best things that are to be seen. I shall go to Rome, I shall go to Athens — Athens first, I think. I don’t want to be influenced by any modern art, and if you go to Rome you must fall in with some modern school or other: there are too many artists at Rome. Yes, I shall go to Athens the autumn after I have taken my degree. But I expect to be disappointed. It will all be beautiful, but it will be all obsolete, and that will be distressing. Greek statues are in the grand style, like the Acropolis, I expect. They were perfect for that age and for that people, but I don’t think they would do now. We’re not in the grand style at all. We wear cloth caps and Norfolk jackets. Fancy the Discobolus in a Norfolk jacket, or Athene in a bonnet and high heels. I shall go and talk to Marshall about Athens. He’s been there. You play this afternoon, Teddy, you know. Two sharp. I’m going to lunch in hall at one.”

  Tom gathered his books together, preparatory to leaving the room. “I wish I hadn’t gone to that Museum,” he said; “it’s put me out of conceit You can’t do anything good unless you believe in yourself. People talk of humility being a virtue; if so, it’s one of the seven deadly virtues.”

  Tom met Mr. Marshall going across the court, and assailed him with questions about Athens. This eminent scholar was a small man, with a quick, nervous manner and weak, blinking eyes. He had a nose like a beak, which completed his resemblance to a young owl.

  “Athens, yes. I was there six years ago,” he said. “I remember it rained a good deal. The Acropolis, of course, is very fine. There is, as you know, a beautiful temple to Minerva on it I calculated that the blocks composing the row of masonry above the pillar must have weighed fifteen or twenty tons each. I was very much interested in speculating how they got them into place. Yes.”

  “I’m going to work there,” said Tom, “after I’ve taken my degree. I suppose they’ve got masses of things there.”

  “The museums are very considerable buildings,” said Marshall. “I was very much struck by the size of them. I should be most pleased to be of any use to you, in the way of recommending hotels and so forth.”

  “Many thanks,” said Tom. “I shall ask you again about it, if I may.”

  Tom went to his rooms, and addressed his piano dramatically. “That is a tutor,” he said.

  He went up rather late to cricket, being the captain, and having warned every one that the match was going to begin at two sharp, won the toss, went in himself, and got bowled during the first over, in trying to slog a well-pitched ball over long-on’s head.

  “I vote we declare the innings closed,” he said, as he returned to the pavilion. “To close our innings for one run would be so original that it would be really worth while just once. Hit them about, Teddy, and make a century!”

  Tom had the satisfaction of seeing his side make between two and three hundred, but however gratifying this was to him as a member of the team, it was tempered with other feelings. He went and bowled at the nets for half an hour, watched the game a little, and felt that his applause was hollow. Markham was playing characteristically; that is to say, he left dangerous balls on the off alone, hit hard and well at badly pitched ones, and played good-length balls with care and precision.

  “There’s no fun in that,” thought Tom to himself; “any one can do that. All the same any one can get out first ball, like me, if they play the ass.”

  Markham was in about an hour, and when it was over he and Tom went to get tea.

  “I wish you’d had a decent innings instead of me,” said Markham, as they walked off to the pavilion.

  “Nonsense, Teddy; you played very well.”

  “I mean you enjoy it much more than I do.”

  “Well, that’s your fault. Hullo, there’s Pritchard out!”

  Pritchard came up to them, dangling his glove in his hand, with much to say.

  “It’s a beastly light,” he began, as soon as he was up to them. “I played the ball all right, but I simply couldn’t see it. Besides, it shot.”

  “Well, it was just the other way with me,” remarked Tom. “I saw the ball all right, but I couldn’t play it, and it didn’t shoot.”

  “Oh, you tried to slog your first ball,” said he, walking away.

  Tom and Markham sat down under the chestnut tree and drank their tea.

  “Shall I come to you as soon as term is over? “ asked Markham. “ The last day of term is Saturday week, you know.”

