Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  Tom worked as much as he could without a model, copying exactly his clay sketch; but for the “lady’s” arms one was necessary. And she too helped to melt the £150. She certainly had superb arms, and she stood splendidly. She also added her contribution — a not unimportant one — to the little jars which sometimes occurred between Tom and May.

  She was a young woman of unquestionably fine physique, but her tongue was a rather unruly member, and she spoke freely. Tom used to tell her to be quiet and stand, but sometimes she came out with something very breezy and sudden. She once made a particularly breezy remark when May was there. May turned to Tom flushing, and asked him in French to tell her to be quiet. Tom, who had a great sympathy with life in all its forms — the model’s remark was not a particularly vicious form — smiled, but told her to be silent May left the room.

  The girl’s eyes followed her out of the room, and then without moving she spoke to Tom.

  “Well, ayn’t she perticler? A lydy friend of mine, she—”

  “Never mind about your lady friends. You’ve moved your arm. A little more forward, please, and the wrist more bent.”

  May was sitting in the dining-room when Tom came in for lunch, looking angry and flushed.

  “Tom, you mustn’t have that woman in the house,” she said. “She is abominable.”

  “Who?” asked Tom, who had forgotten the occurence.

  “The model, of course.”

  Tom raised his eyebrows.

  “Why? — Oh, I remember. Do you mean that thing she said this morning?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “But, my dear May, it really doesn’t matter much, does it? I don’t let her talk, and as a model she is one in a thousand. Besides, what did she say? I’ve forgotten. Nothing very bad, was it?”

  May put down her knife and fork.

  “Tom, can’t you see? It hurts me that she should be here. It makes me feel ill. It is not right to have a girl like that in the house.”

  Tom crumbled his bread attentively.

  “I think you take rather an exaggerated view of it, dear,” he said. “Of course that class of young woman is not very particular in its language; but what has that to do with me?”

  “She is wicked,” said May.

  “Really you seem to me to build a good deal on one remark. Of course I am sorry you heard it. She expected to be allowed to talk as much as she pleased at first; but I stopped that.”

  “Tom, how can you condone that sort of thing? Oh—”

  “I don’t condone it. I don’t allow her to talk. Besides, one doesn’t select a model for her morals, but for her muscles.”

  “Do you refuse to dismiss her?”

  Tom looked up in surprise.

  “You surely can’t expect me to send her away, and spend perhaps a week, perhaps more, in getting another? In addition to that, I have engaged her for a week more.”

  “Pay her the money and let her go,” said May.

  “My dear May, we can’t afford to throw models and money about in that manner. She has most beautiful hands. Wallingthorpe told me he had never seen such a lovely piece of modelling from elbow to finger tips.”

  “Ah,” said May, suddenly, “you don’t know — you don’t understand. Will you never understand me? Can’t you see what it means to me?”

  Tom could be very patient and gentle.

  “I think you’ve worked yourself up about it, May,” he said. “We won’t talk of it just now. Let us talk of it this evening. I must get back to my work. And don’t be unreasonable.”

  “You will not dismiss the model at once?”

  “Do you mean now — this afternoon?”

  May got up too, and went to the window and threw it open.

  “Ah, yes, of course I mean now,” she said. “When there is a right and a wrong, how do you dare to put off your choice?”

  “May, you ask an impossibility,” said he.

  May felt she was losing control over herself. She had a headache, the heat was stifling, and her equilibrium was upset.

  “You don’t care, you don’t care!” she said with passion.

  “I care very much that you should speak to me like that,” said Tom. “I will promise to think it over. This afternoon I shall go on working with the same model.”

