Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  “I think,” Maud was saying, “ that I’m about the best sort of dialogist. Not only can I talk quite intelligently and agreeably — can’t I, May? — but I’m a first-rate listener.”

  “Good listening is not necessary for a dialogist,” said Tom. “Dialogists enjoy themselves most when they both talk together, as we used to do at Athens.”

  “Oh, you’re wrong,” said Maud. “Each dialogist must know that the other is sympathique, and the easiest way of conveying that is by listening well.”

  “Yes; but I know you are sympathique to me,” said Tom, “so I don’t care whether you listen or not Besides, listening is rather a despicable quality. I don’t think you’ve got it, you know, so I’m not being rude.”

  May got up.

  “Well, we must go,” she said. “ I said I’d be back by three to take Mr. Thomas out.”

  “Oh, don’t go yet,” said Maud. “Why, you’ve only just finished lunch!”

  “I must; but Tom can stop here.”

  May was conscious that it required a little magnanimity to say this, and at the same time that she threw a pinch of bitterness into her magnanimity. She wished Maud to know that she knew that it was Tom, not herself, Maud wanted to talk to; and though she had not spoken with any idea of her words conveying this, she was not sorry that they might bear such an interpretation.

  But Tom did not dive into such feminine subtleties, though Maud suspected them.

  “I shall stop a bit if I’m not in the way,” he said. “I meant to take a holiday this afternoon, and I shall take it here.”

  Maud stood drumming with her fingers on the balustrade for a moment or two after May had gone. This was the first time she had been alone with Tom since her stay in Norfolk, and she revelled in her sense of security, for she felt all the old camaraderie feeling, and no touch of any more disturbing results from the companionship, and it was with the air and the words of a comrade that she spoke.

  “I think you ought to have gone with May,” she said. “I can say that to you, for you know how glad I am personally that you stayed.”

  Tom looked up.

  “Why?”

  “Because she wanted you to go. I am sure of that.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “But I do,” said Maud. “Don’t be banal, and say you ought to know because you are her husband. That’s no argument You are a man, and it is impossible for you to understand a woman as a woman can.”

  “But it’s unreasonable.”

  “That, again, is no argument. Oh, good heavens, Tom, if we were all reasonable, what a simple world it would be! And how dull!”

  “I’m not sure I don’t prefer dulness to excitement,” said Tom. “Wait till you’ve had a fright and then see how you appreciate uneventfulness.”

  “Ah, but dulness is not a synonym for content,” said Maud, speaking from her new experiences. “It is a great mistake to suppose that.”

  Tom flicked off the end of his cigarette ash. For the last few weeks he had deliberately stifled certain thoughts, but with Maud there was no need to stifle them.

  “I am not sure,” he said. “Of course one aims at content — one aims at nothing else. But one aims at it, I think, because one knows it is unattainable. There is no such thing as content for people who are alive — you know what I mean by alive. I think we have talked about it before. For human beings to be content is to be limited.”

  “Yes, and to be human is to be limited. I am talking like a maiden aunt, I know.”

  Tom looked up smiling.

  “You have the distinction of having invented the least applicable definition possible of yourself. What’s the opposite to maiden aunt? Married niece, I suppose. There is your label.”

  “But I am not married.”

  “No; but you unite qualities which are rarely united You are experienced and you are fresh. How do you do it?”

  “I might much more reasonably ask you that.”

  “Not at all. At present I feel like a blasé baby.”

  “You?”

  Tom suddenly became overwhelmingly conscious of all he had stifled so long. His anxieties over petty money matters, the sordidness of the life in the little flat in Bloomsbury — all these were trifles; but there were other things which were not trifles. He and May loved each other — that he believed; but apart from their love to each other their passions lay as far sundered as the two poles. Each was invisible and incomprehensible to the other.

  “It is this,” he said. “I have felt and feel a passion for something which I shall, I am afraid, have to abandon. I am telling you things I have told to no one, hardly to myself. But, as you know, art is a passion to me. There is one art, so I think, and I am trying to realize it. But I have to face the probability that it will not be appreciated — already I call it a probability — and if so, I shall have to abandon it because I have other ties, and the need for bread and butter rightly outweighs all else. Not that I am less enthusiastic; but one can neither live nor triumph by enthusiasm. There are claims which outweigh all enthusiasms or artistic convictions.”

  “Oh, but the two could not actually come in conflict,” said Maud. “It is absurd to suppose that you will have to abandon your ideas of art at the very outset because they are not marketable. Besides, most purchasers are Philistines.”

  “That is exactly what I fear,” said Tom. “Of course I don’t say for a moment that I can produce good things, but I have an idea of beauty, and I must work for that as long as I can. Perhaps great encouragement from any one would mend my case, but the world regards me with disconcerting indifference. Manvers thinks me a delver after uninteresting survivals. He may be right, but again I may be. That the majority of purchasers think Manvers right is of course indisputable.”

  “But all this need not make you blasé;” said Maud.