  “Hang it! so it is. Yes, come at once; it will be the twenty-ninth, won’t it? Thirty days hath — no there are thirty-one. Tuesday will be the first You may come and carry my cartridges if you won’t shoot.”

  “That will be charming. I can’t see what the fun of hitting little brown birds is.”

  “Oh, well, you may always miss! But if you come to that, what’s the fun of hitting a little red cricket-ball?”

  “Well, you may always miss that,” said Markham, “just as you did, Tom! Besides, if you hit it you score runs.”

  “Well, if you hit the little brown bird twice, you score a brace of partridges. Besides, you have a nice walk over turnips and mangolds—”

  “Well, you can do that in August.”

  “Oh, Teddy, there’s no hope for you!” said Tom.

  “ — When you die and go to hell, they’ll make you shoot all day until you love it, and then they’ll send you to heaven, where there is no shooting at all. I don’t suppose there are such things as rocketing angels, are there?”

  “Tom, the only excuse for being profane is being funny.”

  “All right. But I don’t see why there shouldn’t be. There is such a thing as a shooting star.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Tom. “Of course there was some connection in my mind, or I shouldn’t have said it.”

  “Do you mean that no one, even you, can talk sheer drivel?”

  “Don’t ask so many questions, Teddy. We shall be all out in a minute; there’s the ninth wicket down. Come on, we’ll give those beggars a chance. You know it is all nonsense saying that trousers and shirts are not beautiful. Look at Harold bowling there. Do you see how the wind blows the shirt tight over his shoulder? That’s an opportunity for a sculptor which the Greeks didn’t use — you get all the shape of the arm, and that look of wind and motion which the loose flap of the sleeve gives.”

  “I should advise you to do a statue of a man bowling in a high wind,” said Markham.

  “I’m going to — just at the moment when the ball leaves his hand, one leg right forward, with the trouser loose on it, the other leg back with the trouser tight. It’s all nonsense about momentary postures not being statuesque. They are statuesque above all others. I don’t call those knights in armour on Gothic tombs statuesque. Sculpture represents life, not death. There! why the deuce Hargrave tried to hit that ball, I don’t know. Of course it bowled him.”

  “Thomas Carlingford did the same,” said Markham.

  “I know he did. That’s why he has every right to express his opinion, as it is strictly founded on experience. Look sharp with the roller! We’ll go out at once.”

  The remaining fortnight of the Long passed away quickly and uneventfully, and by degrees the colleges began to empty themselves. In King’s hardly any one was left except Tom and Markham, who played tennis together when there was no longer a cricket team available, and spent the mornings, Markham working, Tom doing anything else by preference. The latter got hold of a lump of modelling wax, and made the prettiest possible sketch, as he had intended, of a man bowling. The figure was charmingly fresh, and had a certain masterly look about it which showed through all its defects. Tom lost his temper with it twenty times a day, and twice cr
ushed the whole thing into a shapeless mass, was sorry he had done so, and set to work again. He had never had any teaching, but there was no doubt that he had got the artist’s fingers, which are of more importance than many lessons. Lessons you can obtain in exchange for varying sums of money, and artist’s fingers are a free gift, but they are given to the few.

  Meantime Markham bent his grave, black-haired head over his Herodotus, and sat on a cane-backed chair at the table, while Tom lolled in the window-seat, and poured out floods of desultory criticism on every subject under the sun. At times Markham gathered up his books impatiently, and left the room, declaring that it was impossible to do anything if Tom was there; but after a quarter of an hour or so he always wished that Tom would follow him, and at the end of half an hour he usually went back, finding that the wish to be with him was stronger than the wish to get on with his work. Tom apparently was quite unconscious of all this. He was always very fond of the other, but in a breezy, out-of-door manner, and he would always have preferred playing cricket, with or without his friend, to his undivided company at home, while Markham had been conscious on several occasions of being glad when it rained, making cricket impossible, but making it natural for Tom to come to him to be supplied with other amusements.