  He turned and left the room, his hands thrust deep down in his pockets, puzzled and vexed. He was really unable to understand his wife. She seemed to him wholly unreasonable. The girl was one of the ordinary class. Wallingthorpe had often employed her, and he, as Tom knew, was rather particular and fanciful in his choice. He had once told Tom, in his florid manner, that it made him unable to work if he knew that a woman, whom he was using to help out his idea of what a thing should be, did not live up to the splendid possibilities which — which — just so. His model had made an improper remark — a remark, by the way, which would have passed with a laugh if made by a man among men — and he was seriously expected to dismiss her, to pay her for an extra week, and lose his time in hunting for another, who could not possibly be as good. Tom had begun to get in a fever to have Demeter finished. He felt it was to be his challenge. If Demeter was not good — was not of the best — he had been wrong, he had done what Wallingthorpe had told him he was doing, trying to fly, and only succeeding in standing on tiptoe. The sort of scene he had been through with May, threw him out of gear — it dimmed his eye and unnerved his hand. Why could she not be more tolerant, less apt to judge? Of course, Tom confessed, she was right in principle. If he could get two identical models, one of whom was breezy and the other not, he would choose the unbreezy one. But what had a model’s character to do with her muscles? Besides, May was building an absurd superstructure on a very slight foundation. It was ridiculous; and he set to work.

  Meantime, May, in the other room, was scarcely more content. Her fastidiousness had been touched; she had winced at what the girl said, as if under physical pain. Tom did not know, he did not care to know, she told herself bitterly, how much she disliked the thought of his having the girl in the house. The face of the Demeter was May’s face, and that the arms should be the arms of such a woman seemed to her positively insulting. This she had not told Tom; she felt it too keenly, and it was a grievance the force of which he could not appreciate if he did not appreciate the other. She felt hot, tired, ill-used, misunderstood, and the worst of it all was that she was afraid she had been a little unreasonable. She was, she had a suspicion, a little unreasonable still, and she felt convinced that she would continue to be a little unreasonable. Then she veered round and told herself that she was perfectly right, and that Tom was hard and unfeeling, and then, between the heat and the headache and the worry, she had a dismal little cry all to herself.

  Tears are a secretion, but they are sometimes a solution; they seem occasionally to carry off the cause of the irritation; and the upshot was that the prevailing feeling in May’s mind when she had finished was that she was sorry to have vexed Tom. He really had behaved with great patience to her; he didn’t wholly understand her, that is true, but he was a dear, good boy, and she had been a little exasperating.

  Fate, in fact, seemed just to have woke up to the existence of Tom. For twenty-five years she really appeared to have forgotten about him, and let him go on in his own pleasant way exactly as he chose. But some malignant spirit had reminded her of his existence, and she was just reminding him that he was not his own master. She made him another little visit the same afternoon, while he was working, in the shape of a tradesman’s boy with a bill.

  Tom tore open the envelope and was confronted by a request to pay thirty pounds for a block of Carrara marble which he had bought for a relief he was working at. It had been ordered before the smash came, and he had supposed that it had been paid with the other bills. He dismissed the boy, and wrote a note to the agent who had managed his affairs, asking whether a bill of thirty pounds, for a block of Carrara, had not been paid. He had given orders that every bill should be paid. He clung desper
ately to the hope that a mistake had occurred, and that the bill had been sent in twice. And then for the first time he felt that emotion, which is stronger than all others — fear, blank fear. Thirty pounds was a solid fraction of their capital. And what would happen next?

  He could not pay it. Surely they would wait. Tom thought, with a regretful sigh, of the patient tradesmen who had so often waited till he could bother himself to draw a cheque. But somehow, by a strange unreasonableness, now that he was in want of money, he was almost eager to pay his debts, whereas, when he never thought about money at all, he never felt the slightest inclination to do so. But Fate was playing with him and frightening him. He had a horrible dread of these surprises, and he felt that the inner knowledge of this sum owing would be poison. Besides, it would be necessary to keep it from May, and the thought of concealing things from May was untenable.

  The answer came back from the agent; no, the bill had not been sent in before. Tom went on working with mechanical accuracy, thinking of that horrible thirty pounds. After all, why pay it at once? Of course there would be no kind of difficulty with the tradesman. He remembered ordering the block with Wallingthorpe. The price was a large one, and he had not dealt at the shop before, and the man had hesitated, wondering if his master would wish him to send it before it had been paid for. But when Tom gave the Grosvenor Square address he was perfectly satisfied.