  Tom was silent. What he hungered for was active, sincere sympathy from May, but that was not to be had. She seemed to regard the possible abandonment of his practice of art as she would regard any other change of employment, as if, for instance, Tom was a butcher and found it necessary to become a baker. He had, as he acknowledged to himself, taken an impossible view of all she might be to him. He was in love with her still, as much as, or even more than when they married, but he had realized that she did not and could not sympathize fully with his aims. At first it had seemed as if there was nothing she could not do for him, as if they two were wholly and inevitably one. But, without loving her the less, he had learned that it was not so. She had one passion, he another, and they had to support their passions singly. But the most rudimentary code of loyalty forbade his saying anything of the kind to Maud.

  “No; you are right,” he said. “I have a great many illusions left, and one can’t be blasé if one has illusions. Of course I still have the illusion that the Demeter is going to be a masterpiece. But the necessity of wondering whether the masterpiece is marketable clouds the illusion a little.”

  “Oh, you are certainly not blasé? said Maud, with conviction. “How can a man married to a woman he loves, working at what he loves, not only for its sake but to supply her actual needs, be blasé. You ought to keep young for ever.”

  “I am a quarter of a century old,” said Tom, “and I should like to live till a hundred. It’s a good thing to be alive. Do you know that line of Whitman’s? — I can’t quote it exactly—’ Let us take hands and help each other to-day, because we are alive together.’” Maud’s eye kindled.

  “I like great big common ideas like that,” she said. “Mr. Manvers would think it was a sign of approaching bourgeoisie or old age. After all we are alive, and who is to help us except — except each other?” she added, with a fine superiority to grammar, and holding out her hand to Tom.

  Tom smiled, and the dimples came. Just now it struck Maud that he was so like his cousin, instead of the other way about “I believe you understand me,” he said. “And to understand any one is the greatest benefit you can do him!”


  Lady Chatham returned before long from an unnecessary call, undertaken chiefly because the carriage had to go that way, and it was the most convenient thing in the world. She urged Tom to stop for tea, and it was consequently nearly six when he left the house.

  His way lay across the park from the Albert Gate to the Marble Arch, and he loitered, for Maud had replenished his serenity, and when we are serene we are not in a hurry. It was a hot afternoon, and by the time he got to the Serpentine the banks were crowded with bathers. The grass underneath the big elm trees on the side of the Row was covered with heaps of clothes, and multitudes of boys and young men were standing about on the bank, or swimming. The soft persuasive colour of an English evening was there, and the warm languor of the south, and Tom stood watching them for some time, feeling rather as if a gallery of antique statues had come to life. Some of the bathers were very well made, one particularly, a boy of about eighteen, who was standing on the bank resting on his foremost foot, the other just touching the ground with the toes, his hands clasped behind his head. He was long in the leg, short and slight in the body, and his hair curled crisply on his forehead as in a Greek bronze. Tom told himself that he was Lysippian, and went on his way thinking what a fine subject for a statue Isaac would make — Isaac waiting with the faggots of wood on his shoulder, standing gracefully, unthinkingly, like the boy he had just seen, not knowing who the victim should be.

  May meanwhile had taken Mr. Thomas out for his airing, had had tea alone, and was feeling a little ill-used. Maud had been quite right Tom, she thought, ought to have come away with her. Why? Well, for no reason except the very important one that he wanted to stop. Then it occurred to her that a candid enemy might say she was in danger of becoming jealous of Maud, and the thought of that made her quite angry. But no one had suggested it except herself.

  In Tom’s mind the vision of Isaac was supplanted by other thoughts. He wondered whether he had said too much, whether by any chance Maud could guess his trouble, for he knew she was skilful at reading between the lines, and on his way down Oxford Street he determined to write her a line in order to counteract any such undesirable possibility.

  May was not in the drawing-room when he got in, and taking up a postcard — for there was nothing private in what he meant to say — he wrote: “I am not blasé at all. Don’t think I am.”

  He directed it, and leaving it with two or three others for the post, went to see if May was in yet He found her with Mr. Thomas, who was a little fractious, and who, on Tom’s entrance, began yelling in a way that shouted volumes for his lungs and larynx Tom bore it for a minute or two, but as it did not subside he shouted out to May across the tumult —

  “I’ve only just come in, and if I stop here I shall be deafened. I shall be in the studio till dinner.”

  Mr. Thomas condescended to go to sleep after a quarter of an hour or so, and May went to the drawingroom. Tom’s post-card was lying address downwards, and not thinking what she was doing she read it. It was quite natural and innocent to see to whom he was writing, but when she saw the address she felt a little more ill-used than before.

  About a week after this, Maud Wrexham came to see them in Bloomsbury. May was out, and Tom was in despair because the breezy model had taken it into her head to demand a higher wage for standing, and Tom could not afford either to pay her more, or to part with her. He had engaged her till the end of the week at the higher rate, but he knew he could not continue to do so indefinitely. He was walking up and down the studio when Maud was sloppily announced by the slip-shod maid — wondering what on earth was to be done.