  Once during this week the two had settled, in default of other things to do, to go up the river and have tea at Byron’s pool, bathe, and come home again in the evening. But during the morning a note had come for Tom, asking him to play for an inter-college club against a town club, and he accepted with alacrity, and went to Markham’s room to tell him that he couldn’t come with him.

  Markham said, “All right,” without looking up from his books; but for some reason Tom was unsatisfied. He paused with his hand on the door.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” he said.

  “I don’t want you not to play,” said Markham coolly.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Tom in surprise.

  Markham got up and went to the window.

  “Nothing. Mind you make some runs.”

  But Tom still lingered. —

  “Look here, I’ll come up the river if you are keen about it I only thought we settled to do it if nothing else turned up.”

  Markham recovered himself.

  “Yes, it’s perfectly right, Tom. Bring your books in here and work till lunch.”

  “No, I can’t; we’re going to begin at one. I shall go and have some lunch now. You can get some one else to go up the river with you, you know; no one is doing anything this afternoon.”

  “No, I don’t think I shall go; I don’t want to much. Are you playing on the Piece? I shall stroll down there after lunch.”

  Markham’s father was the incumbent of a small living about ten miles from Cambridge, where he spent a happy, and therefore a good life, doing his parish work with great regularity and no enthusiasm, reading Sir Walter Scott’s novels through again and again, looking after a rather famous breed of spaniels, and editing, at intervals of about three years, an edition of some classic, adapted, as he suggested in his prefaces, for the higher forms in public schools. His religion was a matter of quiet conviction to him, and his other conviction in life — two convictions is a large allowance for an average man — was his belief in the classics. Ted had been brought up in the same convictions, and at present had shown no signs, outward or inward, of departing from either of them. The nearest approach he had had to abandoning either was due to Tom’s frank inability to find amusement or interest in classics, for Markham, recognizing his undoubted ability, could not quite dismiss his opinion off-hand. The father’s wish for the son was that he should be a great Christian apologist, in Orders as a matter of course, and a Fellow of his college. At times, Markham suspected that Tom’s religion had no greater place in his interests than classics; but of this he knew nothing, for nine young men out of ten do not talk about their religion, even if they know about it, and Tom was emphatically not the tenth.

  Ted left Cambridge to go home two days before the end of term, for Chesterford was on Tom’s way, and he wished to pick up some books at home, and leave others there.

  His father met him at the station, driving a neat, rather unclerically high dog-cart, accompanied by two spaniels and a horsey-looking lad, who was coachman, gardener, and organ-blower in church. Mr. Markham was a tallish, distinguished-looking man, in whom the resemblance to his son could be traced; he wore a straw hat and a grey coat, so that, had it not been for his white tie, you would perhaps have been at a loss to guess what his profession was.

  “Well, my boy,” he said heartily, “I’m glad to see you, though it is for such a short time. Have you got all your luggage? Jim will put it in the cart for you. I’ve got a thing or two to do in the village,” he continued, taking the reins. “Wroxly tells me he’s got some wonderful stuff for the distemper, and Flo is down with it, poor lass! She’s a bit better this morning, and I think we shall pull her through.”

  “Which is Flo?” asked Ted, who thought dogs were uninteresting.

  “Flo? She’s one of the last lot, born in April — don’t you remember? She’s the best of them all, I think. Wonderful long silky ears.”

  “That’s no clue to me, father,” said Ted. “I always think they are all just alike.”

  “Ah, well, my boy, they aren’t so important as classics. I read that note of yours in the Classical Review, and it seemed to me uncommonly good. How has your work been getting on?”

  “Oh, fairly well, thanks. I haven’t done much lately, though. I’ve been looking after Tom Carlingford.”

  “That’s the boy who was here a year ago, isn’t it? You’re going to him to-morrow, I think you said. Get him to come here again, Ted; we all liked him so much. Not much of a classic, I should think — —”

  “No. Tom doesn’t care for classics,” said Ted, “and there’s no reason why he should work at them, you see. He’s awfully rich, and he’s going to be a sculptor.”

  “A sculptor — that’s rather an irregular profession.”