  What he wanted was to gain time. Thirty pounds represented so many days’ work, and why cut that off? Demeter must be finished; he must show the world what he meant. The artist’s need of expressing himself cried aloud in him. To finish Demeter, and do, if only once, the best he could, was necessary. Necessary? It was the only necessary thing in the world for him except — except May and the baby.

  Tom put down his chisel.

  “You can go,” he said to the model. “It is close on four.”

  The girl stretched herself. She had posed for nearly an hour, and she was a little stiff, and for the moment Tom forgot about bills and everything else, looking at the splendid line of her form from shoulder to ankle beneath the clinging drapery.

  “At ten to-morrow?” she asked.

  With a flash the whole scene with May came backover him. He walked to the window, putting on his coat, and stood there a moment. She repeated her question.

  “Unless you hear to the contrary,” said Tom. “It’s all right. You will be paid all the same. Put your address down here. I will send if I don’t want you.”

  She retired behind the screen to change her clothes, and Tom still stood where he was. Just as she was passing out he stopped her.

  “I don’t want to be inquisitive,” he said, “but tell me this: you are straight, aren’t you?”

  The girl flushed.

  “Strite! Who says I’m not strite? Your wife, I’ll be bound.”

  “Never mind my wife,” said Tom. “Just tell me will you? I shall believe you, of course.”

  But the lower classes, when they happen to be respectable, are just as proud of it as the upper classes — perhaps more proud The girl was thoroughly angry “I’ll thank you to tell her not to say things agin me what are not true, and never likely to be, s’elp me Gawd. An’ what does she know about me? You’re too good for her, Mr. Carlingford, with her narsty back-biting ways. I knew she was up to some mischief this morning. Strite? I’m as strite as she is, an’ striter, too, for I don’t talk ill of folks behind their backs. An’ good night to you, sir!”

  She flounced out of the room and left Tom to make the best of what she had said.

  “Well, that’s all right, at any rate,” he thought to himself. “I shall tell May.”

  He filled a pipe and sat in the window, his elbows on the sash. Forty feet below lay the hot street, down which the sun shone pitilessly; but soon it sank below the house-roofs, and a merciful little breeze sprang up from the west. Tom leant out to enjoy it more and let it ruffle his hair. He was tired and weary, but his brain went back to the same old incessant question, “What next? what next?” Supposing Demeter was a success — not in his sense of the word, but in the financial sense, well and good. If not, what? Three weeks more. There was money for three weeks more, including the wages of the model; and if this bill was not paid, for six. If all went well Demeter would be finished in a month. What next? what next? There were May and the baby, there was the nurse, there was himself. He left himself out of the reckoning. But the others had to be reckoned for. He must get money somehow. But if Demeter brought him none, where was it to come from? He thought of the horrible little statuette which May kept on the mantelpiece, and he went to look at it. It was not finished, but it would not take long to finish it. Would it come to that? Was that the shrunken reality to which all his dreams of art were going to awake? For he felt conclusively within himself that he could not do both. If he abandoned his great aim for a moment he abandoned it for ever. There was no going back. He could not earn his living with things like that, and with the other hand, so to speak, do sacrifice to his mistress. The house of Rimmon or the temple of the Lord — one or the other, but not possibly both.

  When his day’s work was over he and May usually went out for an hour or two before dinner, and before many minutes were up she came to look for him. She wanted to say she was sorry, but she very much wished that Tom would help her out with it. But as they drank tea before going out, Tom was silent, thinking of other things.

  But at last he looked up.

  “Another week with the model,” he said, “and then I can get on alone for a time. Oh, by the way, May, I think you judged her harshly to-day; in fact I am sure you did.”

  “Yes, Tom. I am sorry,” said May. “I’ve been wanting to tell you.”

  “Poor old girl, you look rather done up with the heat! There’s nothing wrong, is there, May?”

  “No. It’s only the heat and — and being sorry.”