  “May not here,” she said, “and you be-thunder-clouded! What’s the matter?”

  Tom related the woes of the afternoon, and commented bitterly on the rapacity of the human race.

  “I really don’t know what to do,” he said. “I can’t possibly keep her on at this rate. It’s hard enough as it is.”

  Maud flushed suddenly, and seemed to have something to say.

  “We are old friends,” she began at length, “and I don’t think you will be offended at what I am going to say. Will you do me a favour? Will you let me lend you some money?”

  Tom stopped suddenly in his walk.

  “How could I be offended?” he asked. “It is awfully kind of you. For myself I should say ‘Yes’ at once. Why not? But there is May.”

  Maud was silent a moment. A vague impatience came over her, for she had understood rather more than Tom had meant her to understand a week ago.

  “Why should she know?” she asked at length. “It is a matter between you and me. I know some people would refuse such a thing at once. It is such a comfort that you are sensible. I have too much money, you have too little. There can be no reason why I should not lend you some.”

  Despite herself she felt a great anxiety that Tom should acquiesce. The thing was of no importance, but she could not help longing that Tom should take her offer, and not let May know. The feeling in her mind was too undefined to lend itself to analysis, but she was conscious of desiring this in some subtle manner beyond her control.

  But Tom answered her at once.

  “No, I must tell May. It would be out of the question not to tell her. You see that surely. But I thank you again for your offer. I will tell her tonight. Perhaps she will not object; on the other hand, I am afraid she may. I have no such feelings about it. Of course we can go on for a month or so, but what is to happen then? If I could get Demeter finished, and the clay sketch of the other done, I shall have done my best, and if no one buys them—”

  Maud looked up inquiringly.

  “God knows what next,” said Tom. “If May and the baby keep well I can’t bring myself to feel desperate. But if anything demanding expense happens to either of them I don’t know what we shall do.”

  “You’re fussed and worried this afternoon,” said Maud, sympathetically. “It’s this bother about the model, and the heat, and so on. This room is awfully hot. Why don’t you have a new blind up?”

  Tom laughed rather bitterly.

  “New blinds!” he said. “I’m thankful we’ve got some old ones. Thank God May doesn’t know about it all, how near we are to actual want! But I lie awake at night wondering if I ought to tell her. I am worried, I confess it; and I thought I was so sure of myself. I aim at what I believe to be best I would sooner have produced that” — and he pointed to the Demeter—” than all Manvers’ things, for which he gets what he asks. It will be finished next week and two or three dealers are coming here to look at it. They bought those miserable statuettes of mine readily enough;”

  “Of course you can’t make any more of those,” said Maud. “I understand that.”

  Tom flushed with pleasure.

  “I believe you do,” he said, “though I don’t think any one else does. Manvers and Wallingthorpe think it is half out of sheer perversity that I make what they call heathen goddesses. But they are wrong. I do it because I must. I may be quite wrong about myself, but I believe I am an artist If I didn’t think that I should have taken to the statuettes again the moment we lost all our money. They might as well tell me to make plush brackets — which I could probably do tolerably well. If I am not an artist, of course I am wasting my time when I might be earning money, but I can’t sterilize that possibility just yet When you have a passion for a thing, it is not easy to give it all up because you have no bank-notes.”

  “It’s hard,” said Maud.

  “I cannot serve two masters,” continued Tom, earnestly. “I cannot use the gifts I believe I may possess in any other way than the way I believe to be best. If the worst comes to the worst, if I cannot get my living by — oh, it’s impossible, impossible! “ he cried.

  Before Maud had time to reply the door opened and May came in. She, too, saw by Tom’s face that, something had happened.

  “Why, what’s the matter, Tom?” she asked quickly.

  “Nothing, dear,” said he, getting up and recovering himself with an effort. “I
have had a row with a model, and she says she won’t sit for me any more at the present terms; and so we parted. May, give us some tea, dear, will you? I want tea badly, and so does Miss Wrexham.”

  May looked a little vexed; she felt she had not been told all. She shook hands with Maud, and remarked, a little curtly, that she did not know the Chathams were still in London.

  “Only a few days more,” said Maud. “How splendidly the Demeter has got on.”

  May was a little mollified.

  “Yes, Tom’s been working very hard — too hard, I think. He doesn’t take enough exercise.”

  “Oh, there’ll be plenty of time for that when she’s finished,” said Tom; “and it’s exercise enough chipping away at that stone.”

  “I saw Mr. Holders this afternoon,” said May. “Mr. Holders bought one of Tom’s things last winter,” she explained to Maud, “and he wants to know if you have anything else for him. I said there was one unfinished statuette, but I couldn’t get you to finish it. Besides, you’d given it me.”

  Tom grinned and stirred his tea.

  “No, dear, I should just think you couldn’t get me to finish it,” he said. “May means that little abortion on the chimney-piece in the sitting-room, you know. There’s a horror for you!”

  Maud Wrexham soon went away, and the two were left together. May’s thoughts went back to the trouble she had seen on Tom’s face when she entered, and presently she said —