  “Yes. Tom’s irregular, too.”

  “Has he got any ability?”

  “I always think he’s extremely clever,” said Ted with finality.

  “Dear me, he didn’t strike me as clever at all,” said his father. “I remember he spent most of his time skating, and sitting by the fire reading old volumes of Punch “I dare say I’m wrong,” said Ted. “You see, I’m very fond of him. Ah, here we are, and here’s May coming down the drive to meet us!”

  If Tom had spent his time skating and reading Punch when he might have been talking to May — always supposing that May did not skate and did not read Punch with him — he was a fool. That, however, is probably sufficiently obvious already. In this case, Tom’s folly consisted in preferring even old volumes of Punch to the society and conversation of a typical English girl of the upper classes, tall, fair, slim, just at that period of her life when the blush of girlhood is growing into the light of womanhood, a girl whose destiny it clearly was to be a wife, and the mother of long-limbed boys who yearn all their boyhood to be men, and who become men, real men, at the proper time.

  Ted jumped down off the dog-cart as it turned up the steep drive, leaving his father there; and the brother and sister walked up to the house together.

  “Yes, it’s always the way, Ted,” she said; “you come here one day and go off the next And you promised to be here all September!”

  “Well, I shall be here nearly all September,” said he. “I’m only going to the Carlingfords’ for a week.”

  “How is Mr. Carlingford?” asked May, after a pause.

  “He’s all right He always is. He has talked a good deal, and done very little work. He also made one century in a college match, and followed it up by five ducks.”

  “I thought you were going to bring him here again.”

  “Yes,” said Ted, “I had thought of it. But he asked me to go back with him for a bit.”

  They had reached the house by thi
s time, and Mr. Markham was just going off to the kennels, to try the effect of the new medicine on Flo.

  “Flo’s a good deal better, father,” said May; “I think she’s getting over it.”

  “Ah, I’m glad of that. But I shall just try her with this. By the way, did you take those books you have been covering to the parish library?”

  “Yes, I took them this morning, and brought back some others.”

  “That’s a good girl! And the meeting of the outdoor relief fund?”

  “It went all right Come down to the lake, Ted, and we’ll paddle about.”

  They walked across the lawn, down over two fields, now green and tall with the aftermath, and pushed off in a somewhat antiquated boat.

  “Well, May, how have things been going?”

  “Oh, much as usual! I’ve been busy lately. Oh, Ted, isn’t it lovely? Look at the reflections there. I do love this place!”

  “Could you live here always? “ asked Ted.

  “Why, yes, of course; what more can one want? I should hate to live in a town! And think of leaving the village, and all the dear dull old people! I like dull old people — I like little ordinary things to do, like covering parish books. That’s the life I should choose — wouldn’t you?”

  Ted did not answer for a moment.

  “Yes, I think I should. All the same, you know —

  No, I like this best.”

  “People talk of the stir and bustle of London,” went on May, dipping her hand into the water, and pulling up a long flowering reed, “but I should detest that. It would frighten me.”

  “It’s my opinion that the bustle and stir is exaggerated,” said Ted. “People are much the same all the world over.”

  “I don’t think that,” said May. “Miss Wrexham was here last week, staying at the Hall; father and I dined there once while she was here. Well, she is quite a different sort of person. She was always talking, and wanting to do something else. She couldn’t sit still for two minutes together, and she talked in a way I didn’t understand.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I can’t express it exactly,” said May. “She seemed to belong to a different order of woman altogether. One morning she asked me if I did any work in the parish. I told her the sort of things I spend my day in, and she said, ‘ Oh, that must be so sweet! just living in a country place like this, and seeing poor people, and going to early celebrations. I suppose you go to London, don’t you, in the summer?’ Then, of course, I had to explain that country clergymen couldn’t do that sort of thing, and she said how stupid it was of her, and would I forgive her. She talked as if all one did was the same kind of thing — as if covering parish books was the same thing as going to communion. And why should she ask me to forgive her?”