  “I wish we could get away,” said Tom; “but I can’t move till this thing is off my hands. But why don’t you go down to Applethorpe for a week?”

  “Not without you. But you’ll come away when it’s finished?”

  Tom walked up and down the room.

  “May, I’m frightened,” he said, “horribly frightened, and it’s a bad feeling. A bill came in this afternoon, which of course I thought had been paid with the rest.”

  “A bill? How much for?”

  “Thirty pounds?”

  “Oh, Tom!”

  “It frightened me. I’m losing nerve. I don’t see that we can pay it now. There is no reason why it shouldn’t stand over. If no one will buy Demeter the time will come, and come soon, when we must get money somehow, and I think I shall let it stand over till she’s finished. I hope to goodness I shan’t be dunned for it. I used not to mind being dunned when I — was at Cambridge, and had plenty of money; but it’s no fun now. They county-courted me once — I’ve got the summons still. I think if I was county-courted now I should die of it.”

  “But what are we to do?”

  “I only want to finish Demeter. There will be money enough for that, if the bill stands over.”

  “And when Demeter is finished?” asked May.

  “When she is finished I shall have done my best.

  And if others do not think my best good—”

  Tom left the sentence unfinished.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  MAUD spent a month with Lady Ramsden — four epoch-making weeks. The note of change which had been struck in her when she met Violet had expanded into a harmonious chord. Just as healthy physical surroundings produce physical health, so intimacy with healthy-minded people produces a corresponding well-being in the soul. And thus recuperated, she was able to make the effort she had been unable to make before, and when she returned to London at the end of July she congratulated herself on the change that she alone knew of, as much as her friends congratulated her on the change they could all see.

  Parliament was not to rise before the 10th of August, and the Chathams were
to remain in London till then. During that fortnight Maud saw Tom constantly, often going to see him and May in Bloomsbury, and Tom, with or without May, more than once coming to see her.

  The old camaraderie days of Athens seemed to be renewing themselves. Tom found Maud stimulating in a way that May could not be, partly because he loved his wife, partly although he loved her. With May his responsibility asserted itself; he was always aware of an increasing anxiety as to what would happen to them all, crouching in his mind, ready to spring.

  And he knew — he could not help knowing — that May did not really understand how essential his art was to him, how inexorable was his inner need of producing the best he could; how bad, how immoral, the statuette of the boy with the rifle seemed to him. She had not an artistic nature, and she had never, except in him, known a man who served that most exacting of all mistresses, whose service is a passion to her slaves. For Manvers, as he often said himself, was not like those poets who sing because they must, but those who sing because they choose to sing. He was clever, diabolically clever, and he liked to exercise his intelligence.

  With Maud then Tom could both throw off, or at least not be scourged by, his responsibilities, and also he knew that she understood how terrible the struggle he might have to go through would be. There was always the possibility ahead that no one would want to possess any of the shining gods and goddesses, and if so it was financially impossible for him to go on producing them.

  The three were sitting on the balcony where Manvers and Maud had sat alone one night only a month or two ago, and, as usual in her presence, Tom’s Promethean eagle had ceased pecking at him for the time, and had hopped away out of sight.

  May was feeling a little out of it, and a little neglected, for Tom was talking to Maud in a way he did not talk to her. He was never anything but kind and considerate to her; but the hurried luncheons which they ate together in their grilling little flat, were often rather silent affairs. If the morning’s work had been satisfactory, Tom was only eager to finish and get to work again; if he had got on badly, the Promethean eagle always seemed aware of it, and applied its claws and beak to the tenderest places with the accuracy of experience. But with Maud he was altogether different, partly, no doubt, for reasons stated above, and partly also because the most well-mannered and loving husbands do not trouble themselves to talk, if they are not inclined to talk, in the privacy of the domestic luncheon-table. Thirdly, as May knew herself, she was not, as Maud expressed it, a “dialogist,” and it was of dialogists she and Tom were talking now. Incidentally, they were both behaving like dialogists.